More and more people are using CommandBox or our Ortus Docker containers (powered by CommandBox) for production deployments.  Commandbox uses JBoss Undertow which is very lightweight and fast, and capable of service traffic just as fast as IIS or Apache.  A lot of people ask me about running CommandBox in production and I always say it's fine so long as you follow the same basic lockdown procedures you'd take on any web server.  If you have IIS or Apache sitting in front of CommandBox, most of this configuration can happen there, but for people who want drop-dead simple prod servers, here's some quick tips on locking down your CommandBox server.

Server Settings

Most of CommandBox's settings are secure-by-default, but just to mention a couple:

web.directoryBrowsing 

Make sure this is set to false so a visitor can't view files on your server in directories with no index.cfm

server set web.directoryBrowsing=false

web.errorPages

We have a default 404 page for static assets which are not found, but consider setting up a custom error page.

server set web.errorPages.404=/404.html

app.cfengine

Consider pinning this to a specific version just so you don't get new releases without getting a chance to test them on your dev servers.

server set app.cfengine=lucee@5.3.3+62

debug / trace

Make sure you don't have the debug or trace flags enabled as they cause extra logging overhead and might unlock debugging features you don't want accessible like Tuckey's status page.

server set debug=false
server set trace=false

 

server.json

{                                     
    "app":{                           
        "cfengine":"lucee@5.3.3+62"   
    },                                
    "debug":"false",                  
    "trace":"false",                  
    "web":{                           
        "directoryBrowsing":"false",  
        "errorPages":{                
            "404":"/404.html"         
        }                             
    }                                 
}                                     

 

CF Engine Settings

You can automate your CF Engine's settings (Adobe, Lucee) with the CFConfig module.  These apply to any server, not just CommandBox, but here are some notable ones:

debuggingEnabled / robustExceptionEnabled

Toggle these to false.  They control "Enable Request Debugging Output" in Adobe and "Enable debugging" in Lucee.  Robust exceptions is an Adobe only setting.  

cfconfig set debuggingEnabled=false to=.cfconfig.json
cfconfig set robustExceptionEnabled=false to=.cfconfig.json

inspectTemplate

Set this to "never" if you'll not be doing any hot deploys of code, like Docker for faster performance.

cfconfig set inspectTemplate=never to=.cfconfig.json

adminPassword

Even if you block the web admin (which we'll cover below) make sure there is a solid, non-default password set in your web admins.  This can be exploited in Lucee by the CFAdmin tag for instance if someone guesses the password.

cfconfig set adminPassword=supersecure to=.cfconfig.json

generalErrorTemplate

Set to "secure" to enable the most secure error template for your engine.

cfconfig set generalErrorTemplate=secure to=.cfconfig.json

 

.cfconfig.json

{                                     
    "adminPassword":"supersecure",    
    "debuggingEnabled":"false",       
    "generalErrorTemplate":"secure",  
    "inspectTemplate":"never",        
    "robustExceptionEnabled":"false"  
}                                     

Secure Paths via Rewrites

There are a lot of naughty things people can get to by guessing file paths that are web accessible.  CommandBox's URL Rewrite engine has an XML format you can use to block paths that hackers shouldn't be touching.  I'll cover each section, and then show the full file below.

Any references to /404.html would load a file of that name if you create it.  If 404.html doesn't exist, you'll simply get the default 404 handler in CommandBox.

Deny TRACE/TRACK HTTP Verb

The Trace/track HTTP verbs can be used for JS to access HTTP-only cookies by tricking the web server into reflecting the cookies back on a TRACE request. 

<rule>
    <condition type="method" casesensitive="false" operator="equal">TRACE|TRACK</condition>
    <set type="status">403</set>
    <to>null</to>
</rule>

Deny Administrative Access

Block all access to your web-based administrator.  This is where the majority of vulnerabilities have existed over the years.

<rule>
	<condition type="request-uri" casesensitive="false" operator="equal">/(CFIDE/administrator|CFIDE/adminapi|CFIDE/AIR|CFIDE/appdeployment|CFIDE/cfclient|CFIDE/classes|CFIDE/componentutils|CFIDE/debug|CFIDE/images|CFIDE/orm|CFIDE/portlets|CFIDE/scheduler|CFIDE/ServerManager|CFIDE/services|CFIDE/websocket|CFIDE/wizards|lucee/admin)/.*</condition>
	<from>^/(.+)$</from>
	<set type="status">404</set>
	<to type="passthrough" last="true">/404.html</to>
</rule>

Deny "hidden" files

Files starting with a period like ".htaccess" are meant to be "hidden" and your web server probably shouldn't serve them up.

<rule>
	<condition type="request-uri" operator="equal">.*/\..*</condition>
	<from>^/(.+)$</from>
	<set type="status">404</set>
	<to type="passthrough" last="true">/404.html</to>
</rule>

Deny common config files

There are a lot of common config files in your web root hackers may probe for.  Let's keep their hands off!

<rule>
	<condition type="request-uri" casesensitive="false" operator="equal">.*/(box.json|server.json|web.config|urlrewrite.xml|package.json|package-lock.json|Gulpfile.js|CFIDE/multiservermonitor-access-policy.xml|CFIDE/probe.cfm)</condition>
	<from>^/(.+)$</from>
	<set type="status">404</set>
	<to type="passthrough" last="true">/404.html</to>
</rule>

urlRewrite.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE urlrewrite PUBLIC "-//tuckey.org//DTD UrlRewrite 3.2//EN" "http://tuckey.org/res/dtds/urlrewrite3.2.dtd">
<urlrewrite>

    <rule>
        <note>Deny TRACE/TRACK HTTP Verb</note>
        <condition type="method" casesensitive="false" operator="equal">TRACE|TRACK</condition>
        <set type="status">403</set>
        <to>null</to>
    </rule>

	<rule>
		<note>Deny Administrative Access</note>
		<!-- These are paths that don't exist on disk, but shouldn't get rewritten since the CF engine treats them special. -->
		<condition type="request-uri" casesensitive="false" operator="equal">/(CFIDE/administrator|CFIDE/adminapi|CFIDE/AIR|CFIDE/appdeployment|CFIDE/cfclient|CFIDE/classes|CFIDE/componentutils|CFIDE/debug|CFIDE/images|CFIDE/orm|CFIDE/portlets|CFIDE/scheduler|CFIDE/ServerManager|CFIDE/services|CFIDE/websocket|CFIDE/wizards|lucee/admin)/.*</condition>
		<from>^/(.+)$</from>
		<set type="status">404</set>
		<to type="passthrough" last="true">/404.html</to>
	</rule>

	<rule>
		<note>Deny "hidden" files</note>
		<condition type="request-uri" operator="equal">.*/\..*</condition>
		<from>^/(.+)$</from>
		<set type="status">404</set>
		<to type="passthrough" last="true">/404.html</to>
	</rule>

	<rule>
		<note>Deny common config files</note>
		<condition type="request-uri" casesensitive="false" operator="equal">.*/(box.json|server.json|web.config|urlrewrite.xml|package.json|package-lock.json|Gulpfile.js|CFIDE/multiservermonitor-access-policy.xml|CFIDE/probe.cfm)</condition>
		<from>^/(.+)$</from>
		<set type="status">404</set>
		<to type="passthrough" last="true">/404.html</to>
	</rule>

	<!-- Remove this if you don't need ColdBox-style rewrites in your app, or put your custom rewrite rules here. -->	
	<rule>
		<note>Generic Front-Controller URLs</note>
		<!-- These are paths that don't exist on disk, but shouldn't get rewritten since the CF engine treats them special. -->
		<condition type="request-uri" operator="notequal">^/(flex2gateway|flashservices/gateway|messagebroker|lucee|rest|cfide|CFIDE|cfformgateway|jrunscripts|cf_scripts|mapping-tag|CFFileServlet)/.*</condition>
		<!-- This is a special URL that can be enabled with debugging -->
		<condition type="request-uri" operator="notequal">^/tuckey-status</condition>
		<!-- Used for the Adobe CF 2018 performance monitoring service -->
		<condition type="request-uri" operator="notequal">^/pms$</condition>
		<!-- Browsers like to send this request and it will get rewritten to /index.cfm/favicon.ico when it really just needs to be a 404 -->
		<condition type="request-uri" operator="notequal">^/favicon.ico</condition>
		<!-- Ignore any path to a .cfm or .cfml file in a sub directory that has a path info attached. These won't trigger as "real" directories below
		since the rewrite filter doesn't know what part is the actual file name.  Note, the ses path info servlet filter hasn't fired yet. -->
		<condition type="request-uri" operator="notequal">^/.*\.cf(m|ml)/.*</condition>
		<!-- Do not rewrite paths that point to real files or directories -->
		<condition type="request-filename" operator="notdir"/>
		<condition type="request-filename" operator="notfile"/>
		<!-- Turn localhost/foo into localhost/index.cfm/foo -->
		<from>^/(.+)$</from>
		<to type="passthrough">/index.cfm/$1</to>
	</rule>

</urlrewrite>

You would use the previous file with this command:

server set web.rewrites.config=urlRewrite.xml