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F5 Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning: Safeguarding AI-Enabled Web Applications

Ian Dinno Thumbnail
Ian Dinno
Published April 18, 2025

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to revolutionize the way businesses operate, its integration into web applications—via large language models (LLMs) powering AI-enabled services—has become increasingly common. And with this innovation comes additional risk in the form of new AI-enabled services and vulnerabilities, putting new critical services, more sensitive data, overall app and business reliability, and ultimately user trust in jeopardy along with it.

Expanded security measures are critical, and F5 Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning meets this need. An intelligent web application security solution, Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning is designed to help organizations address the evolving challenges of safeguarding modern, AI-enabled web apps. With cutting-edge capabilities—including external attack surface mapping of an organization’s domain paired with dynamic application security testing (DAST) functionality and a comprehensive suite for testing AI components against OWASP Top 10 for large language models (LLMs) risks—this service provides robust and continuous detection of modern web app vulnerabilities.

This blog explores why adopting this service is a must for organizations integrating AI and LLMs into their web applications, the vulnerabilities Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning identifies, and how the service works.

Security for the next generation of applications

As organizations increasingly adopt AI to enhance functionality and provide richer user experiences, ensuring the security, reliability, and compliance of these systems becomes non-negotiable. The dynamic nature of AI threats, coupled with the potential for real-world vulnerabilities surfacing in production environments, underscores the need for continuous, robust testing.

Here’s why Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning is vital for organizations embracing AI:

  • Continuous testing with broad coverage: AI systems, unlike traditional software, are dynamic—they learn, adapt, and evolve. Continuous testing ensures that organizations can identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across the broad spectrum of OWASP LLM Top 10 threat categories, including those arising from real-world LLM usage.
  • Protecting user trust in AI-enabled services: Issues like prompt injection or model hallucinations can erode user confidence, especially in customer-facing applications like AI-enabled chatbots or assistants, translation services, content generation, search, etc. Proactive testing helps protect trust by identifying and resolving vulnerabilities before they can be exploited and impact these new AI experiences.
  • Meeting regulatory and ethical standards: With increasing scrutiny on AI systems, organizations implementing modern, AI-enabled digital experiences must have a way to demonstrate compliance with relevant regulatory frameworks. Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning supports this by helping organizations identify and track web app vulnerabilities including those impacting integrated LLM based services—providing a critical audit trail for reporting within their compliance process.

 

Understanding the vulnerabilities

AI systems, particularly LLMs, are powerful but inherently complex, and their introduction into web applications adds a new layer of risk in the form of new vulnerabilities and attacks to worry about including:

  • Prompt injection attacks: Malicious actors craft inputs that manipulate the LLM into executing unintended actions, such as generating unauthorized outputs.
  • Data leakage: LLMs often rely on vast data sets to function, and without proper safeguards, they may inadvertently leak sensitive data provided during training or their interactions.
  • Cross-site scripting (XSS): Attackers inject malicious scripts into AI-enabled inputs, compromising the application, outputs, and potentially its users.
  • Model hallucinations: LLMs may generate contextually inappropriate or inaccurate results that can harm user trust and introduce legal or compliance issues.

Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning doesn't just find these issues; it also offers remediation guidance. With an AI assistant to help better understand each vulnerability and provide actionable recommendations, organizations can ensure their web apps are protected and available and that users’ trust remains intact.

How Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning works

The process of discovering and testing LLMs within modern, AI-enabled web applications begins with an automated four-step process that ensures comprehensive coverage:

  1. Reconnaissance: The Web App Scanning service first interacts with any external facing domain, to detect and map the entire web app, its subdomains and supporting infrastructure including LLM integrated services exposed.
  2. Identification: Once the presence of an LLM is detected, the service runs a fingerprinting algorithm to identify the specific models being used—for example, Mistral 7B Instruct or other widely-adopted models including over 150 popular LLMs in the industry.
  3. Testing: After the initial mapping comes the automated penetration testing that includes a broad testing suite of OWASP Web App and LLM Top 10 specific threats. Leveraging industry-leading testing frameworks like NVIDIA’s garak and Microsoft’s PyRIT, the service simulates adversarial attacks to uncover critical security issues, including prompt injection attacks, data leakage via relay and repeat relay vulnerabilities, cross-site scripting (XSS), keyword probes and model hallucinations, misleading claims, and more.
  4. Reporting: The scan and test generate a complete, detailed penetration test report, which highlights any vulnerabilities found across the LLM and web application Top 10 lists. This report includes actionable remediation guidance, with videos and screenshots of the entire test and vulnerabilities with context aware insights that empower organizations to easily address any vulnerabilities identified to protect their modern, AI-enabled web apps.

Embrace the future securely

AI powered innovation has unlocked incredible potential for web applications and modern digital experiences, but it’s also opened the door to new and sophisticated security threats. Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning, with its integrated LLM testing suite, provides the scalability and coverage organizations need to securely navigate this evolving landscape, enabling them to stay on top of vulnerabilities as their applications evolve.

Incorporating this intelligent, continuous web application security testing into a company’s security posture not only safeguards web apps and APIs, but also reinforces an organization’s commitment to responsible, secure AI development and adoption.

Contact us to learn more about how Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning can help you strengthen your defenses and embrace AI with confidence.

And if you’re planning to attend the RSA Conference in San Francisco, be sure to attend our April 29 session, “Stronger Together: A Unified Approach to App Security and Delivery” and visit us in Booth N-4335.