As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several CloudFlare queries.

Today, let us see how our Support techs resolve this error.

How to resolve CloudFlare OWASP inbound blocking?

Basically, the Cloudflare WAF contains mainly 2 packages.

Cloudflare Managed Ruleset:

These rules are manage by Cloudflare WAF Engineers.

For “security reasons”, the rule patterns are not provided as this would increase the likelihood that a malicious party could learn to bypass the rules.

OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set:

These rules are not manage by Cloudflare.

They are created by the OWASP Group 14 and Cloudflare integrates with this OWASP package as part of our WAF for additional security.

Today, let us see the different methods followed by our Support Techs to resolve it.

1. Firstly, add the IP(s) doing the request to the IP Access Rules 30 in the allowlist, if the users connecting to your backend are always using the same IP address.

This is the best solution as it does not affect the site security.

2. Then, disable the affected WAF rule(s)

This will reduce the security of the site, but will stop the requests from getting blocked/challenged.

3. Next, bypass the WAF with a Firewall Rule

Here, you can create a Firewall Rule with the bypass action for the WAF to deactivate for a specific combination of parameters.

4. Next, disable the Web Application Firewall from the request endpoint.

This will result in lower security, as the WAF will no longer applicable on that location.

This action is done by using Page Rules

5. Then if the rule blocking is 981176, it means it was block by the OWASP rules.

You need then to decrease the OWASP sensitivity.

If decreasing the OWASP sensitivity doesn’t solve the issue, you might need to apply one of the other actions describe above (1, 2, 3 or 4).

6. Then, use Waf Overrides API

There is a way to disable one WAF rule for a specific URI.

The feature is known as the URI-Controlled WAF.