Shortcut Handler

Purpose

ATTENTION
The Shortcut Handler completely disables protection for the specified URI patterns.

Often, not all parts of a web application need protection, such as entirely static pages. The Shortcut Handler tells vWAF to ignore all other handlers for specific URLs. If the requested URL matches a given pattern, vWAF immediately passes on the request to your web application without further analyzing the request – even if other handlers have been defined for the very same URLs. This increases performance.

The Shortcut Handler is always the first handler vWAF calls. Therefore it’s always shown on top of the list on the tabs Global Handlers / Handler Templates / Handlers.

For more information regarding adding and editing Handlers, see Editing Handlers.

Severity

Events triggered by this handler are given the severity: low. (For details on severity levels, see Severity of Events Triggered by Handlers).

Recommendations for use

You can use the Shortcut Handler to increase performance for parts of your web application that are completely static and thus don’t involve the risk of an attack.

Attributes

Attribute	Meaning
uri patterns	URIs for which you want vWAF to ignore all other handlers. This increases performance but disables protection. Regular Expressions can be used.
usertext	Optional: Here you can specify some text that vWAF adds to the log file entries created by this handler. You can use this, for example, to document why you've added the handler to your configuration, and how the handler is intended to behave.
enable logging	Disable this option if you do not want vWAF to create a log file entry when the handler is executed. This can be useful to keep log files smaller in case the handler creates a large number of entries but you don't need these entries. When in detection mode, disabling logging de facto makes the handler ineffective. Disabling logging also prevents the actions of the handler from being taken into account for the Top-10 lists in Attack Analysis, and from being listed in Reports. To decrease the size of the log files, also consider to enable reduced logging, which excludes all non-handler-related information from the log files (see Editing Applications).

Attribute

Meaning

uri patterns

URIs for which you want vWAF to ignore all other handlers. This increases performance but disables protection. Regular Expressions can be used.

usertext

Optional:

Here you can specify some text that vWAF adds to the log file entries created by this handler. You can use this, for example, to document why you've added the handler to your configuration, and how the handler is intended to behave.

enable logging

Disable this option if you do not want vWAF to create a log file entry when the handler is executed. This can be useful to keep log files smaller in case the handler creates a large number of entries but you don't need these entries.

When in detection mode, disabling logging de facto makes the handler ineffective. Disabling logging also prevents the actions of the handler from being taken into account for the Top-10 lists in Attack Analysis, and from being listed in Reports. To decrease the size of the log files, also consider to enable reduced logging, which excludes all non-handler-related information from the log files (see Editing Applications).

For details regarding entries added to the log file by this handler, see the relevant section in Entries in Application-Specific Log Files.