Cisco NX OS Switch RTR Security Technical Implementation Guide
Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark
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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 VPLS bridge disruption by suppressing traffic w...Rule Medium Severity -
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 domain, the snooping application can set up Layer 2...Rule Low Severity -
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 core via pseudowires using IEEE 802.1q Ethernet b...Rule Medium Severity -
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 and intrusions as Layer 2 networks. Although the...Rule High Severity -
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 p...Rule Medium Severity -
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 multitude of applications and services, a network re...Rule Low Severity -
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 multitude of applications and services, a network re...Rule Low Severity -
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 o...Rule Medium Severity -
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 multic...Rule Medium Severity -
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 loc...Rule Low Severity -
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 available bandwidth and thereby creating a denial...Rule Low Severity -
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 b...Rule Medium Severity -
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 net...Rule Medium Severity -
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 autonomous systems. MP-BGP advertises the unicast prefix...Rule Low Severity -
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 easier to construct appropriate ingress filters f...Rule Low Severity -
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 site-lo...Rule Medium Severity
Node 2
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