Introducing full transaction detection for Cloudflare WAF

Today, we are expanding our web application firewall (WAF) by adding two new capabilities: full transaction detections and response rules. Full transaction detections evaluate each HTTP request alongside its response to identify evidence of exploitation. It helps answer both "Does this request look malicious?" and "What happened when the application handled it?" Response rules can then block the origin’s response before it reaches the requester. These are valuable protections because the latest frontier models are uncovering vulnerabilities buried deep in widely used software, giving defenders clarity on what to fix — and attackers new paths to exploit. The recent php2shell vulnerability shows the stakes: a flaw in a common software component can put applications across the Internet at risk. AI agents scanning for vulnerabilities can be extremely persistent, adapting payloads using feedback, and chaining vulnerabilities, credentials, and permissions. An application's response can reveal whether an attempt worked and give an attacker information that helps them go deeper. Inspecting incoming requests remains essential for stopping recognizable attacks before they reach an application. But some threats become clear only when the request is considered alongside what the origin returns. A suspicious input followed by a response exposing sensitive information tells a different story from the same input followed by a rejection or an error. With these new capabilities, customers can use Cloudflare-managed protections or build their own policies combining request and response properties. This extends our always-on application security framework, with detection results available in Security Analytics to support investigation. Our first managed protections using this capability address the recently disclosed php2shell vulnerability. And the best part? We are making these new capabilities generally available to all Cloudflare customers, including Free plans. Request inspection is not enough Cloudflare WAF protects websites and APIs with managed rules, custom rules, and rate limiting. Managed rules provide protection for known attack techniques and vulnerabilities while custom rules let teams create their own policies using parameters such as an IP address, URL path, headers, and request body. These controls operate at the request level to stop exploits or unwanted traffic from reaching the origin. For many threats, this is the right place to act. However, …