Cisco ACI Router Security Technical Implementation Guide - V1R2

Information flow control regulates where information is allowed to travel within a network and between interconnected networks. The flow of all network traffic must be monitored and controlled so it does not introduce any unacceptable risk to the network infrastructure or data. Information flow control policies and enforcement mechanisms are commonly employed by organizations to control the flow of information between designated sources and destinations (e.g., networks, individuals, and devices) within information systems. In Cisco ACI, the administrator uses "contracts" to define security policies that control traffic between different endpoint groups (EPGs), essentially acting as a more granular and flexible ACL mechanism by specifying source and destination addresses, ports, and protocols based on the desired network segmentation needs. Add multiple filter rules to create a comprehensive set of allowed traffic patterns. Satisfies: SRG-NET-000019-RTR-000005, SRG-NET-000715-RTR-000120

Accepting route advertisements belonging to the local AS can result in traffic looping or being black holed, or at a minimum using a nonoptimized path. For Cisco APIC, the default setting is to prevent route loops from occurring. Sites are required to use different AS numbers when configuring. To prevent such a situation from occurring, sites must not enable the "BGP Autonomous System override" feature to override the default setting, and must not enable the "Disable Peer AS Check". An alternative to route maps is to use subnets under the External EPG with the correct route Controls assigned discussed in vendor documentation (Reference the L3 out white paper).

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. This causes a denial of service (DoS) on the network that allocated the block of addresses and may cause a DoS on the network that is inadvertently advertising it as the originator. It is also possible that a misconfigured or compromised router within the GIG IP core could redistribute IGP routes into BGP, thereby leaking internal routes. An alternative to route maps is to use subnets under the External EPG with the correct route Controls assigned as discussed in vendor documentation (Reference the L3 out white paper).

PIM is a routing protocol used to build multicast distribution trees for forwarding multicast traffic across the network infrastructure. PIM traffic must be limited to only known PIM neighbors by configuring and binding a PIM neighbor filter to those interfaces that have PIM enabled. If a PIM neighbor filter is not applied to those interfaces that have PIM enabled, unauthorized routers can join the PIM domain, discover and use the rendezvous points, and also advertise their rendezvous points into the domain. This can result in a denial of service (DoS) by traffic flooding or result in the unauthorized transfer of data.

Call home services will routinely send data such as configuration and diagnostic information to the vendor for routine or emergency analysis and troubleshooting. There is a risk that transmission of sensitive data sent to unauthorized persons could result in data loss or downtime due to an attack.

A rogue router could send a fictitious routing update to convince a site's perimeter router to send traffic to an incorrect or even a rogue destination. This diverted traffic could be analyzed to learn confidential information about the site's network or used to disrupt the network's ability to communicate with other networks. This is known as a "traffic attraction attack" and is prevented by configuring neighbor router authentication for routing updates. However, using clear-text authentication provides little benefit since an attacker can intercept traffic and view the authentication key. This would allow the attacker to use the authentication key in an attack. This requirement applies to all IPv4 and IPv6 protocols used to exchange routing or packet forwarding information; this includes all Interior Gateway Protocols (such as OSPF, EIGRP, and IS-IS) and Exterior Gateway Protocols (such as BGP), MPLS-related protocols (such as LDP), and multicast-related protocols. To configure a Cisco ACI to use encryption for routing protocol authentication, set up a "pre-shared key" (PSK) on the APIC, which will then be used to generate encryption keys for the routing protocol authentication process, essentially encrypting the authentication messages exchanged between switches within the fabric. This feature is typically referred to as "CloudSec Encryption" within the ACI platform.

A rogue router could send a fictitious routing update to convince a site's perimeter router to send traffic to an incorrect or even a rogue destination. This diverted traffic could be analyzed to learn confidential information about the site's network or used to disrupt the network's ability to communicate with other networks. This is known as a "traffic attraction attack" and is prevented by configuring neighbor router authentication for routing updates. However, using clear-text authentication provides little benefit since an attacker can intercept traffic and view the authentication key. This would allow the attacker to use the authentication key in an attack. Since MD5 is vulnerable to "birthday" attacks and may be compromised, routing protocol authentication must use FIPS 198-1 validated algorithms and modules to encrypt the authentication key. This requirement applies to all IPv4 and IPv6 protocols that are used to exchange routing or packet forwarding information; this includes all Interior Gateway Protocols (such as OSPF, EIGRP, and IS-IS) and Exterior Gateway Protocols (such as BGP), MPLS-related protocols (such as LDP), and multicast-related protocols. Satisfies: SRG-NET-000230-RTR-000002, SRG-NET-000230-RTR-000003

Fragmented ICMP packets can be generated by hackers for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks such as Ping O' Death and Teardrop. It is imperative that all fragmented ICMP packets are dropped.

To configure OOB management on an ACI fabric, use the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC), the central management point for the network. When setting up OOB access, a specific "contract" that controls which traffic is allowed on the OOB management network is typically defined. All management traffic is immediately forwarded into the management network; it is not exposed to possible tampering. The separation ensures that congestion or failures in the managed network do not affect the management of the device. If the device does not have an OOBM port, the interface functioning as the management interface must be configured so that management traffic does not leak into the managed network and that production traffic does not leak into the management network.

A rogue router could send a fictitious routing update to convince a site's perimeter router to send traffic to an incorrect or even a rogue destination. This diverted traffic could be analyzed to learn confidential information about the site's network or used to disrupt the network's ability to communicate with other networks. This is known as a "traffic attraction attack" and is prevented by configuring neighbor router authentication for routing updates. This requirement applies to all IPv4 and IPv6 protocols used to exchange routing or packet forwarding information. This includes BGP, RIP, OSPF, EIGRP, IS-IS and LDP.

A GARP 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 address. A spoofed gratuitous ARP message can cause network mapping information to be stored incorrectly, causing network malfunction.

The ICMP supports IP traffic by relaying information about paths, routes, and network conditions. Routers automatically send ICMP messages under a wide variety of conditions. Mask Reply ICMP messages are commonly used by attackers for network mapping and diagnosis.

The effects of prefix de-aggregation can degrade router performance due to the size of routing tables and result in black-holing legitimate traffic. Initiated by an attacker or a misconfigured router, prefix de-aggregation occurs when the announcement of a large prefix is fragmented into a collection of smaller prefix announcements. Maximum prefix limits on peer connections combined with aggressive prefix-size filtering of customers' reachability advertisements will effectively mitigate the de-aggregation risk. BGP maximum prefix must be used on all eBGP routers to limit the number of prefixes it should receive from a particular neighbor, whether customer or peering AS. Consider each neighbor and how many routes that will be advertised and set a threshold slightly higher than the number expected.

When a new source starts transmitting in a PIM Sparse Mode network, the designated router (DR) will encapsulate the multicast packets into register messages and forward them to the RP using unicast. This process can be taxing on the CPU for both the DR and the RP if the source is running at a high data rate and there are many new sources starting at the same time. This scenario can potentially occur immediately after a network failover. The rate limit for the number of register messages should be set to a relatively low value based on the known number of multicast sources within the multicast domain. Satisfies: SRG-NET-000362-RTR-000120

Limiting mroute states helps prevent excessive multicast traffic flooding on the network by controlling the number of multicast groups a segment can join. By limiting multicast routes, the APIC can better manage its internal resources and prevent potential performance issues due to excessive multicast traffic. Depending on the ACI configuration, set a global IGMP state limit that would apply across all interfaces, or it may be necessary to configure limits on individual interfaces.

As currently defined, site local addresses are ambiguous and can be present in multiple sites. The address itself does not contain any indication of the site to which it belongs. The use of site-local addresses has the potential to adversely affect network security through leaks, ambiguity, and potential misrouting as documented in section 2 of RFC3879. RFC3879 formally deprecates the IPv6 site-local unicast prefix FEC0::/10 as defined in RFC3513. Specify the appropriate IPv6 address range within the relevant configuration objects like bridge domains and L3Out, ensuring the addresses fall within the allocated site local unicast prefix, and enable IPv6 routing on the fabric level, allowing the ACI switches to learn and route traffic based on these IPv6 addresses.

An incident, whether adversarial- or nonadversarial-based, can disrupt established communication paths used for system operations and organizational command and control. Alternate communication paths reduce the risk of all communications paths being affected by the same incident. To compound the problem, the inability of organizational officials to obtain timely information about disruptions or to provide timely direction to operational elements after a communication path incident, can impact the ability of the organization to respond to such incidents in a timely manner. Establishing alternate communication paths for command and control purposes, including designating alternative decision makers if primary decision makers are unavailable and establishing the extent and limitations of their actions, can greatly facilitate the organization's ability to continue to operate and take appropriate actions during an incident.

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 control plane processes. It is also instrumental in ongoing network management functions that keep the routers and links available for providing network services. Any disruption to the RP or the control and management planes can result in mission-critical network outages. A DoS attack targeting the RP can result in excessive CPU and memory utilization. To maintain network stability and RP security, the router must be able to handle specific control plane and management plane traffic destined to the RP. In the past, one method of filtering was to use ingress filters on forwarding interfaces to filter both forwarding path and receiving path traffic. However, this method does not scale well as the number of interfaces grows and the size of the ingress filters grows. Control plane policing increases the security of routers and multilayer switches by protecting the RP from unnecessary or malicious traffic. Filtering and rate limiting the traffic flow of control plane packets can be implemented to protect routers against reconnaissance and DoS attacks, allowing the control plane to maintain packet forwarding and protocol states despite an attack or heavy load on the router or multilayer switch.