
Aikido Firewall for Node.js

Aikido Firewall is an embedded Web Application Firewall that autonomously protects Node.js apps against common and critical attacks.
It protects your Node.js apps by preventing user input containing dangerous strings, which allow injection, pollution, and path traversal attacks. It runs on the same server as your Node.js app for simple installation and zero maintenance.
Features
Firewall autonomously protects your Node.js applications against:
Firewall operates autonomously on the same server as your Node.js app to:
- β
Secure your app like a classic web application firewall (WAF), but with none of the infrastructure or cost.
- β
Rate limit specific API endpoints by IP or by user
- β
Allow you to block specific users manually
Supported libraries and frameworks
Aikido Firewall for Node.js 16+ is compatible with:
Web frameworks
- β
Express 4.x
- β
Hono 4.x
- β
Next.js (upcoming)
- β
Fastify (upcoming)
Database drivers
Cloud providers
ORMs and query builders
See list above for supported database drivers.
API tools
Data serialization tools
Installation
# The --save-exact makes sure that you don't automatically install a newer version
$ npm install --save-exact @aikidosec/firewall
# The --exact makes sure that you don't automatically install a newer version
$ yarn add --exact @aikidosec/firewall
For framework- and provider- specific instructions, check out our docs:
Reporting to your Aikido Security dashboard
Aikido Security is a developer-first software security platform. We scan your source code & cloud to show you which vulnerabilities are actually important.
You can use some of Firewalls's features without Aikido, but you will get the most value by reporting your data to Aikido.
You will need an Aikido account and a token to report events to Aikido. If you don't have an account, you can sign up for free.
Here's how:
- Log in to your Aikido account.
- Go to Firewall.
- Go to apps.
- Click on Add app.
- Choose a name for your app.
- Click Generate token.
- Copy the token.
- Set the token as an environment variable,
AIKIDO_TOKEN, using dotenv or another method of your choosing.
Running in production (blocking) mode
By default, Firewall will only detect and report attacks to Aikido.
To block requests, set the AIKIDO_BLOCKING environment variable to true.
See Reporting to Aikido to learn how to send events to Aikido.
License
This program is offered under a commercial and under the AGPL license.
You can be released from the requirements of the AGPL license by purchasing
a commercial license. Buying such a license is mandatory as soon as you
develop commercial activities involving the Aikido Firewall software without
disclosing the source code of your own applications.
For more information, please contact Aikido Security at this
address: support@aikido.dev or create an account at https://app.aikido.dev.
Performance
We run a benchmark on every commit to ensure Firewall has a minimal impact on your application's performance.
The benchmark runs a simple MongoDB query to measure the difference between two runs with and without Firewall:
(Using Node.js 18.x and MongoDB 6.3.x. Results will vary depending on your hardware.)
See benchmarks for more information.
Bug bounty program
Our bug bounty program is public and can be found by all registered Intigriti users at: https://app.intigriti.com/researcher/programs/aikido/aikidoruntime
Contributing
See CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.
Code of Conduct
See CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for more information.
Security
See SECURITY.md for more information.