Resource-level DDoS protection for Application Load Balancers - Amazon WAF, Amazon Firewall Manager, Amazon Shield Advanced, and Amazon Shield network security director
Enable standard DDoS protection on an existing webACL
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Introducing a new console experience for Amazon WAF

You can now use the updated experience to access Amazon WAF functionality anywhere in the console. For more details, see Working with the updated console experience.

Resource-level DDoS protection for Application Load Balancers

Resource level DDoS protection adds immediate defense to Application Load Balancers without incurring charges of deploying Amazon WAF managed rule groups. This standard tier of Anti-DDoS protection uses Amazon threat intelligence and traffic pattern analysis to protect Application Load Balancers. To identify known malicous sources, Anti-DDoS protection performs on-host filtering of both direct client IP addresses and X-Forwarded-For (XFF) headers. After a known malicious source is identified, protection is activated through one of two modes:

Active under DDoS is the default protective mode and is recommended for most use cases.

This mode:

  • Activates protection automatically when detecting high load conditions or potential DDoS events

  • Rate-limits traffic from known malicious sources only during attack conditions

  • Minimizes impact on legitimate traffic during normal operations

  • Uses Application Load Balancer health metrics and Amazon WAF response data to determine when to engage protection

Always on is an optional mode that is always active once enabled.

This mode:

  • Maintains continuous protection against known malicious sources

  • Rate-limits traffic from known malicious sources in real time

  • Applies protection to both direct connections and requests with malicious IPs in XFF headers

  • May have higher impact on legitimate traffic but provides maximum security

Enable standard DDoS protection on an existing webACL

You can enable DDoS protection when you create a web ACL or update an existing web ACL associated with Application Load Balancer.

Note

If you have an existing web ACL that is associated with an Application Load Balancer, Anti-DDoS protection is enabled by default with Active under DDoS mode.

To enable Anti-DDoS protection in the Amazon WAF console

  1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console and open the Amazon WAF console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/wafv2/homev2.

  2. Choose Web ACLs in the navigation pane, and then open any web ACL that is associated with an Application Load Balancer.

  3. Choose Associated Amazon resources.

  4. Under Resource level DDoS protection, choose Edit.

  5. Select one of the following protection modes:

    • Active under DDoS (recommended) - Protection engages only during high load conditions

    • Always on - Always-on protection against known malicious sources

  6. Choose Save changes.

Note

For information about creating a web ACL, see Creating a protection pack (web ACL) in Amazon WAF.

To optimize web ACL request costs for your Application Load Balancer

You must associate a web ACL with your Application Load Balancer to enable resource-level protection. If your Application Load Balancer is associated with a web ACL that has no configuration, you will not incur charges from Amazon WAF requests, however, Amazon WAF will not provide sampled requests or report on the Application Load Balancer in CloudWatch metrics. You can take the following actions to enable observability features for the Application Load Balancer:

Amazon WAF will not provide sampled requests or publish CloudWatch metrics without these configurations.