Which protection mechanism is described as a firewall designed to protect web applications from code injection and DoS attacks?

Which protection mechanism is described as a firewall designed to protect web applications from code injection and DoS attacks?

• A. Web application firewall (WAF)
• B. Intrusion detection system
• C. Antivirus
• D. Network firewall

Answer: (A)

Web applications face threats like code injection and application-layer DoS, so the protective mechanism designed for this is a web application firewall. A WAF sits in front of a web application and inspects HTTP/S traffic at the application layer, looking for patterns that indicate attacks such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting and for abusive request patterns that aim to overwhelm the app. It can block malicious requests, enforce input validation, and apply rate limiting to reduce DoS risk, helping to keep the web application safe without requiring changes to the underlying code. Other mechanisms serve different purposes. An intrusion detection system mainly alerts on unusual activity and may not automatically block offending traffic at the application level. Antivirus protects individual hosts from malware, not the logic or payloads of web requests. A network firewall governs traffic at the network or transport layer and typically doesn’t perform deep inspection of application payloads required to detect and block code injection or sophisticated DoS targeting a web app.

Web applications face threats like code injection and application-layer DoS, so the protective mechanism designed for this is a web application firewall. A WAF sits in front of a web application and inspects HTTP/S traffic at the application layer, looking for patterns that indicate attacks such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting and for abusive request patterns that aim to overwhelm the app. It can block malicious requests, enforce input validation, and apply rate limiting to reduce DoS risk, helping to keep the web application safe without requiring changes to the underlying code.

Other mechanisms serve different purposes. An intrusion detection system mainly alerts on unusual activity and may not automatically block offending traffic at the application level. Antivirus protects individual hosts from malware, not the logic or payloads of web requests. A network firewall governs traffic at the network or transport layer and typically doesn’t perform deep inspection of application payloads required to detect and block code injection or sophisticated DoS targeting a web app.