owasp-modsecurity / owasp-modsecurity/ModSecurity

ModSecurity Audit Logs Showing Numeric Severity Instead of String Defined in Rules and Incorrect Severity Mapping

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3.x
Dominant language
C++
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Description

I'm encountering an issue where the severity in ModSecurity audit logs is shown as a numeric value (e.g., "severity": "2") instead of the string defined in the rules (e.g., "severity": "CRITICAL")

0: EMERGENCY
1: ALERT
2: CRITICAL
3: ERROR
4: WARNING
5: NOTICE
6: INFO
7: DEBUG

Issue:
Rules like 949110 (blocking evaluation) do not have a defined severity, but in the logs, severity = 0 is being incorrectly mapped to "EMERGENCY", causing confusion.

audit_log.json

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  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by comparing audit_log.json with rule 949110 and the listed severity mapping. Reproduce the audit-log output and trace how an undefined severity becomes 0; done means explicitly defined severities retain their strings and an undefined severity is not reported as EMERGENCY.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
security
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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