BBQ Firewall vs NAXSI

BBQ Firewall

Model: Freemium (Free tier + paid licenses with lifetime option)

NAXSI

Model: Free (Open Source, GPLv3)

BBQ Firewall

• 7G/8G Request Filtering

  Regex-based pattern matching against incoming URIs, query strings, user agents, and referrers. Based on over a decade of refinement by Jeff Starr.

• SQL Injection Protection

  Blocks common SQL injection patterns including UNION, SELECT, eval(), and base64-encoded payloads.

• Directory Traversal Protection

  Catches path traversal attempts, null byte injection, and requests for sensitive system files.

• Bad Bot Blocking

  Filters known malicious user agents and referrer spam patterns.

• Request Method Scanning

  Checks all HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) against firewall rules.

• Customizable Patterns

  Add, edit, or remove firewall patterns to fine-tune protection for your specific site (Pro feature).

• Block Statistics

  Visual bar graphs showing hit counts per pattern to measure firewall effectiveness (Pro feature).

• Email Alerts

  Receive notifications when requests are blocked (Pro feature).

NAXSI

• Scoring-Based Detection

  Assigns scores to suspicious patterns in requests. Blocks when the cumulative score exceeds a threshold, rather than relying on exact signature matches.

• Learning Mode

  Monitors traffic and automatically generates whitelist rules for legitimate application behavior, reducing manual tuning effort during initial deployment.

• Virtual Patching

  Apply custom rules to block specific vulnerabilities without modifying application code. Rules target raw requests or specific fields like headers, args, and body.

• Deny-by-Default

  Operates like a DROP firewall. Common attack characters and patterns are blocked unless explicitly whitelisted for the target application.

• Lightweight Footprint

  Written in C with only libpcre as a dependency. Adds minimal overhead to NGINX request processing.

• Dynamic Module Support

  Can be compiled as a dynamic NGINX module, allowing it to be loaded without recompiling NGINX from source.