cloudflare

Manage Cloudflare's Web App Firewall ( WAF ) with Terraform.

Authenticate to Cloudflare

Use a less privileged, short-lived, API Token instead of the traditional email and long-lived API Key. Reference.

# required for every request sent to Cloudflare
# Terraform will pick up the API Token from here 
export CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN="< token >"

# The Account ID is used in "Account Level" calls to Cloudflare
export CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID="abcd"

# to pass the Account ID into variables
export TF_VAR_cloudflare_account_id=$CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID

Backup state file to Cloudflare r2

Almost identical to s3 backups. When the requests get sent during an terraform init it actually sends it to: https://[bucket_name].[account_id].r2.cloudflarestorage.com

# environment variables
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID     - R2 token
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY - R2 secret
AWS_ENDPOINT_URL_S3   - R2 location: https://ACCOUNT_ID.r2.cloudflarestorage.com


related info: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/33847

Debug Cloudflare API requests from Terraform

Almost all issues I experienced related to using the wrong CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN when making change via Terraform. A quick way to see the errors was:

# Add the certificate to KeyChain "trust"
export https_proxy=127.0.0.1:8081 && terraform plan

Limitations of free Cloudflare tier

# No bot management values
cf.bot_management.score eq 1
not cf.bot_management.verified_bot

# LogPush not available on anything apart from Enterprise Plan
https://developers.cloudflare.com/logs/about/

# Advanced Rate Limits
no counting expression allowed
action = "log" not allowed with free zones
"log" with a an Action Response block not allowed ( as "log" overrides the response block )

# Firewall Filters can't include
http.request.method
http.response.code
http.host eq "${var.website}"

# ddos overrides
You can still override DDOS rules with the free tier

Permissions I used

Account level

- Workers Pipelines
- Notifications
- Transform Rules
- Account WAF
- Workers R2 Storage
- Account Rulesets
- Rule Policies
- Account Filter Lists
- Access: Organizations, Identity Providers, and Groups
- Account Firewall 
- Access Rules
- Account Settings
- Logs      # free tier doesn't allow zone level logpush

Zone Level
- Config Rules
- Single Redirect
- Transform Rules
- HTTP DDoS Managed Ruleset
- Bot Management
- Zone Settings
- Zone
- Page Rules
- Firewall Service
- DNS

Note

you have to use the template Create Additional Tokens to do anything with API Tokens. These permissions are not viewable if you generate a custom token.

All users 
- API Tokens

State file is secret

If you check-in the state file, which is default named terrform.tfstate, you have just compromised your Cloudflare authentication credentials. Time to rotate those creds !

State mismatch

On day 1 you set up Cloudflare and add a bunch of resources. On day 2 you set up a repo to manage Cloudflare with Terraform. What happens ? You need to import those rules. Does that matter ? Example:

• Create a Cloudflare Access Rule with Terraform
• Delete the state file
• terraform init
• terraform plan # all looks good
• terraform apply

Error: failed to create access rule: firewallaccessrules.api.duplicate_of_existing (10009)

The state is out of sync. To get it back in sync:

cf-terraforming import \
  --resource-type "cloudflare_access_rule" \
  --token $CF_TOKEN --account $CF_ACCOUNT_ID

Then just make sure you import it to the correct place. In my case, I needed to import the rule into a module called access_rules:

terraform import module.access_rules.cloudflare_access_rule.foobar account/yy/xxxx

Import multiple Resources with same name

resource "cloudflare_access_rule" "challenge_anzac" {
    ...
    ...
variable "countries_naughty_map" {
  type    = list(string)
  default = ["AU", "NZ"]
}

This means any import needs handling with multiple commands:

terraform import -state=terraform.tfstate "module.access_rules.cloudflare_access_rule.my_rule[0]" account/<account id>/<rule id>

Test state change

# remove state
terraform state rm -state=terraform.tfstate "module.access_rules.cloudflare_access_rule.my_rule[1]"

# import
terraform import -state=terraform.tfstate "module.access_rules.cloudflare_access_rule.my_rule[1]" account/<account id>/<rule id>

# test it worked
▶ terraform plan
No changes. Your infrastructure matches the configuration.