WLAN Controller Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG)

All network devices must present a DoD-approved warning banner prior to a system administrator logging on. The banner should warn any unauthorized user not to proceed. It also should provide clear and unequivocal notice to both authorized and unauthorized personnel that access to the device is subject to monitoring to detect unauthorized usage. Failure to display the required logon warning banner prior to logon attempts will limit DoD's ability to prosecute unauthorized access and also presents the potential to give rise to criminal and civil liability for systems administrators and information systems managers. In addition, DISA's ability to monitor the device's usage is limited unless a proper warning banner is displayed. DoD CIO has issued new, mandatory policy standardizing the wording of "notice and consent" banners and matching user agreements for all Secret and below DoD information systems, including stand-alone systems by releasing DoD CIO Memo, "Policy on Use of Department of Defense (DoD) Information Systems Standard Consent Banner and User Agreement", dated 9 May 2008. The banner is mandatory and deviations are not permitted except as authorized in writing by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Information and Identity Assurance. Implementation of this banner verbiage is further directed to all DoD components for all DoD assets via USCYBERCOM CTO 08-008A.Information Assurance Officer

Terminating an idle session within a short time period reduces the window of opportunity for unauthorized personnel to take control of a management session enabled between the managed network device and a PC or terminal server when the later has been left unattended. In addition quickly terminating an idle session will also free up resources committed by the managed network device as well as reduce the risk of a management session from being hijacked. Setting the timeout of the session to 10 minutes or less increases the level of protection afforded critical network components.Information Assurance Officer

Numerous vulnerabilities exist with SNMP; therefore, without unique SNMP community names, the risk of compromise is dramatically increased. This is especially true with vendors default community names which are widely known by hackers and other networking experts. If a hacker gains access to these devices and can easily guess the name, this could result in denial of service, interception of sensitive information, or other destructive actions.Information Assurance Officer

By not restricting authorized accounts to their proper privilege level, access to restricted functions may be allowed before authorized personnel are trained or experienced enough to use those functions. Network disruptions or outages may occur due to mistakes made by inexperienced persons using accounts with greater privileges than necessary.Information Assurance Officer

A malicious user attempting to gain access to the network device may compromise an account that may be unauthorized for use. The unauthorized account may be a temporary or inactive account that is no longer needed to access the device. Denial of Service, interception of sensitive information, or other destructive actions could potentially take place if an unauthorized account is configured to access the network device.Information Assurance Officer

Administration and management connections performed across a network are inherently dangerous because anyone with a packet sniffer and access to the right LAN segment can acquire the network device account and password information. With this intercepted information they could gain access to the router and cause denial of service attacks, intercept sensitive information, or perform other destructive actions.Information Assurance Officer

Network devices not running the latest tested and approved versions of software are vulnerable to network attacks. Running the most current, approved version of system and device software helps the site maintain a stable base of security fixes and patches, as well as enhancements to IP security. Viruses, denial of service attacks, system weaknesses, back doors and other potentially harmful situations could render a system vulnerable, allowing unauthorized access to DoD assets.Information Assurance Officer

EAP-TLS provides strong cryptographic mutual authentication and key distribution services not found in other EAP methods, and thus provides significantly more protection against attacks than other methods. Additionally, EAP-TLS supports two-factor user authentication on the WLAN client, which provides significantly more protection than methods that rely on a password or certificate alone. EAP-TLS also can leverage DoD CAC in its authentication services, providing additional security and convenience.System AdministratorInformation Assurance Officer

Authentication for administrative access to the device is required at all times. A single account of last resort can be created on the device's local database for use in an emergency such as when the authentication server is down or connectivity between the device and the authentication server is not operable. The console or local account of last resort logon credentials must be stored in a sealed envelope and kept in a safe.

Terminating an idle session within a short time period reduces the window of opportunity for unauthorized personnel to take control of a management session enabled on the console or console port that has been left unattended. In addition quickly terminating an idle session will also free up resources committed by the managed network device. Setting the timeout of the session to 10 minutes or less increases the level of protection afforded critical network components.Information Assurance Officer

Enabling write access to the device via SNMP provides a mechanism that can be exploited by an attacker to set configuration variables that can disrupt network operations.Information Assurance Officer

Remote administration is inherently dangerous because anyone with a sniffer and access to the right LAN segment could acquire the device account and password information. With this intercepted information they could gain access to the infrastructure and cause denial of service attacks, intercept sensitive information, or perform other destructive actions.

An attacker may attempt to connect to the device using SSH by guessing the authentication method, encryption algorithm, and keys. Limiting the amount of time allowed for authenticating and negotiating the SSH session reduces the window of opportunity for the malicious user attempting to make a connection to the network device.Information Assurance Officer

An attacker may attempt to connect to the device using SSH by guessing the authentication method and authentication key or shared secret. Setting the authentication retry to 3 or less strengthens against a Brute Force attack.Information Assurance Officer

Since NTP is used to ensure accurate log file time stamp information, NTP could pose a security risk if a malicious user were able to falsify NTP information. To launch an attack on the NTP infrastructure, a hacker could inject time that would be accepted by NTP clients by spoofing the IP address of a valid NTP server. To mitigate this risk, the time messages must be authenticated by the client before accepting them as a time source. Two NTP-enabled devices can communicate in either client-server mode or peer-to-peer mode (aka "symmetric mode"). The peering mode is configured manually on the device and indicated in the outgoing NTP packets. The fundamental difference is the synchronization behavior: an NTP server can synchronize to a peer with better stratum, whereas it will never synchronize to its client regardless of the client's stratum. From a protocol perspective, NTP clients are no different from the NTP servers. The NTP client can synchronize to multiple NTP servers, select the best server and synchronize with it, or synchronize to the averaged value returned by the servers. A hierarchical model can be used to improve scalability. With this implementation, an NTP client can also become an NTP server providing time to downstream clients at a higher stratum level and of decreasing accuracy than that of its upstream server. To increase availability, NTP peering can be used between NTP servers. In the event the device loses connectivity to its upstream NTP server, it will be able to choose time from one of its peers. The NTP authentication model is opposite of the typical client-server authentication model. NTP authentication enables an NTP client or peer to authenticate time received from their servers and peers. It is not used to authenticate NTP clients because NTP servers do not care about the authenticity of their clients, as they never accept any time from them.

SSH Version 1 is a protocol that has never been defined in a standard. Since SSH-1 has inherent design flaws which make it vulnerable to attacks, e.g., man-in-the-middle attacks, it is now generally considered obsolete and should be avoided by explicitly disabling fallback to SSH-1.Information Assurance Officer

A WLAN session that never terminates due to inactivity may allow an opening for an adversary to highjack the session to obtain access to the network. System Administrator

The use of Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) affords the best methods for controlling user access, authorization levels, and activity logging. By enabling AAA on the routers in conjunction with an authentication server such as TACACS+ or RADIUS, the administrators can easily add or remove user accounts, add or remove command authorizations, and maintain a log of user activity. The use of an authentication server provides the capability to assign router administrators to tiered groups that contain their privilege level that is used for authorization of specific commands. For example, user mode would be authorized for all authenticated administrators while configuration or edit mode should only be granted to those administrators that are permitted to implement router configuration changes.Information Assurance Officer

The OOBM access switch will connect to the management interface of the managed network device. The management interface of the managed network device will be directly connected to the OOBM network. An OOBM interface does not forward transit traffic; thereby, providing complete separation of production and management traffic. Since all management traffic is immediately forwarded into the management network, it is not exposed to possible tampering. The separation also ensures that congestion or failures in the managed network do not affect the management of the device. If the OOBM interface does not have an IP address from the managed network address space, it will not have reachability from the NOC using scalable and normal control plane and forwarding mechanisms.System AdministratorInformation Assurance Officer

The OOBM access switch will connect to the management interface of the managed network device. The management interface can be a true OOBM interface or a standard interface functioning as the management interface. In either case, the management interface of the managed network device will be directly connected to the OOBM network. An OOBM interface does not forward transit traffic; thereby, providing complete separation of production and management traffic. Since all management traffic is immediately forwarded into the management network, it is not exposed to possible tampering. The separation also 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.System AdministratorInformation Assurance Officer

Call home services or features will routinely send data such as configuration and diagnostic information to the vendor for routine or emergency analysis and troubleshooting. The risk that transmission of sensitive data sent to unauthorized persons could result in data loss or downtime due to an attack.Information Assurance OfficerNetwork Security Officer

DoD certificate-based PKI authentication is strong, two-factor authentication that relies on carefully evaluated cryptographic modules. Implementations of EAP-TLS that are not integrated with certificate-based PKI could have security vulnerabilities. For example, an implementation that uses a client certificate on laptop without a second factor could enable an adversary with access to the laptop to connect to the WLAN without a PIN or password. Systems that do not use the certificate-based PKI are also much more likely to be vulnerable to weaknesses in the underlying public key infrastructure (PKI) that supports EAP-TLS.System Administrator

If the DoD WLAN components (WLAN AP, controller, or client) are not NIST FIPS 140-2 (Cryptographic Module Validation Program – CMVP) certified, the WLAN system may not adequately protect sensitive unclassified DoD data from compromise during transmission.