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Simran Khalsa

Staff Security Researcher

Simran is a Staff Security Researcher at Fastly where he focuses on threat intelligence, vulnerability research, and product innovation. He enjoys researching novel attack techniques and fortifying technology to prevent real-world web attacks. He has spent his career on both the offensive and defensive sides of the industry in both public and private sectors with an emphasis on building modern security solutions.

Detection as Code with Fastly's WAF Simulator

Simran Khalsa, Fastly Security Research Team

Being able to test and validate rule behavior is critical to a maintainable WAF. With our WAF Simulator, you can validate rules in a safe simulation environment.

DevOps
+ 3 more

Active exploitation of unauthenticated stored XSS vulnerabilities in WordPress Plugins

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa, + 2 more

We have observed active exploitation attempts targeting three high-severity CVEs: CVE-2024-2194, CVE-2023-6961, and CVE-2023-40000.

Security
Industry insights

Cyber 5 Threat Insights

Simran Khalsa, Charlie Bricknell, + 1 more

To gain a broader understanding of the threat landscape during "Cyber 5" weekend, we analyzed attack activities with a particular focus on commerce sites.

Industry insights
+ 2 more
An illustration of a yellow, shining shield with a cracking gray shield peeling off of it

WAF Simulator: Transforming DevSecOps Workflows

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa

We're excited to announce Fastly's new WAF Simulator, which simplifies the testing process and provides the following key benefits.

DevOps
+ 2 more

Patch that Vuln! Identify, Triage, and Qualify CVEs

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa

Vulnerabilities are an unfortunate inevitability. However, when using a WAF there are options for your security teams while waiting for a patch.

Security
+ 2 more

Network Effect Threat Report: Uncovering the power of collective threat intelligence

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa, + 3 more

Announcing the Network Effect Threat Report, Fastly’s threat intelligence report with insights based on unique data from April to June of 2023

Security
+ 2 more

CVE-2023-34362: Progress MOVEit Transfer SQL Injection Vulnerability

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa, + 3 more

What you need to know about CVE-2023-34362: Progress MOVEit Transfer SQL Injection Vulnerability

Security

Using Client Hints to Detect Disparities

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa

Learn how User-Agent Client Hints work, explore privacy-related features and concerns, and how the partial adoption and incompleteness of this emerging standard can be used to detect behavior disparities.

DevOps
+ 2 more

Automating and Defending Nefarious Automation

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa

If your application is on the internet, chances are it has been subjected to nefarious automation. These events can include many different attacks – including content scraping, credential stuffing, application DDoS, web form abuse, token guessing, and more.

Security

Spring: CVE-2022-22963 & Spring4Shell (CVE-2022-22965) | Fastly

Fastly Security Research Team, Xavier Stevens, + 1 more

In this post, we review details for two RCE vulnerabilities impacting Spring Cloud and Spring Framework, including how Fastly customers can protect themselves from this vulnerability.

Security

How to Secure your GraphQL

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa

There are many benefits to adopting GraphQL, but its security implications are less understood. In this post, we’ll explore those implications and offer guidance on which defaults and controls can support a safer GraphQL implementation.

Engineering
Security

WAF framework measures WAF effectiveness | Fastly

Fastly Security Research Team, Simran Khalsa, + 1 more

Our new WAF efficacy framework provides a standardized way to measure the effectiveness of a WAF’s detection capabilities through continuous verification and validation. Here’s how it works.

Engineering
Security

Log4Shell attacks (CVE-2021-44228) insights | Fastly

Fastly Security Research Team, Xavier Stevens, + 1 more

We’re sharing our latest data and new insights into the Log4j/Log4Shell vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228 + CVE-2021-45046) in this post in order to help the engineering community cope with the situation. We also share our guidance around testing your environment against many of the new obfuscation methods that have been seen.

Industry insights
Security

Log4Shell exploit found in Log4j | Fastly

Fastly Security Research Team, Xavier Stevens, + 1 more

CVE-2021-44228 is a Remote Code Execution vulnerability in the Apache Log4j library being actively exploited. We provide our observations into the exploit and a summary of its impact.

Security
Engineering

Atlassian Confluence OGNL Injection Vulnerability Protection | Fastly

Fastly Security Research Team, Xavier Stevens, + 1 more

Our Security Research Team has built and deployed a rule to help protect customers of our next-gen WAF against the recently announced Confluence Server OGNL injection vulnerability, CVE-2021-26084.

Security

Next-Gen WAF for Microsoft Exchange | Fastly

Fastly Security Research Team, Xavier Stevens, + 1 more

Fastly’s security research team has built and deployed a rule to protect Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF customers against the recently announced Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities.

Product
Security