The Datadog nginx tracing module has experimental support for threat detection and blocking.

Enabling threat detection

Get started

1. Verify that your nginx build was compiled with the flag --with-threads. Most distributions ship with this flag enabled by default. To check if your nginx installation was built with thread support, run nginx -V and check the configure arguments line. If you cannot find --with-threads in the output, you will need to rebuild nginx with this flag enabled. For more information on how to build nginx from sources, see the nginx documentation.

2. Update your nginx tracing library module to at least version 1.2.0. Visit the GitHub releases page and select the artifact named according to the pattern “ngx_http_datadog_module-appsec-<amd64/arm64>-<nginx version>.so.tgz”. Note that this artifact includes “appsec” in the name.

3. Enable App and API Protection in the nginx configuration. You need to:

   • define one or more thread pools with the thread_pool directive,
   • explicitly enable AppSec with datadog_appsec_enabled, and
   • map requests to a thread pool or pools that you defined with the directive datadog_waf_thread_pool_name.

   For example:

   load_module /path/to/ngx_http_datadog_module.so;
   thread_pool waf_thread_pool threads=4 max_queue=128;
   http {
     datadog_appsec_enabled on;
     datadog_waf_thread_pool_name waf_thread_pool;
   }
   

   For more information, see the reference documentation.

   After this configuration is complete, the library collects security data from your application and sends it to the Agent. The Agent sends the data to Datadog, where out-of-the-box detection rules flag attacker techniques and potential misconfigurations so you can take steps to remediate.

4. To see App and API Protection threat detection in action, send known attack patterns to your application. For example, trigger the Security Scanner Detected rule by running a file that contains the following curl script:

   for ((i=1;i<=250;i++)); 
   do
   # Target existing service's routes
   curl https://your-application-url/existing-route -A dd-test-scanner-log;
   # Target non existing service's routes
   curl https://your-application-url/non-existing-route -A dd-test-scanner-log;
   done

   Note: The dd-test-scanner-log value is supported in the most recent releases.

   A few minutes after you enable your application and send known attack patterns to it, threat information appears in the Application Signals Explorer and vulnerability information appears in the Vulnerabilities explorer.

Limitations

As of version 1.3.0, the available functionality has the following important limitations:

• The request body is not inspected, regardless of its content type.

• It’s not possible to block the request based on characteristics of the response, such as its status code, headers, or body.

Using App and API Protection without APM tracing

If you want to use Application & API Protection without APM tracing functionality, you can deploy with tracing disabled:

1. Configure your tracing library with the DD_APM_TRACING_ENABLED=false environment variable in addition to the DD_APPSEC_ENABLED=true environment variable.
2. This configuration will reduce the amount of APM data sent to Datadog to the minimum required by App and API Protection products.

For more details, see [Standalone App and API Protection][standalone_billing_guide]. [standalone_billing_guide]: /security/application_security/guide/standalone_application_security/

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

nginx integration's source codeSOURCE CODE OOTB App and API Protection RulesDOCUMENTATION Troubleshooting App and API ProtectionDOCUMENTATION