How does Cloudflare's WAF (Web Application Firewall) protect websites from malicious attacks?

Cloudflare's WAF protects websites by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the Internet. It identifies and blocks common attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and other OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities. The WAF uses rule sets, including OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set, Cloudflare-managed rules, and custom rules defined by the user, to detect and mitigate malicious requests before they reach the origin server, safeguarding the application and its data.