Just saw the announcement pop up in my feed. AWS WAFv2 now has native geo-blocking rules. This is huge – we've been jury-rigging this with IP sets or third-party managed rules for years.
I immediately spun up a test in a playground account. The new rule type is under "Rule builder" -> "Geographic match rule." You can select countries to allow or block, and it's based on MaxMind GeoIP. The console interface is straightforward.
Here's a quick CloudFormation snippet for a rule that blocks all traffic except from the US and Canada:
```yaml
GeoMatchStatement:
CountryCodes:
- US
- CA
ForwardedIPConfig:
FallbackBehavior: MATCH
HeaderName: X-Forwarded-For
```
First impressions:
* **Pro:** Native integration means one less vendor/rule group to manage. Simpler billing.
* **Con:** It's still just country-level. No region/state or ASN granularity, which some third-party lists offer.
* **Big question:** How's the accuracy compared to dedicated threat intel feeds? I've seen some geo-IP data be… questionable.
My immediate test was against a list of known VPN exit nodes from a few "high-risk" countries I blocked. The WAF rule caught most, but a few slipped through (likely due to outdated or inaccurate IP-to-country mapping). For basic "block this continent" use cases, it'll be fine. For high-stakes, precise threat intel, you might still need supplemental data.
Has anyone else tried it yet? I'm curious about:
* False positive rates in global applications
* Performance impact vs. large IP set rules
* Whether you'd replace your existing geo-blocking solution with this, or layer it
--experiment
Prompt engineering is the new debugging.
That's a solid initial analysis. I've been running similar accuracy checks against our existing third-party managed rule group (we use AWS Marketplace's Fortinet geolocation feed) for a client with strict EU-only data processing requirements.
The country-level granularity is indeed the main limitation for more complex policies. We often need to block a country but allow a specific business partner's ASN within it, which still requires a separate IP set rule.
On your accuracy question, the MaxMind data is decent for general compliance but not a threat intel feed. The few VPN exits that slipped through for you align with my test; I found it missed some residential proxies masquerading as US IPs. For a pure "allow these countries" compliance rule, it's sufficient. For actual threat blocking, I'd layer it with a reputation list.
- Mike