| V-220440 | High | 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 requirement applies to both inbound and... |
| V-220471 | High | 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", which are a collection of compromised... |
| V-220455 | High | The Cisco PE switch must be configured to block any traffic that is destined to the IP core infrastructure. | IP addresses can be guessed. Core network elements must not be accessible from any external host. Protecting the core from any attack is vital for the integrity and privacy of customer traffic as... |
| V-220429 | High | The Cisco switch must be configured to restrict traffic destined to itself. | The route processor handles traffic destined to the switch. This is the key component used to build forwarding paths and is instrumental with all network management functions. Hence, any... |
| V-237755 | Medium | 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 the site to which it belongs. The use of... |
| V-220443 | Medium | 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 have never been assigned by the IANA or have... |
| V-220468 | Medium | 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 destination. This diverted traffic could be analyzed to... |
| V-220427 | Medium | The Cisco switch must not be configured to have any zero-touch deployment feature enabled when connected to an operational network. | Network devices that are configured via a zero-touch deployment or auto-loading feature can have their startup configuration or image pushed to the device for installation via TFTP or Remote Copy... |
| V-220472 | Medium | 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) attacks on switches commonly send large streams of... |
| V-220473 | Medium | 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) attacks on switches commonly send large streams of... |
| V-220470 | Medium | 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 troubleshooting. There is a risk that transmission... |
| V-220454 | Medium | 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 core network. Using a targeted LDP session,... |
| V-220456 | Medium | 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 reachable. To mitigate attacks that rely on forged... |
| V-220451 | Medium | 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 proxy ARP allows hosts from different LAN... |
| V-220452 | Medium | 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 nodes, such as switches and firewalls.... |
| V-220453 | Medium | 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 or a standard interface functioning as the... |
| V-220437 | Medium | The Cisco switch must be configured to produce audit records containing information to establish where the events occurred. | Without establishing where events occurred, it is impossible to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack.
To compile an accurate risk assessment and... |
| V-220434 | Medium | The Cisco switch must be configured to have Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) mask reply 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 wide variety of conditions. Mask Reply ICMP... |
| V-220435 | Medium | 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 wide variety of conditions. Redirect ICMP... |
| V-220433 | Medium | 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 wide variety of conditions. Host unreachable... |
| V-220430 | Medium | 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 denial-of-service (DoS) attacks such as Ping O' Death and Teardrop. It is imperative that all fragmented ICMP packets are dropped. |
| V-220431 | Medium | 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 address. A spoofed gratuitous ARP message can... |
| V-220419 | Medium | 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 network traffic must be monitored and controlled so... |
| V-237761 | Medium | The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to drop IPv6 undetermined transport packets. | One of the fragmentation weaknesses known in IPv6 is the undetermined transport packet. This packet contains an undetermined protocol due to fragmentation. Depending on the length of the IPv6... |
| V-220438 | Medium | The Cisco switch must be configured to produce audit records containing information to establish the source of the events. | Without establishing the source of the event, it is impossible to establish, correlate, and investigate the events leading up to an outage or attack.
To compile an accurate risk assessment and... |
| V-220428 | Medium | 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 control plane processes. It is also... |
| V-237749 | Medium | The Cisco switch must be configured to have Cisco Express Forwarding enabled. | The Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF) switching mode replaces the traditional Cisco routing cache with a data structure that mirrors the entire system routing table. Because there is no need to build... |
| V-237763 | Medium | The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured drop IPv6 packets with a Routing Header type 0, 1, or 3-255. | The routing header can be used maliciously to send a packet through a path where less robust security is in place, rather than through the presumably preferred path of routing protocols. Use of... |
| V-237758 | Medium | 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, links that have no hosts connected such as the... |
| V-220465 | Medium | 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 download here or there), whereas multicast can have... |
| V-220467 | Medium | 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 from the source to the receiver. By default,... |
| V-220466 | Medium | 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 Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) Sparse Mode... |
| V-220461 | Medium | 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. Limiting where, within the network, a given... |
| V-220460 | Medium | 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 as volumetric attacks and have the objective... |
| V-220462 | Medium | 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 must be limited to only known PIM neighbors by... |
| V-220447 | Medium | 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). Secure configuration of switches makes use of... |
| V-220446 | Medium | 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). Secure configuration of switches makes use of... |
| V-220423 | Medium | 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 destination. This diverted traffic could be analyzed to... |
| V-220422 | Medium | 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 destination. This diverted traffic could be analyzed to... |
| V-220469 | Medium | 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 routes and redirecting traffic. Some routing... |
| V-220442 | Medium | 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 traffic may transit a network, which uses bandwidth... |
| V-220441 | Medium | 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 network traffic is critical so it does not... |
| V-237775 | Medium | The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to drop IPv6 packets containing the NSAP address option within Destination Option header. | The optional and extensible natures of the IPv6 extension headers require higher scrutiny since many implementations do not always drop packets with headers that it cannot recognize, and hence... |
| V-237777 | Medium | The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to drop IPv6 packets containing a Hop-by-Hop or Destination Option extension header with an undefined option type. | The optional and extensible natures of the IPv6 extension headers require higher scrutiny since many implementations do not always drop packets with headers that it cannot recognize, and hence... |
| V-237765 | Medium | The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to drop IPv6 packets containing a Hop-by-Hop header with invalid option type values. | These options are intended to be for the Destination Options header only. The optional and extensible natures of the IPv6 extension headers require higher scrutiny since many implementations do... |
| V-237771 | Medium | The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to drop IPv6 packets containing a Destination Option header with invalid option type values. | These options are intended to be for the Hop-by-Hop header only. The optional and extensible natures of the IPv6 extension headers require higher scrutiny since many implementations do not always... |
| V-220445 | Medium | 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 entering the enclave.
Access control lists... |
| V-237773 | Medium | The Cisco perimeter switch must be configured to drop IPv6 packets containing an extension header with the Endpoint Identification option. | The optional and extensible natures of the IPv6 extension headers require higher scrutiny since many implementations do not always drop packets with headers that it cannot recognize, and hence... |
| V-237751 | Low | 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 the standardized default value. If a very... |
| V-220458 | Low | The Cisco PE switch must be configured to enforce a Quality-of-Service (QoS) policy in accordance with the QoS GIG Technical Profile. | Different applications have unique requirements and toleration levels for delay, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss, and availability. To manage the multitude of applications and services, a network... |
| V-220459 | Low | The Cisco P switch must be configured to implement a Quality-of-Service (QoS) policy in accordance with the QoS GIG Technical Profile. | Different applications have unique requirements and toleration levels for delay, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss, and availability. To manage the multitude of applications and services, a network... |
| V-220450 | Low | 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 media-and-protocol-independent as it runs over... |
| V-220436 | Low | The Cisco switch must be configured to log all packets that have been dropped at interfaces via an access control list (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 to be done, and by whom, to compile an accurate... |
| V-220432 | Low | 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 broadcast is routed through the network as a... |
| V-220439 | Low | The Cisco switch must be configured to disable the auxiliary port unless it is connected to a secured modem providing encryption and authentication. | The use of POTS lines to modems connecting to network devices provides clear text of authentication traffic over commercial circuits that could be captured and used to compromise the network.... |
| V-220464 | Low | 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 download here or there), whereas multicast can have... |
| V-220449 | Low | 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-protocol-independent as it runs over Layer 2;... |
| V-220424 | Low | 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 with access to the communication facility could... |
| V-220463 | Low | 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.
Administrative scoped multicast addresses are... |
