CompTIA PenTest+ PT0-002 Question # 100 Topic 11 Discussion

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is designed to monitor, filter or block traffic to a web application. A WAF will monitor incoming and outgoing traffic from a web application and is often used to protect web servers from attacks such as SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and other forms of attacks. If a WAF detects an attack, it will often reset the TCP connection, causing the connection to be terminated. As a result, a penetration tester may see TCP resets when a WAF is present. Therefore, the most likely reason for the TCP resets returning from the web server is that the web server is using a WAF.