Haltdos is a web application firewall that can protect your server from different kind of attacks, such as : SQL injections, RCE, XSS, LFI, RFI and more.
Haltdos has also a bot protection feature, that allows you to block bots from your website.
One downside of Haltdos is that it's not open source, and that the free version is limited to one website only, meaning you can't protect more than website.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Haltdos on Ubuntu 22.04.
Step 1 - Update your server
Connect to your SSH server, and run the command below to update all packages
sudo apt update
Step 2 - Install Haltdos
Haltdos can be installed very easily by downloading the setup file.
Downloads Haltdos setup
curl -s -k -o setup.sh https://binary.haltdos.com/community/waf/setup.sh
Once the setup file has been downloaded, you need to make it executable by using chmod command
chmod +x setup.sh
Now to install Haltdos, simply run the setup file
sudo ./setup.sh
Step 3 - Setup Haltdos
Once Haltdos has been installed on your server, you need to browse to the IP of the server where you installed Haltdos and complete the setup.
In this step you will also be asked to enter a username and password, these are the credentials that you will be using to manage Haltdos.
Conclusion
Haltdos is a free WAF that protects your server from OWASP top 10 attacks. It is a free firewall that can be easily installed and managed because of its simple user interface.
Even though the free version can't be used to protect more than one website on your server, for one website it does a great job.
