Cisco NX OS Switch RTR Security Technical Implementation Guide

Overview

VersionDateFinding Count (78)Downloads
32024-12-20CAT I (High): 7CAT II (Medium): 45CAT III (Low): 26
STIG Description
This Security Technical Implementation Guide is published as a tool to improve the security of Department of Defense (DOD) information systems. The requirements are derived from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-53 and related documents. Comments or proposed revisions to this document should be sent via email to the following address: disa.stig_spt@mail.mil.
ClassifiedPublicSensitive
I - Mission Critical ClassifiedI - Mission Critical PublicI - Mission Critical Sensitive
II - Mission Support ClassifiedII - Mission Support PublicII - Mission Support Sensitive
III - Administrative ClassifiedIII - Administrative PublicIII - Administrative Sensitive

Findings - MAC II - Mission Support Public

Finding IDSeverityTitleDescription
V-221071
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to enforce approved authorizations for controlling the flow of information within the network based on organization-defined information flow control policies.Information flow control regulates where information is allowed to travel within a network and between interconnected networks. The flow of all networ...
V-221072
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to implement message authentication for all control plane protocols.A rogue switch could send a fictitious routing update to convince a site's perimeter switch to send traffic to an incorrect or even a rogue destinatio...
V-221073
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to use keys with a duration not exceeding 180 days for authenticating routing protocol messages.If the keys used for routing protocol authentication are guessed, the malicious user could create havoc within the network by advertising incorrect ro...
V-221074
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to use encryption for routing protocol authentication.A rogue switch could send a fictitious routing update to convince a site's perimeter switch to send traffic to an incorrect or even a rogue destinatio...
V-221075
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to authenticate all routing protocol messages using NIST-validated FIPS 198-1 message authentication code algorithm.A rogue switch could send a fictitious routing update to convince a site's perimeter switch to send traffic to an incorrect or even a rogue destinatio...
V-221078
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must not be configured to have any feature enabled that calls home to the vendor.Call home services will routinely send data such as configuration and diagnostic information to the vendor for routine or emergency analysis and troub...
V-221079
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to protect against or limit the effects of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks by employing control plane protection.The Route Processor (RP) is critical to all network operations because it is the component used to build all forwarding paths for the data plane via c...
V-221081
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to drop all fragmented Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets destined to itself.Fragmented ICMP packets can be generated by hackers for DoS attacks such as Ping O' Death and Teardrop. It is imperative that all fragmented ICMP pack...
V-221082
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to have Gratuitous ARP disabled on all external interfaces.A gratuitous ARP is an ARP broadcast in which the source and destination MAC addresses are the same. It is used to inform the network about a host IP ...
V-221084
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to have Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) unreachable messages disabled on all external interfaces.The ICMP supports IP traffic by relaying information about paths, routes, and network conditions. Switches automatically send ICMP messages under a wi...
V-221085
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to have Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) redirect messages disabled on all external interfaces.The ICMP supports IP traffic by relaying information about paths, routes, and network conditions. Switches automatically send ICMP messages under a wi...
V-221088
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to enforce approved authorizations for controlling the flow of information between interconnected networks in accordance with applicable policy.Information flow control regulates authorized information to travel within a network and between interconnected networks. Controlling the flow of netw...
V-221089
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to only allow incoming communications from authorized sources to be routed to authorized destinations.Unrestricted traffic may contain malicious traffic that poses a threat to an enclave or to other connected networks. Additionally, unrestricted traffi...
V-221090
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to block inbound packets with source Bogon IP address prefixes.Packets with Bogon IP source addresses should never be allowed to traverse the IP core. Bogon IP networks are RFC1918 addresses or address blocks that...
V-221092
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to filter traffic destined to the enclave in accordance with the guidelines contained in DoD Instruction 8551.1.Vulnerability assessments must be reviewed by the System Administrator, and protocols must be approved by the Information Assurance (IA) staff before ...
V-221093
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to filter ingress traffic at the external interface on an inbound direction.Access lists are used to separate data traffic into that which it will route (permitted packets) and that which it will not route (denied packets). Se...
V-221094
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to filter egress traffic at the internal interface on an inbound direction.Access lists are used to separate data traffic into that which it will route (permitted packets) and that which it will not route (denied packets). Se...
V-221095
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to block all packets with any IP options.Packets with IP options are not fast switched and henceforth must be punted to the switch processor. Hackers who initiate denial-of-service (DoS) atta...
V-221098
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to have Proxy ARP disabled on all external interfaces.When Proxy ARP is enabled on a switch, it allows that switch to extend the network (at Layer 2) across multiple interfaces (LAN segments). Because pro...
V-221099
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to block all outbound management traffic.For in-band management, the management network must have its own subnet in order to enforce control and access boundaries provided by Layer 3 network ...
V-221100
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to only permit management traffic that ingresses and egresses the out-of-band management (OOBM) interface.The OOBM access switch will connect to the management interface of the managed network elements. The management interface can be a true OOBM interface...
V-221102
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to use a unique key for each autonomous system (AS) that it peers with.If the same keys are used between eBGP neighbors, the chance of a hacker compromising any of the BGP sessions increases. It is possible that a malicio...
V-221103
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to reject inbound route advertisements for any Bogon prefixes.Accepting route advertisements for Bogon prefixes can result in the local autonomous system (AS) becoming a transit for malicious traffic as it will i...
V-221104
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to reject inbound route advertisements for any prefixes belonging to the local autonomous system (AS).Accepting route advertisements belonging to the local AS can result in traffic looping or being black-holed, or at a minimum, using a non-optimized pa...
V-221105
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to reject inbound route advertisements from a customer edge (CE) switch for prefixes that are not allocated to that customer.As a best practice, a service provider should only accept customer prefixes that have been assigned to that customer and any peering autonomous system...
V-221106
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to reject outbound route advertisements for any prefixes that do not belong to any customers or the local autonomous system (AS).Advertisement of routes by an autonomous system for networks that do not belong to any of its customers pulls traffic away from the authorized network...
V-221107
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to reject outbound route advertisements for any prefixes belonging to the IP core.Outbound route advertisements belonging to the core can result in traffic either looping or being black holed, or at a minimum, using a non-optimized ...
V-221110
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to use the maximum prefixes feature to protect against route table flooding and prefix de-aggregation attacks.The effects of prefix de-aggregation can degrade switch performance due to the size of routing tables and also result in black-holing legitimate traff...
V-221116
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco MPLS switch must be configured to have TTL Propagation disabled.The head end of the label-switched path (LSP), the label edge switch (LER) will decrement the IP packet's time-to-live (TTL) value by one and then cop...
V-221119
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured to have each VRF with the appropriate Route Distinguisher (RD).An RD provides uniqueness to the customer address spaces within the MPLS L3VPN infrastructure. The concept of the VPN-IPv4 and VPN-IPv6 address famili...
V-221120
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch providing MPLS Layer 2 Virtual Private Network (L2VPN) services must be configured to authenticate targeted Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) sessions used to exchange virtual circuit (VC) information using a FIPS-approved message authentication code algorithm.LDP provides the signaling required for setting up and tearing down pseudowires (virtual circuits used to transport Layer 2 frames) across an MPLS IP ...
V-221123
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch providing Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) must be configured to have traffic storm control thresholds on CE-facing interfaces.A traffic storm occurs when packets flood a VPLS bridge, creating excessive traffic and degrading network performance. Traffic storm control prevents ...
V-221125
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured to limit the number of MAC addresses it can learn for each Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) bridge domain.VPLS defines an architecture that delivers Ethernet multipoint services over an MPLS network. Customer Layer 2 frames are forwarded across the MPLS co...
V-221127
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured with Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding (uRPF) loose mode enabled on all CE-facing interfaces.The uRPF feature is a defense against spoofing and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks by verifying if the source address of any ingress packet is reachab...
V-221128
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured to ignore or drop all packets with any IP options.Packets with IP options are not fast-switched and therefore must be punted to the switch processor. Hackers who initiate denial-of-service (DoS) attac...
V-221131
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to enforce a Quality-of-Service (QoS) policy to limit the effects of packet flooding denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.DoS is a condition when a resource is not available for legitimate users. Packet flooding distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are referred to...
V-221132
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast switch must be configured to disable Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) on all interfaces that are not required to support multicast routing.If multicast traffic is forwarded beyond the intended boundary, it is possible that it can be intercepted by unauthorized or unintended personnel. Lim...
V-221133
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast switch must be configured to bind a Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) neighbor filter to interfaces that have PIM enabled.PIM is a routing protocol used to build multicast distribution trees for forwarding multicast traffic across the network infrastructure. PIM traffic m...
V-221139
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast Designated switch (DR) must be configured to filter the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) Report messages to allow hosts to join a multicast group only from sources that have been approved by the organization.Real-time multicast traffic can entail multiple large flows of data. Large unicast flows tend to be fairly isolated (i.e., someone doing a file downlo...
V-221140
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast Designated switch (DR) must be configured to limit the number of mroute states resulting from Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) Host Membership Reports.The current multicast paradigm can let any host join any multicast group at any time by sending an IGMP or MLD membership report to the DR. In a Proto...
V-221141
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast Designated switch (DR) must be configured to set the shortest-path tree (SPT) threshold to infinity to minimalize source-group (S, G) state within the multicast topology where Any Source Multicast (ASM) is deployed.ASM can have many sources for the same groups (many-to-many). For many receivers, the path via the RP may not be ideal compared with the shortest path...
V-221142
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) switch must be configured to only accept MSDP packets from known MSDP peers.MSDP peering with customer network switches presents additional risks to the DISN Core, whether from a rogue or misconfigured MSDP-enabled switch. To ...
V-221143
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) switch must be configured to authenticate all received MSDP packets.MSDP peering with customer network switches presents additional risks to the core, whether from a rogue or misconfigured MSDP-enabled switch. MSDP pas...
V-237757
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must not be configured to use IPv6 Site Local Unicast addresses.As currently defined, site local addresses are ambiguous and can be present in multiple sites. The address itself does not contain any indication of t...
V-237760
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to suppress Router Advertisements on all external IPv6-enabled interfaces.Many of the known attacks in stateless autoconfiguration are defined in RFC 3756 were present in IPv4 ARP attacks. To mitigate these vulnerabilities, ...
V-221076
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to have all inactive layer 3 interfaces disabled.An inactive interface is rarely monitored or controlled and may expose a network to an undetected attack on that interface. Unauthorized personnel wit...
V-221083
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to have IP directed broadcast disabled on all interfaces.An IP directed broadcast is a datagram sent to the broadcast address of a subnet that is not directly attached to the sending machine. The directed br...
V-221086
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to log all packets that have been dropped at interfaces via an ACL.Auditing and logging are key components of any security architecture. It is essential for security personnel to know what is being done or attempted t...
V-221096
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to have Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) disabled on all external interfaces.LLDP is a neighbor discovery protocol used to advertise device capabilities, configuration information, and device identity. LLDP is media-and-protoco...
V-221097
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to have Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) disabled on all external interfaces.CDP is a Cisco proprietary neighbor discovery protocol used to advertise device capabilities, configuration information, and device identity. CDP is m...
V-221101
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to check whether a single-hop eBGP peer is directly connected.As described in RFC 3682, GTSM is designed to protect a switch's IP-based control plane from DoS attacks. Many attacks focused on CPU load and line-ca...
V-221108
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to reject route advertisements from BGP peers that do not list their autonomous system (AS) number as the first AS in the AS_PATH attribute.Verifying the path a route has traversed will ensure the IP core is not used as a transit network for unauthorized or possibly even internet traffic. ...
V-221109
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to reject route advertisements from CE switches with an originating AS in the AS_PATH attribute that does not belong to that customer.Verifying the path a route has traversed will ensure that the local AS is not used as a transit network for unauthorized traffic. To ensure that the l...
V-221111
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to limit the prefix size on any inbound route advertisement to /24, or the least significant prefixes issued to the customer.The effects of prefix de-aggregation can degrade switch performance due to the size of routing tables and also result in black-holing legitimate traff...
V-221112
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to use its loopback address as the source address for iBGP peering sessions.Using a loopback address as the source address offers a multitude of uses for security, access, management, and scalability of the BGP switches. It is...
V-221113
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco MPLS switch must be configured to use its loopback address as the source address for LDP peering sessions.Using a loopback address as the source address offers a multitude of uses for security, access, management, and scalability of backbone switches. It i...
V-221114
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco MPLS switch must be configured to synchronize Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) and LDP to minimize packet loss when an IGP adjacency is established prior to LDP peers completing label exchange.Packet loss can occur when an IGP adjacency is established and the switch begins forwarding packets using the new adjacency before the LDP label excha...
V-221115
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The MPLS switch with RSVP-TE enabled must be configured with message pacing to adjust maximum burst and maximum number of RSVP messages to an output queue based on the link speed and input queue size of adjacent core switches.RSVP-TE can be used to perform constraint-based routing when building LSP tunnels within the network core that will support QoS and traffic engineerin...
V-221124
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured to implement Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) or Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) snooping for each Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) bridge domain.IGMP snooping provides a way to constrain multicast traffic at Layer 2. By monitoring the IGMP membership reports sent by hosts within the bridge doma...
V-221129
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured to enforce a Quality-of-Service (QoS) policy to provide preferred treatment for mission-critical applications.Different applications have unique requirements and toleration levels for delay, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss, and availability. To manage the multi...
V-221130
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco P switch must be configured to enforce a Quality-of-Service (QoS) policy to provide preferred treatment for mission-critical applications.Different applications have unique requirements and toleration levels for delay, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss, and availability. To manage the multi...
V-221134
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast edge switch must be configured to establish boundaries for administratively scoped multicast traffic.If multicast traffic is forwarded beyond the intended boundary, it is possible that it can be intercepted by unauthorized or unintended personnel. Ad...
V-221135
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast Rendezvous Point (RP) switch must be configured to limit the multicast forwarding cache so that its resources are not saturated by managing an overwhelming number of Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) and Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) source-active entries.MSDP peering between networks enables sharing of multicast source information. Enclaves with an existing multicast topology using PIM-SM can configure...
V-221136
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast Rendezvous Point (RP) switch must be configured to filter Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) Register messages received from the Designated switch (DR) for any undesirable multicast groups and sources.Real-time multicast traffic can entail multiple large flows of data. An attacker can flood a network segment with multicast packets, over-using the av...
V-221137
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast Rendezvous Point (RP) switch must be configured to filter Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) Join messages received from the Designated Cisco switch (DR) for any undesirable multicast groups.Real-time multicast traffic can entail multiple large flows of data. An attacker can flood a network segment with multicast packets, over-using the av...
V-221138
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco multicast Designated switch (DR) must be configured to filter the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) Report messages to allow hosts to join only multicast groups that have been approved by the organization.Real-time multicast traffic can entail multiple large flows of data. Large unicast flows tend to be fairly isolated (i.e., someone doing a file downlo...
V-221144
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) switch must be configured to filter received source-active multicast advertisements for any undesirable multicast groups and sources.The interoperability of BGP extensions for interdomain multicast routing and MSDP enables seamless connectivity of multicast domains between autonomou...
V-221145
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) switch must be configured to filter source-active multicast advertisements to external MSDP peers to avoid global visibility of local-only multicast sources and groups.To avoid global visibility of local information, there are a number of source-group (S, G) states in a PIM-SM domain that must not be leaked to anothe...
V-221146
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) switch must be configured to limit the amount of source-active messages it accepts on a per-peer basis.To reduce any risk of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack from a rogue or misconfigured MSDP switch, the switch must be configured to limit the number of...
V-221147
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) switch must be configured to use a loopback address as the source address when originating MSDP traffic.Using a loopback address as the source address offers a multitude of uses for security, access, management, and scalability of MSDP switches. It is ea...
V-237754
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco switch must be configured to advertise a hop limit of at least 32 in Switch Advertisement messages for IPv6 stateless auto-configuration deployments.The Neighbor Discovery protocol allows a hop limit value to be advertised by routers in a Router Advertisement message being used by hosts instead of ...
V-221087
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to deny network traffic by default and allow network traffic by exception.A deny-all, permit-by-exception network communications traffic policy ensures that only connections that are essential and approved are allowed. This...
V-221091
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to restrict it from accepting outbound IP packets that contain an illegitimate address in the source address field via egress filter or by enabling Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding (uRPF).A compromised host in an enclave can be used by a malicious platform to launch cyberattacks on third parties. This is a common practice in "botnets", ...
V-221117
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured to have each Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) instance bound to the appropriate physical or logical interfaces to maintain traffic separation between all MPLS L3VPNs.The primary security model for an MPLS L3VPN infrastructure is traffic separation. The service provider must guarantee the customer that traffic from ...
V-221118
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured to have each Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) instance with the appropriate Route Target (RT).The primary security model for an MPLS L3VPN as well as a VRF-lite infrastructure is traffic separation. Each interface can only be associated to one ...
V-221121
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch providing MPLS Virtual Private Wire Service (VPWS) must be configured to have the appropriate virtual circuit identification (VC ID) for each attachment circuit.VPWS is an L2VPN technology that provides a virtual circuit between two PE switches to forward Layer 2 frames between two customer-edge switches or sw...
V-221122
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch providing Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) must be configured to have all attachment circuits defined to the virtual forwarding instance (VFI) with the globally unique VPN ID assigned for each customer VLAN.VPLS defines an architecture that delivers Ethernet multipoint services over an MPLS network. Customer Layer 2 frames are forwarded across the MPLS co...
V-221126
LOWMEDIUMHIGH
The Cisco PE switch must be configured to block any traffic that is destined to the IP core infrastructure.IP/MPLS networks providing VPN and transit services must provide, at the least, the same level of protection against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks a...