HTTP policies

Note

To use HTTP policies, install the Cloudflare root certificate.

HTTP policies allow you to intercept all HTTP and HTTPS requests and either block, allow, or override specific elements such as websites, IP addresses, and file types. HTTP policies operate on Layer 7 for all TCP (and optionally UDP) traffic sent over ports 80 and 443.

An HTTP policy consists of an Action as well as a logical expression that determines the scope of the policy. To build an expression, you need to choose a Selector and an Operator, and enter a value or range of values in the Value field. You can use And and Or logical operators to evaluate multiple conditions.

• Actions
• Selectors
• Comparison operators
• Value
• Logical operators

If a condition in an expression joins a query attribute (such as Source IP) and a response attribute (such as Resolved IP), then the condition will be evaluated when the response is received.

Actions

Actions in HTTP policies allow you to choose what to do with a given set of elements (domains, IP addresses, file types, and so on). You can assign one action per policy.

Allow

API value: allow

Available selectors

Traffic

• Application
• Content Categories
• Destination Continent IP Geolocation
• Destination Country IP Geolocation
• Destination IP
• DLP Profile
• Domain
• Download File Types
• Download Mime Type
• Host
• HTTP Method
• HTTP Response
• Proxy Endpoint
• Security Risks
• Source Continent IP Geolocation
• Source Country IP Geolocation
• Source Internal IP
• Source IP
• Upload File Types
• Upload Mime Type
• URL
• URL Path
• URL Path & Query
• URL Query
• Virtual Network

Identity

• SAML Attributes
• User Email
• User Group Emails
• User Group IDs
• User Group Names
• User Name

Device Posture

• Passed Device Posture Checks

The Allow action allows outbound traffic to reach destinations you specify within the Selectors and Value fields. For example, the following configuration allows traffic to reach all websites we categorize as belonging to the Education content category:

Selector	Operator	Value	Action
Content Categories	in	Education	Allow

Untrusted certificates

Note

To use this feature, deploy a custom root certificate.

The Untrusted certificate action determines how to handle insecure requests.

Option	Action
Error	Display Gateway error page. Matches the default behavior when no action is configured.
Block	Display block page as set in Zero Trust.
Pass through	Bypass insecure connection warnings and seamlessly connect to the upstream. To use this feature, deploy a custom root certificate. For more information on what statuses are bypassed, refer to the troubleshooting FAQ.

Block

API value: block

Available selectors

Traffic

• Application
• Content Categories
• Destination Continent IP Geolocation
• Destination Country IP Geolocation
• Destination IP
• DLP Profile
• Domain
• Download File Types
• Download Mime Type
• Host
• HTTP Method
• HTTP Response
• Proxy Endpoint
• Security Risks
• Source Continent IP Geolocation
• Source Country IP Geolocation
• Source Internal IP
• Source IP
• Upload File Types
• Upload Mime Type
• URL
• URL Path
• URL Path & Query
• URL Query
• Virtual Network

Identity

• SAML Attributes
• User Email
• User Group Emails
• User Group IDs
• User Group Names
• User Name

Device Posture

• Passed Device Posture Checks

The Block action blocks outbound traffic from reaching destinations you specify within the Selectors and Value fields. For example, the following configuration blocks users from being able to upload any file type to Google Drive:

Selector	Operator	Value	Logic	Action
Application	in	Google Drive	And	Block
Upload Mime Type	matches regex	.*

WARP client block notifications

Feature availability

WARP modes	Zero Trust plans ↗
Gateway with WARP Secure Web Gateway without DNS filtering	Enterprise

System	Availability	Minimum WARP version
Windows	✅	2024.1.159.0
macOS	✅	2024.1.160.0
Linux	❌
iOS	✅	1.7
Android	✅	1.4
ChromeOS	✅	1.4

Turn on Display block notification for WARP client to display notifications for Gateway block events. Blocked users will receive an operating system notification from the WARP client with a custom message you set. If you do not set a custom message, the WARP client will display a default message. Custom messages must be 100 characters or less.

Upon selecting the notification, WARP will direct your users to a block page. Optionally, you can direct users to a custom URL, such as an internal support form.

To turn on client notifications on macOS devices running DisplayLink software, you may have to allow system notifications when mirroring your display. For more information, refer to the macOS documentation ↗.

Isolate

API value: isolate

Available selectors

Traffic

• Application
• Content Categories
• Domain
• Host
• HTTP Method
• Security Risks
• Source Continent IP Geolocation
• Source Country IP Geolocation
• URL
• URL Path
• URL Path & Query
• URL Query

Identity

• SAML Attributes
• User Email
• User Group Emails
• User Group IDs
• User Group Names
• User Name

Device Posture

• Passed Device Posture Checks

The Isolate action serves matched traffic to users via Cloudflare Browser Isolation. For more information on this action, refer to Isolation policies.

Do Not Isolate

API value: noisolate

Available selectors

Traffic

• Application
• Content Categories
• Domain
• Host
• HTTP Method
• Security Risks
• Source Continent IP Geolocation
• Source Country IP Geolocation
• URL
• URL Path
• URL Path & Query
• URL Query

Identity

• SAML Attributes
• User Email
• User Group Emails
• User Group IDs
• User Group Names
• User Name

Device Posture

• Passed Device Posture Checks

The Do Not Isolate action turns off browser isolation for matched traffic. For more information on this action, refer to Isolation policies.

Do Not Inspect

API value: off

Available selectors

Traffic

• Application
• Content Categories
• Destination Continent IP Geolocation
• Destination Country IP Geolocation
• Destination IP
• Domain
• Host
• Proxy Endpoint
• Security Risks
• Source Continent IP Geolocation
• Source Country IP Geolocation
• Source Internal IP
• Source IP
• Virtual Network

Identity

• SAML Attributes
• User Email
• User Group Emails
• User Group IDs
• User Group Names
• User Name

Device Posture

• Passed Device Posture Checks

Visibility limitation

When you create a Do Not Inspect policy for a given hostname, application, or app type, you will lose the ability to log or block HTTP requests, apply DLP policies, and perform AV scanning.

Information contained within HTTPS encryption, such as the full requested URL, will not be visible if it bypasses Gateway inspection. However, you can still apply network policies to this traffic. For more information, refer to TLS decryption.

Do Not Inspect lets you bypass certain elements from inspection. To prevent Gateway from decrypting and inspecting HTTPS traffic, your policy must match against the Server Name Indicator (SNI) in the TLS header. When accessing a Do Not Inspect site in the browser, your browser may display a Your connection is not private warning, which you can proceed through to connect. For more information about applications which may require a Do Not Inspect policy, refer to TLS decryption limitations.

All Do Not Inspect rules are evaluated first, before any Allow or Block rules, to determine if inspection should occur. For more information, refer to Order of enforcement.

Do Not Scan

API value: noscan

Available selectors

Traffic

• Application
• Content Categories
• Destination Continent IP Geolocation
• Destination Country IP Geolocation
• Destination IP
• Domain
• Host
• HTTP Method
• Proxy Endpoint
• Security Risks
• Source Continent IP Geolocation
• Source Country IP Geolocation
• Source Internal IP
• Source IP
• URL
• URL Path
• URL Path & Query
• URL Query
• Virtual Network

Identity

• SAML Attributes
• User Email
• User Group Emails
• User Group IDs
• User Group Names
• User Name

Device Posture

• Passed Device Posture Checks

When an admin enables AV scanning for uploads and/or downloads, Gateway will scan every supported file. Admins can selectively choose to disable scanning by leveraging the HTTP rules. For example, to prevent AV scanning of files uploaded to or downloaded from example.com, an admin would configure the following rule:

Selector	Operator	Value	Action
Hostname	matches regex	.*example.com	Do Not Scan

When a Do Not Scan rule matches, nothing is scanned, regardless of file size or whether the file type is supported or not.

Quarantine

API value: quarantine

Available selectors

Traffic

• Application
• Content Categories
• Destination Continent IP Geolocation
• Destination Country IP Geolocation
• Destination IP
• Domain
• Host
• HTTP Method
• Proxy Endpoint
• Security Risks
• Source Continent IP Geolocation
• Source Country IP Geolocation
• Source Internal IP
• Source IP
• URL
• URL Path
• URL Path & Query
• URL Query
• Virtual Network

Identity

• SAML Attributes
• User Email
• User Group Emails
• User Group IDs
• User Group Names
• User Name

Device Posture

• Passed Device Posture Checks

The Quarantine action sends files in matching requests to a file sandbox to scan for malware. Gateway will only quarantine files not previously seen in the file sandbox. For more information on this action, refer to File sandboxing.

Sandbox file types

In Sandbox file types, you can select which file types to quarantine with your policy. You must select at least one file type.

File sandboxing supports scanning the following file types:

Supported sandboxing file types

• .com
• .exe
• .pdf
• .doc
• .docm
• .docx
• .rtf
• .ppt
• .pptx
• .xls
• .xlsm
• .xlsx
• .zip
• .rar

Selectors

Note

Policies created using the URL selector are case-sensitive.

Gateway matches HTTP traffic against the following selectors, or criteria:

Application

You can apply HTTP policies to a growing list of popular web applications. Refer to Application and app types for more information.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Application	any(app.ids[*] in {505})	Before DNS resolution

Multiple API selectors required for Terraform

When using Terraform to create a policy with the Do Not Inspect action, you must use the app.hosts_ids and app.supports_ids selectors. For example, to create a Do Not Inspect policy for Google Cloud Platform traffic, create a policy with both any(app.hosts_ids[*] in {1245}) and any(app.supports_ids[*] in {1245}).

Content Categories

UI name	API example
Content Categories	not(any(http.conn.content_category[*] in {1}))

For more information, refer to our list of content categories.

Destination Continent

Note

Only applies to traffic sent through the WARP client.

The continent where the request is destined. Geolocation is determined from the target IP address. To specify a continent, enter its two-letter code into the Value field:

• AF – Africa
• AN – Antarctica
• AS – Asia
• EU – Europe
• NA – North America
• OC – Oceania
• SA – South America
• T1 – Tor network

UI name	API example
Destination Continent IP Geolocation	http.dst_ip.geo.continent == “EU”

Destination Country

Note

Only applies to traffic sent through the WARP client.

The country that the request is destined for. Geolocation is determined from the target IP address. To specify a country, enter its ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 code ↗ in the Value field.

UI name	API example
Destination Country IP Geolocation	http.dst_ip.geo.country == “RU”

Destination IP

Note

Only applies to traffic sent through the WARP client.

UI name	API example
Destination IP	http.conn.dst_ip == "10.0.0.0/8"

Device Posture

With the Device Posture selector, admins can use signals from end-user devices to secure access to their internal and external resources. For example, a security admin can choose to limit all access to internal applications based on whether specific software is installed on a device and/or if the device or software are configured in a particular way.

For more information on device posture checks, refer to Device posture.

UI name	API example
Passed Device Posture Checks	any(device_posture.checks.failed[*] in {"1308749e-fcfb-4ebc-b051-fe022b632644"}), any(device_posture.checks.passed[*] in {"1308749e-fcfb-4ebc-b051-fe022b632644"})"

Domain

Use this selector to match against a domain and all subdomains — for example, if you want to block example.com and subdomains such as www.example.com.

UI name	API example
Domain	any(http.conn.domains[*] == "example.com")

Download and Upload File Types

Deprecated selectors

The Download File Types and Upload File Types selectors supersede the Download File Type and Upload File Type selectors. Gateway will still evaluate policies with the previous selectors. However, Cloudflare recommends migrating any policies with deprecated selectors to the new corresponding selectors.

These selectors will scan file signatures in the HTTP body. You can select from file categories or specific file types, such as executables, archives and compressed files, Microsoft 365/Office documents, and Adobe files:

Supported file types

Compressed

• 7-Zip archive (.7z)
• bzip2 archive (.bz2)
• GNU Gzip archive (.gz)
• Microsoft Cabinet file (.cab)
• Microsoft Compiled HTML Help file (.chm)
• RAR archive (.rar)
• xz archive (.xz)
• ZIP archive (.zip)

Documents

• Microsoft Office/365 files
  • Word document (.doc, .docx, .docm)
  • Excel spreadsheet (.xls, .xlsx, .xlsm)
  • PowerPoint presentation (.ppt, .pptx, .pptm)
• PDF document (.pdf)

Executable

• Dynamic-link library (DLL) file (.dll)
• Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) file (.elf)
• Java archive (JAR) package (.jar)
• Java class file (.class)
• Mach object (Mach-O) file (.macho)
• Microsoft Windows installer (.msi)
• Microsoft Windows executable (.exe)

Image

• Adobe Photoshop document (.psd)
• Bitmap image (.bmp)
• GIF image (.gif)
• Icon file (.ico)
• JPEG image (.jpg, .jpeg)
• PNG image (.png)
• WebP image (.webp)

Other

• BitTorrent file (.torrent)

UI name	API example
Download File Types	any(http.download.file.types[*] in {"docx" "7z"})

UI name	API example
Upload File Types	any(http.upload.file.types[*] in {"compressed"})

Download and Upload Mime Type

These selectors depend on the Content-Type header being present in the request (for uploads) or response (for downloads).

UI name	API example
Download Mime Type	http.download.mime == "image/png\"

UI name	API example
Upload Mime Type	http.upload.mime == "image/png\"

DLP Profile

Scans HTTP traffic for the presence of social security numbers and other PII. You must configure the DLP Profile before you can use this selector in your policy. For more information, refer to our DLP Profile documentation.

Host

Use this selector to match only the hostname specified — for example, if you want to block test.example.com but not example.com or www.test.example.com.

UI name	API example
Host	http.conn.hostname == "test.example.com"

Note

Some hostnames (example.com) will invisibly redirect to the www subdomain (www.example.com). To match this type of website, use the Domain selector instead of the Host selector.

HTTP Method

UI name	API example
HTTP Method	http.request.method == "GET"

HTTP Response

UI name	API example
URL	http.response.status_code == "200"

Proxy Endpoint

The proxy server where your browser forwards HTTP traffic.

UI name	API example
Proxy Endpoint	proxy.endpoint == "3ele0ss56t.proxy.cloudflare-gateway.com"

Security Risks

UI name	API example
Security Risks	any(http.conn.security_category[*] in {1})

For more information, refer to our list of security categories.

Source Continent

The continent of the user making the request.

Geolocation is determined from the device’s public IP address (typically assigned by the user’s ISP). To specify a continent, enter its two-letter code into the Value field:

Continent	Code
Africa	AF
Antarctica	AN
Asia	AS
Europe	EU
North America	NA
Oceania	OC
South America	SA
Tor network	T1

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Source Continent IP Geolocation	http.src_ip.geo.continent == “North America”	Before DNS resolution

Source Country

The country of the user making the request.

Geolocation is determined from the device’s public IP address (typically assigned by the user’s ISP). To specify a country, enter its ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code ↗ in the Value field.

UI name	API example	Evaluation phase
Source Country IP Geolocation	http.src_ip.geo.country == “RU”	Before DNS resolution

Source Internal IP

Use this selector to apply HTTP policies to a private IP address, assigned by a user’s local network, that requests arrive to Gateway from. This selector will only apply to users connected through a Magic GRE or IPSec tunnel.

UI name	API example
Source Internal IP	http.conn.internal_src_ip == “192.168.86.0/27”

Source IP

UI name	API example
Source IP	http.conn.src_ip == "10.0.0.0/8"

URL

Gateway ignores trailing forward slashes (/) in URLs. For example, https://example.com and https://example.com/ will count as the same URL and may return a duplicate error.

UI name	API example
URL	not(any(http.request.uri.content_category[*] in {1}))

URL Path

UI name	API example
URL Path	http.request.uri.path == \"/foo/bar\"

URL Path and Query

UI name	API example
URL Path and Query	http.request.uri.path_and_query == \"/foo/bar?ab%242=%2A342\"

URL Query

UI name	API example
URL Query	not(http.request.uri in $%s)

Users

Identity-based selectors include:

• SAML Attributes
• User Email
• User Group Emails
• User Group IDs
• User Group Names
• User Name

To use identity-based selectors, enable Gateway with WARP in the Zero Trust WARP client and enroll your user in your organization. For more information, refer to Identity-based policies.

Virtual Network

Use this selector to match all traffic routed through a specific Tunnel Virtual Network via the WARP client.

UI name	API example
Virtual Network	http.conn.vnet_id == “957fc748-591a-e96s-a15d-1j90204a7923”

Comparison operators

Comparison operators are the way Gateway matches traffic to a selector. When you choose a Selector in the dashboard policy builder, the Operator dropdown menu will display the available options for that selector.

Operator	Meaning
is	equals the defined value
is not	does not equal the defined value
in	matches at least one of the defined values
not in	does not match any of the defined values
in list	in a pre-defined list of values
not in list	not in a pre-defined list of values
matches regex	regex evaluates to true
does not match regex	regex evaluates to false
greater than	exceeds the defined number
greater than or equal to	exceeds or equals the defined number
less than	below the defined number
less than or equal to	below or equals the defined number

Value

In the Value field, you can input a single value when using an equality comparison operator (such as is) or multiple values when using a containment comparison operator (such as in). Additionally, you can use regular expressions (or regex) to specify a range of values for supported selectors.

Regular expressions

Gateway uses Rust to evaluate regular expressions. The Rust implementation is slightly different than regex libraries used elsewhere. For more information, refer to our guide for Wildcards. To evaluate if your regex matches, you can use Rustexp ↗.

If you want to match multiple values, you can use the pipe symbol (|) as an OR operator. In Gateway, you do not need to use an escape character (\) before the pipe symbol. For example, the following policy blocks requests to two hostnames if either appears in a request header:

Selector	Operator	Value	Action
Host	matches regex	.\*whispersystems.org|.\*signal.org	Block

In addition to regular expressions, you can use logical operators to match multiple values.

Logical operators

To evaluate multiple conditions in an expression, select the And logical operator. These expressions can be compared further with the Or logical operator.

Operator	Meaning
And	match all of the conditions in the expression
Or	match any of the conditions in the expression

The Or operator will only work with conditions in the same expression group. For example, you cannot compare conditions in Traffic with conditions in Identity or Device Posture.

If a condition in an expression joins a request attribute (such as Source IP) and a response attribute (such as a DLP Profile), then the condition will be evaluated when the response is received.