ModSecurity VS crowdsec

Compare ModSecurity vs crowdsec and see what are their differences.

ModSecurity

ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) engine for Apache, IIS and Nginx that is developed by Trustwave's SpiderLabs. It has a robust event-based programming language which provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications and allows for HTTP traffic monitoring, logging and real-time analysis. With over 10,000 deployments world-wide, ModSecurity is the most widely deployed WAF in existence. (by owasp-modsecurity)

crowdsec

CrowdSec - the open-source and participative security solution offering crowdsourced protection against malicious IPs and access to the most advanced real-world CTI. (by crowdsecurity)
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ModSecurity crowdsec
19 169
7,582 7,774
3.3% 2.5%
8.2 9.6
3 days ago 1 day ago
C++ Go
Apache License 2.0 MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

ModSecurity

Posts with mentions or reviews of ModSecurity. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-02-14.
  • Anybody using Crowdsec?
    1 project | /r/unRAID | 4 Mar 2023
    First of all, if you have any experience with Traefik, I'd suggest you to do the reverse proxy stuff with it and install the Crowdsec instance along it. As I didn't have experience using Traefik I went with NPM but now I guess it would have been easier considering the research I had to do... Another reason is, I wanted to implement a geo block and/or another security layer by using ModSecurity (https://github.com/SpiderLabs/ModSecurity ) besides Crowdsec too. Afaik Traefik has a plugin that integrates ModSecurity easily - unless NPM.
  • Has anyone tried this on Blackboard online exams??
    1 project | /r/Professors | 21 Feb 2023
    I don't know about Blackboard, but Moodle will allow quizzes to be run in popups that block most extensions from working; lockdown browsers will block such extensions; and, if you have access to the server, a modified firewall (e.g., ModSecurity) may\* allow blocking this and similar extensions.
  • Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Feb 2023
    > ModSecurity for WAF: https://github.com/SpiderLabs/ModSecurity

    This might be of interest to some: https://www.modsecurity.org/

    > Trustwave is announcing the End-of-Life (EOL) of our support for ModSecurity effective July 1, 2024. We will then hand over the maintenance of ModSecurity code back to the open-source community.

    Probably not too big of a deal, though.

    Also, this might be useful: https://owasp.org/www-project-modsecurity-core-rule-set/

    Though there has been some critique of ModSecurity and that ruleset in the past, as something dated and with false positives.

    Anyone have any good alternatives?

  • WAF with reverse proxy
    2 projects | /r/unRAID | 9 Feb 2023
    Is there a reason no one hasn't made a Docker template for OWASP Coraza (https://github.com/corazawaf/coraza) or ModSecurity (https://github.com/SpiderLabs/ModSecurity) for the use of a reverse proxy?
  • NGINX WAF alternatives: App Protect vs. ModSecurity vs. open-appsec
    4 projects | dev.to | 24 Nov 2022
    Since Nginx has different use cases, protecting your application depends on how and where you use it. It's recommended that you have a reliable WAF solution since they block most harmful requests in the first place. In this article, you'll compare three tools—ModSecurity, F5 Nginx App Protect, and open-appsec—based on their active development, advanced security features, and open source commitment to help you figure out which tool is right for you.
  • ModSecurity VS openappsec - a user suggested alternative
    2 projects | 11 Nov 2022
  • Please help me to identify Cons in my PHP-FPM setup
    1 project | /r/linuxadmin | 28 May 2022
  • What (software, open source) WAF are you using with (open source) Nginx?
    3 projects | /r/nginx | 26 May 2022
    I'm currently erring toward ModSecurity & the Nginx connector now that it's been de-Apache'd.
  • WordPress sites getting hacked ‘within seconds’ of TLS certificates being issued
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 May 2022
    Is anyone on HN doing WordPress administration? I recently 'inherited' a webshop built on WP/WooCommerce, and all the conflicting security advice in the WP space is making my head spin.

    There are a dozen competing 'security' plugins, with some saying 'you don't need any of them, WP is secure enough by default', and others saying 'you actually need ModSecurity [1] / Jeff Starr's nG firewall [2]'.

    The agency that (shoddily...) built the webshop installed Wordfence Free [3], so I've just kept that for now, though I feel it's kind of slow (but that might just be caused by the bottom-of-barrel performance of the shared webhost it's currently running on).

    [1] https://github.com/SpiderLabs/ModSecurity

    [2] https://perishablepress.com/7g-firewall/

    [3] https://www.wordfence.com/

  • An actual secure selfhosted Reverse Proxy with cool stats?
    3 projects | /r/selfhosted | 19 Nov 2021
    By Web Firewall did you mean smth like this ?

crowdsec

Posts with mentions or reviews of crowdsec. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-06-02.
  • Disable notifications for one out of several machines
    1 project | /r/CrowdSec | 4 Jul 2023
  • 9. 为你的公网服务部署入侵检测
    1 project | /r/primecitizens | 2 Jul 2023
  • Brute.Fail Watch brute force attacks in real time
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Jun 2023
    Hey we actually built the second part as a product. Its a modern revamp of fail2ban combined with crowdsourcing aspect to deliver an up-to-date blocklist of active threats. You can check it out at https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec
  • CrowdSec Engine 1.5 is officially here 🚀
    1 project | /r/CrowdSec | 24 May 2023
    Today we are pleased to announce the launch of CrowdSec Engine 1.5 - this is a huge milestone for the project and one that would not have been possible without the help of this community. You can read see the full change log over on GitHub here https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec/releases
  • Crowdsec on OpenSUSE tumbleweed
    1 project | /r/CrowdSec | 19 May 2023
    wget https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec/releases/latest/download/crowdsec-release.tgz server:> tar xzvf crowdsec-release.tgz https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec/releases/latest/download/crowdsec-release.tgz server: > tar xzvf crowdsec-release.tgz server:> cd crowdsec-v* && sudo ./wizard.sh -i
  • Did you have serious attacks on your exposed services before?
    2 projects | /r/selfhosted | 30 Apr 2023
    This tool crowdsec.net is really interesting to mitigate and enact defense systems for different scenarios.
  • Feature Request: CrowdSec
    3 projects | /r/firewalla | 25 Apr 2023
    CrowdSec is licensed under MIT open source license, you can find a copy of the text here: “Copyright 2020, CrowdSec SAS (http://crowdsec.net), Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.” That’s all there is to it. Like in the case of Debian, you can do anything you want with it, for free, period. You just need to embed this license when you redistribute the product.
  • What service can I use to ban users?
    1 project | /r/webdev | 18 Nov 2022
    You should check out https://crowdsec.net. More advanced, uses crowdsources cti to block attacks even before they happen. Also both nginx and captcha is supported. Disclaimer: I am head of community. Visit /r/CrowdSec or our Discord at https://discord.gg/crowdsec if you have questions :-)
  • Hardening exposed WireGuard ports
    3 projects | /r/selfhosted | 6 Nov 2022
    Do I need something like crowdsec, or is WireGuard secure enough on its own?
  • A 'leech-like' connection constantly established on my server
    1 project | /r/homelab | 19 Oct 2022
    Before falling too much in love with Fail2Ban try taking a look at https://crowdsec.net. Similar functionality but way more advanced (but easier to configure). New project that leverages the power of the crowd and shares information of attacks among users so they help each other out protecting themselves.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ModSecurity and crowdsec you can also consider the following projects:

coraza - OWASP Coraza WAF is a golang modsecurity compatible web application firewall library

Fail2Ban - Daemon to ban hosts that cause multiple authentication errors

ModSecurity-nginx - ModSecurity v3 Nginx Connector

Wazuh - Wazuh - The Open Source Security Platform. Unified XDR and SIEM protection for endpoints and cloud workloads.

naxsi - NAXSI is an open-source, high performance, low rules maintenance WAF for NGINX

pfSense - Main repository for pfSense

lua-resty-waf - High-performance WAF built on the OpenResty stack

Suricata - Suricata is a network Intrusion Detection System, Intrusion Prevention System and Network Security Monitoring engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata community.

modsecurity-spoa - HAProxy agent for ModSecurity web application firewall

Nginx Proxy Manager - Docker container for managing Nginx proxy hosts with a simple, powerful interface

wafw00f - WAFW00F allows one to identify and fingerprint Web Application Firewall (WAF) products protecting a website.

docker-pi-hole - Pi-hole in a docker container