You can monitor application security for PHP apps running in host-based or container-based environments such as Docker, Kubernetes, AWS ECS, and AWS EKS.

In general, setting up Application Security Management (ASM) involves:

1. Identifying services that are vulnerable or are under attack, which would most benefit from ASM. Find them on the Security tab of your Service Catalog.
2. Updating to the latest Datadog library (the most recent APM tracing library).
3. Enabling the library to collect the application security data from the services and send it to Datadog.
4. Triggering security signals in your application and seeing how Datadog displays the resulting information.

Prerequisites

• The Datadog Agent is installed and configured for your application’s operating system or container, cloud, or virtual environment.
• Datadog APM is configured for your application or service, and traces are being received by Datadog.
• If your service is running with an Agent with Remote Configuration enabled and a tracing library version that supports it, you can block attackers from the Datadog UI without additional configuration of the Agent or tracing libraries.

Enabling threat detection

Get started

1. Install the latest Datadog PHP library by downloading and running the installer:

   wget https://github.com/DataDog/dd-trace-php/releases/latest/download/datadog-setup.php -O datadog-setup.php
   php datadog-setup.php --php-bin all --enable-appsec
   

   To check that your service’s language and framework versions are supported for ASM capabilities, see Compatibility.

2. Enable the library in your code by restarting PHP-FPM or Apache. In a containerized environment, if you previously installed the library without enabling ASM, you can optionally enable it after by setting the following environment variable:

   Update your configuration container for APM by adding the following argument in your docker run command:

   docker run [...] -e DD_APPSEC_ENABLED=true [...]
   

   Add the following environment variable value to your container Dockerfile:

   ENV DD_APPSEC_ENABLED=true
   

   Update your configuration yaml file container for APM and add the AppSec env variable:

   spec:
     template:
       spec:
         containers:
           - name: <CONTAINER_NAME>
             image: <CONTAINER_IMAGE>/<TAG>
             env:
               - name: DD_APPSEC_ENABLED
                 value: "true"
   

   Update your ECS task definition JSON file, by adding this in the environment section:

   "environment": [
     ...,
     {
       "name": "DD_APPSEC_ENABLED",
       "value": "true"
     }
   ]
   

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

3. To see Application Security Management 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 exercise it, threat information appears in the Application Trace and Signals Explorer in Datadog.

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Adding user information to tracesDOCUMENTATION PHP Datadog Tracer Library source codeGITHUB OOTB Application Security Management RulesDOCUMENTATION Troubleshooting Application Security ManagementDOCUMENTATION