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Cisco IOS XE Router RTR Security Technical Implementation Guide

Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark

  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000114

    Group
  • The Cisco multicast Designated Router (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 b...
    Rule Low Severity
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000115

    Group
  • The Cisco multicast Designated Router (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 b...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000362-RTR-000122

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000362-RTR-000123

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000116

    Group
  • The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) router must be configured to only accept MSDP packets from known MSDP peers.

    MSDP peering with customer network routers presents additional risks to the DISN Core, whether from a rogue or misconfigured MSDP-enabled router. To guard against an attack from malicious MSDP traf...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000343-RTR-000002

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000018-RTR-000007

    Group
  • The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) router 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 autonomous systems. MP-BGP advertises the unicast prefix...
    Rule Low Severity
  • SRG-NET-000018-RTR-000008

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000018-RTR-000009

    Group
  • The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) router 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 router, the router must be configured to limit the number of source-active messages it accepts from each peer.
    Rule Low Severity
  • SRG-NET-000512-RTR-000011

    Group
  • The Cisco Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) router 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 routers. It is easier to construct appropriate ingress filters fo...
    Rule Low Severity
  • SRG-NET-000205-RTR-000014

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000205-RTR-000015

    Group
  • The Cisco perimeter router 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 router processor. Hackers who initiate denial of service (DoS) attacks on routers commonly send large streams of p...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000362-RTR-000124

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000230-RTR-000002

    Group
  • The Cisco BGP router 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 malicious user exists in one autonomous system who wou...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000205-RTR-000016

    Group
  • The Cisco PE router 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 router processor. Hackers who initiate denial of service (DoS) attacks on routers commonly send large streams of pa...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000512-RTR-000100

    Group
  • The Cisco router 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 ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000512-RTR-000012

    Group
  • The Cisco router must be configured to advertise a hop limit of at least 32 in Router 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 small...
    Rule Low Severity
  • SRG-NET-000512-RTR-000013

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000512-RTR-000014

    Group
  • The Cisco perimeter router 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 ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000200

    Group
  • The Cisco perimeter router 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 exten...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000201

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000202

    Group
  • The Cisco perimeter router 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 not...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000203

    Group
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000204

    Group
  • The Cisco perimeter router 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 coul...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000205

    Group
  • The Cisco perimeter router 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 coul...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • SRG-NET-000364-RTR-000206

    Group
  • The Cisco perimeter router 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 coul...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • The Cisco router 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 i...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • The Cisco router must be configured to have all inactive 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 ga...
    Rule Low Severity
  • The Cisco router 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 instrumental...
    Rule High Severity
  • The Cisco router 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 c...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • The Cisco router 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 unic...
    Rule Low Severity
  • The Cisco router must be configured to log all packets that have been dropped at interfaces via 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 ...
    Rule Low Severity
  • The Cisco router 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. In order to compile an accurate risk assessment ...
    Rule Medium Severity

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