How to Test and Troubleshoot a WAF Implementation in Front of Veridium Services

1. Testing the Websec Service (Client Certificate Required)

Endpoint

https://WEBSEC_URL/websec/rest/health/metrics/status

Expected Behavior

  1. The browser or client should be prompted for a client certificate.

  2. The request should only succeed when a valid admin certificate is presented.

Test Procedure

Test 1 — Without Client Certificate

Access the endpoint without presenting a certificate.

Expected result:

  • The WAF should reject the request.

This confirms that the WAF is enforcing client certificate authentication.


Test 2 — With Client Certificate

Access the endpoint from a machine where a valid admin certificate is installed.

Expected result:

  • Request succeeds

  • Response status should be 200 OK


2. Validate Headers in Websec Access Logs

Once a request succeeds, verify that the WAF forwarded the client certificate information to Websec.

Steps

  1. Login to Websecadmin

  2. Navigate to:

Tools → Access Logs
  1. Search for the endpoint:

/websec/rest/health/metrics/status
  1. Check the log entry and confirm that the field is populated.

Client-DN

This field is populated from the X-SSL-Client-DN header sent by the WAF (logged as Client-DN in the logs).

If it is empty, the WAF is not forwarding the certificate DN correctly.

image-20260311-135226.png




3. Troubleshooting Header Forwarding

You can verify whether the WAF is correctly forwarding headers by inspecting network traffic.

Tcpdump Command

tcpdump -nn -A -s0 -l -i any | egrep -i 'x-ssl-termination-proxy-secret|X-SSL-Client-DN'

What This Shows

This command captures incoming requests and displays the following headers:

  • X-SSL-Client-DN

  • x-ssl-termination-proxy-secret

Important Notes

  • Tcpdump displays all internal and external requests

  • You must pay attention to the values of:

X-SSL-Client-DN

to identify the correct client certificate being used.

Correct Behavior

You should see entries similar to:

X-SSL-Client-DN: CN=Admin User,OU=Security,O=Company

If the header is missing, check the WAF configuration responsible for extracting the DN from the certificate.


4. Testing Other Veridium Services (No Certificate Required)

For all other endpoints, the client must NOT be asked for a certificate.

These services should return HTTP 200 OK without requiring client authentication.

Endpoints to Test

https://DMZWEBSEC_URL/dmzwebsec/help
https://SHIB_EXT_URL/idp/profile/health/ready
https://SHIB_EXT_URL/.well-known/webauthn
https://SHIB_EXT_URL/.well-known/openid-configuration
https://SSP_URL/ssp/#/enrollment

Expected Behavior

  • No client certificate prompt

  • Response status 200 OK

If a certificate is requested, the WAF rules are incorrectly applied.


5. Negative Test

Test an invalid endpoint:

https://WEBSEC/wrongurl

Expected result:

ideally the URL should be blocked by WAF. Also 404 response is acceptable.

This confirms the request reached the Veridium service through the WAF.


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