WhatTheHack/017-FrontDoor

The Internet just happened to my website! - Azure Front Door (1 day)

Introduction

The Internet is much like water, in one hand an amazing thing that provides life/capability for so much, but in the other hand can be the most destructive force in nature. Large numbers of users, large size and/or number of resources on pages, malicious activity, site slows down the further away it is, or events triggering massive spikes in traffic are only a few of the problems Azure Front Door addresses. This challenge based hack is intended to teach you how to evolve a simulated local web site (https://www.contosomasks.com) into a globally accelerated, protected web site with burst offset.

Learning Objectives

In this hack you will be solving the common problem that websites have with the Front Door services from Azure:

1. Provision an Azure Front Door and set up SSL
2. Provision and Configure Web Application Firewall (WAF)
3. Configure simple/complex routing rules and caching rules
4. Provision a Static Web site with an Azure Storage Account
5. Discover and Monitor traffic and WAF insights thru Log Analytics

Challenges

1. Setup your Environment and Discover
   • Create Azure resources and leverage your Browser's Dev Tools to analyze the Website
2. Provision your Front Door
   • Create a Front Door account with custom DNS and SSL
3. Provision a Web Application Firewall (WAF)
   • Create a Web Application Firewall Policy and guard your site!
4. Offload traffic for a high traffic event
   • Use a Static Web Site in Azure Storage and route specific traffic to it.
5. Cache Static Assets
   • Use the Rules Engine in Front Door to cache some of the resources of your site

Prerequisites

• Your own Azure subscription with Owner access
  • Or a Resource Group with Contributor access and ability to manage Resource Providers
• Linux Instance, can be either:
  • Running Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 1.0 or 2.0
  • Running on Mac
  • Running a Linux VM in Azure (link)
• Install w3af on that Linux Instance (link)
  • This will be used to exercise the WAF
  • Just need the console version running
• Some form of Chromium Web Browser installed
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Google Chrome

Repository Contents

• ./Coach/Resources/ContosoMasks.com
  • Code for the website that Front Door will refer to
• ./Coach/images
  • Images for the coach's guide
• ./Student/Resources
  • code and templates needed for challenges.
• ./Student/images
  • Images for the student's guide

Contributors

• Andy Wahrenberger