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Manual Chapter : Enforcing Application Use at Specific Geolocations

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BIG-IP ASM

  • 12.1.6, 12.1.5, 12.1.4, 12.1.3, 12.1.2, 12.1.1, 12.1.0
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Enforcing Application Use at Specific Geolocations

Overview: Enforcing application use in certain geolocations

Geolocation software can identify the geographic location of a client or web application user. Geolocation refers either to the process of assessing the location, or to the actual assessed location.

For applications protected by Application Security Manager™, you can use geolocation enforcement to restrict or allow application use in specific countries. You adjust the lists of which countries or locations are allowed or disallowed in a security policy. If an application user tries to access the web application from a location that is not allowed, the Access from disallowed GeoLocation violation occurs. By default, all locations are allowed, and the violation learn, alarm, and block flags are enabled.

Requests from certain locations, such as RFC-1918 addresses or unassigned global addresses, do not include a valid country code. The geolocation is shown as N/A in both the request, and the list of geolocations. You have the option to disallow N/A requests whose country of origination is unknown.

Enforcing application use in certain geolocations

Before you can set up geolocation enforcement, you need to create a security policy. If the BIG-IP®system is deployed behind a proxy, you might need to set the Trust XFF Header option in the security policy properties. Then the system identifies the location using the address from the XFF header instead of the source IP address.
You can set up a security policy to allow or disallow access to the web application by users in specific countries, areas, or from anonymous proxies.
  1. On the Main tab, click Security > Application Security > Geolocation Enforcement .
  2. In the Current edited policy list near the top of the screen, verify that the edited security policy is the one you want to work on.
  3. In the Geolocation List setting, use the move buttons to adjust the lists of allowed and disallowed geolocations. To restrict traffic from anonymous proxies, move Anonymous Proxy to the disallowed geolocations list.
    If no geolocations are disallowed, the list displays the word None. The screen shows the value N/A in the list of geolocations for cases where a user is in a location that cannot be identified, for example, if using RFC-1918 addresses or unassigned global addresses.
    Tip: You can approach geolocation enforcement by specifying either which locations you want to disallow or which locations you want to allow.
  4. Click Save to save your settings.
  5. In the editing context area, click Apply Policy to put the changes into effect.
If a user in a disallowed location attempts to access the web application, the security policy (if in blocking mode) blocks the user and displays the violation Access from disallowed Geolocation.

Setting up geolocation enforcement from a request

You can restrict application use in certain geolocations by using the Requests list. This is an easy way to restrict users in a certain country from accessing the web application. By examining illegal request details, you can disallow the locations from which frequent problems are originating.
  1. On the Main tab, click Security > Event Logs > Application > Requests .
    The Requests screen opens and shows all illegal requests that have occurred for all security policies.
  2. Filter the Requests List to show the illegal requests for the security policy for which you want to disallow the geolocation causing the problem.
  3. In the Requests List, click anywhere on a request.
    The screen displays details about the request including any violations associated with the request, and other details, such as the geolocation.
  4. In the Request Details area, the Geolocation setting displays the country, and if the country is not on the disallowed geolocation list, you see Disallow this Geolocation. If you want to disallow that location, click it.
    The system asks you to verify that you want to disallow this geolocation. When you verify that you do, the system adds the country to the Disallowed Geolocations list for that policy.
  5. Apply the change to the security policy: on the Main tab, click Security > Application Security > Policy , make sure it is the correct current edited policy, and then click Apply Policy.

If a user in a disallowed location attempts to access the web application, the security policy (if in blocking mode) blocks the user and displays the violation Access from disallowed Geolocation.

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