Add an Option to Skip Body Inspections ( Closes #343 )

[thekief]

As dicussed in the issue, I would like to add 2 new directives that allow to skip the body inspection. There are a few usecases, where, e.g. encrypted data is set, and no useful inspection can be made.

While denying the body access may skip the inspection, it still results in the caching of data. Subsequently, there is an unneeded amount of resource consumption, memory, as well as time, involved.

While it would be cleaner to expose an API that allows users of libmodsecurity to check, if a path, e.g. has a reqeust body check, this involves a lot more work. The approach taken in this PR, shifts the functionality to that is only necessitates changes in the nginx module.

Regarding Tests: As for tests, I'm a bit unsure what the best way would be to test it. One way would be to try to upload a file, e.g. 100MB, to a location and check when the first data reaches it. If the body inspection is disabled, the first bytes will arrive much sooner, as the nginx module caches the body until it's fully received otherwise and only then forwards the data.

[airween]

Hi @thekief,

thanks for this PR, I think this is quite useful.

Regarding Tests: As for tests, I'm a bit unsure what the best way would be to test it.

If I suggest suggest a method:

• create a vhost config where you turn Off the request body inspection
• create a rule (into phase:2) that checks for a variable from the request body (eg ARGS_POST)
• send a request which should trigger that rule

For the response body skip:

• create another vhost config where you turn Off the response body inspection
• create a rule (into phase:4) that checks for a variable from the response body (eg RESPONSE_BODY)
• set a content for that vhost which triggers that rule

You can add cross checking too (eg. the first mentioned rule above executes in phase:4 and you try to mix the settings with these new options...)

[thekief]

Sorry for getting back so late. I created configurations, but as I'm terrible with nginx tests using Perl, may I just send you the configurations? :sweat_smile:

[HanadaLee]

The abbreviation for response is usually rep or resp, or consider not using the abbreviation and directly name the directive: modsecurity_skip_request_body_filter and modsecurity_skip_response_body_filter

[sonarqubecloud[bot]]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

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[thekief]

@HanadaLee thank you for looking over the changes. I use resp to abbreviate response now