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XCCDF
Network WLAN AP-IG Management Security Technical Implementation Guide
Network WLAN AP-IG Management Security Technical Implementation Guide
An XCCDF Benchmark
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19 rules organized in 19 groups
SRG-APP-000164-NDM-000252
1 Rule
The network device must enforce a minimum 15-character password length.
Medium Severity
Password complexity, or strength, is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting attempts at guessing and brute-force attacks. Password length is one factor of several that helps to determine strength and how long it takes to crack a password. The shorter the password, the lower the number of possible combinations that need to be tested before the password is compromised. Use of more characters in a password helps to exponentially increase the time and/or resources required to compromise the password.
SRG-APP-000080-NDM-000345
1 Rule
The network device must not have any default manufacturer passwords when deployed.
Medium Severity
Network devices not protected with strong password schemes provide the opportunity for anyone to crack the password and gain access to the device, which can result in loss of availability, confidentiality, or integrity of network traffic. Many default vendor passwords are well known or easily guessed; therefore, not removing them prior to deploying the network device into production provides an opportunity for a malicious user to gain unauthorized access to the device.
SRG-APP-000068-NDM-000215
1 Rule
The network device must display the Standard Mandatory DoD Notice and Consent Banner before granting access to the device.
Medium Severity
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 limits DoD's ability to prosecute unauthorized access and also presents the potential for 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.
SRG-APP-000190-NDM-000267
1 Rule
The network device must terminate all network connections associated with a device management session at the end of the session, or the session must be terminated after 10 minutes of inactivity except to fulfill documented and validated mission requirements.
High Severity
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. Quickly terminating an idle session will also free up resources committed by the managed network element. Terminating network connections associated with communications sessions includes, for example, deallocating associated TCP/IP address/port pairs at the operating system level or deallocating networking assignments at the application level if multiple application sessions are using a single, operating system-level network connection. This does not mean that the device terminates all sessions or network access; it only ends the inactive session and releases the resources associated with that session.
SRG-APP-000153-NDM-000249
1 Rule
The network device must be configured to authenticate each administrator prior to authorizing privileges based on assignment of group or role.
Medium Severity
To ensure individual accountability and prevent unauthorized access, administrators must be individually identified and authenticated. Individual accountability mandates that each administrator is uniquely identified. A group authenticator is a shared account or some other form of authentication that allows multiple unique individuals to access the network device using a single account. If a device allows or provides for group authenticators, it must individually authenticate administrators prior to implementing group authenticator functionality. Some devices may not have the need to provide a group authenticator; this is considered a matter of device design. Where the device design includes the use of a group authenticator, this requirement will apply. This requirement applies to accounts created and managed on or by the network device.
SRG-APP-000033-NDM-000212
1 Rule
The network device must enforce the assigned privilege level for each administrator and authorizations for access to all commands relative to the privilege level in accordance with applicable policy for the device.
High Severity
To mitigate the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information by entities that have been issued certificates by DoD-approved PKIs, all DoD systems must be properly configured to incorporate access control methods that do not rely solely on the possession of a certificate for access. Successful authentication must not automatically give an entity access to an asset or security boundary. Authorization procedures and controls must be implemented to ensure each authenticated entity also has a validated and current authorization. Authorization is the process of determining whether an entity, once authenticated, is permitted to access a specific asset. Network devices use access control policies and enforcement mechanisms to implement this requirement. Access control policies include identity-based policies, role-based policies, and attribute-based policies. Access enforcement mechanisms include access control lists, access control matrices, and cryptography. These policies and mechanisms must be employed by the network device to control access between administrators (or processes acting on behalf of administrators) and objects (e.g., device commands, files, records, processes) in the network device.
SRG-APP-000412-NDM-000331
1 Rule
The network device must be configured to implement cryptographic mechanisms using a FIPS 140-2 approved algorithm to protect the confidentiality of remote maintenance sessions.
High Severity
This requires the use of secure protocols instead of their unsecured counterparts, such as SSH instead of telnet, SCP instead of FTP, and HTTPS instead of HTTP. If unsecured protocols (lacking cryptographic mechanisms) are used for sessions, the contents of those sessions will be susceptible to eavesdropping, potentially putting sensitive data (including administrator passwords) at risk of compromise and potentially allowing hijacking of maintenance sessions.
SRG-APP-000503-NDM-000320
1 Rule
The network device must generate audit records when successful/unsuccessful logon attempts occur.
Medium Severity
Without generating audit records that are specific to the security and mission needs of the organization, it would be difficult to establish, correlate, and investigate the events relating to an incident or identify those responsible for one. Audit records can be generated from various components within the network device (e.g., module or policy filter).
SRG-APP-000516-NDM-000351
1 Rule
The network device must be running an operating system release that is currently supported by the vendor.
High Severity
Network devices running an unsupported operating system lack current security fixes required to mitigate the risks associated with recent vulnerabilities.
SRG-APP-000516-NDM-000336
1 Rule
The network device must be configured to use an authentication server to authenticate users prior to granting administrative access.
High Severity
Centralized management of authentication settings increases the security of remote and nonlocal access methods. This is particularly important protection against the insider threat. With robust centralized management, audit records for administrator account access to the organization's network devices can be more readily analyzed for trends and anomalies. The alternative method of defining administrator accounts on each device exposes the device configuration to remote access authentication attacks and system administrators with multiple authenticators for each network device.
SRG-APP-000395-NDM-000310
1 Rule
The network device must be configured to authenticate SNMP messages using a FIPS-validated Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC).
Medium Severity
Without authenticating devices, unidentified or unknown devices may be introduced, thereby facilitating malicious activity. Bidirectional authentication provides stronger safeguards to validate the identity of other devices for connections that are of greater risk. A local connection is any connection with a device communicating without the use of a network. A network connection is any connection with a device that communicates through a network (e.g., local area or wide area network, internet). A remote connection is any connection with a device communicating through an external network (e.g., the internet). Because of the challenges of applying this requirement on a large scale, organizations are encouraged to only apply the requirement to those limited number (and types) of devices that truly need to support this capability.
SRG-APP-000148-NDM-000346
1 Rule
The network device must be configured with only one local account to be used as the account of last resort in the event the authentication server is unavailable.
Medium Severity
Authentication for administrative (privileged level) access to the device is required at all times. An account can be created on the device's local database for use when the authentication server is down or connectivity between the device and the authentication server is not operable. This account is referred to as the account of last resort since it is intended to be used as a last resort and when immediate administrative access is absolutely necessary. The account of last resort logon credentials must be stored in a sealed envelope and kept in a safe. The safe must be periodically audited to verify the envelope remains sealed. The signature of the auditor and the date of the audit should be added to the envelope as a record. Administrators should secure the credentials and disable the root account (if possible) when not needed for system administration functions.
SRG-APP-000065-NDM-000214
1 Rule
The network device must be configured to enforce the limit of three consecutive invalid logon attempts, after which time it must block any login attempt for 15 minutes.
Medium Severity
By limiting the number of failed login attempts, the risk of unauthorized system access via user password guessing, otherwise known as brute forcing, is reduced.
SRG-APP-000142-NDM-000245
1 Rule
The network device must be configured to prohibit the use of all unnecessary and/or nonsecure functions, ports, protocols, and/or services.
High Severity
To prevent unauthorized connection of devices, unauthorized transfer of information, or unauthorized tunneling (i.e., embedding of data types within data types), organizations must disable unused or unnecessary physical and logical ports/protocols on information systems. Network devices are capable of providing a wide variety of functions and services. Some of the functions and services provided by default may not be necessary to support essential organizational operations. Additionally, it is sometimes convenient to provide multiple services from a single component (e.g., email and web services); however, doing so increases risk over limiting the services provided by any one component. To support the requirements and principles of least functionality, the network device must support the organizational requirements, providing only essential capabilities and limiting the use of ports, protocols, and/or services to only those required, authorized, and approved. Some network devices have capabilities enabled by default; if these capabilities are not necessary, they must be disabled. If a particular capability is used, it must be documented and approved.
SRG-APP-000395-NDM-000347
1 Rule
The network device must authenticate Network Time Protocol (NTP) sources using authentication that is cryptographically based.
Medium Severity
If Network Time Protocol is not authenticated, an attacker can introduce a rogue NTP server. This rogue server can then be used to send incorrect time information to network devices, which will make log timestamps inaccurate and affect scheduled actions. NTP authentication is used to prevent this tampering by authenticating the time source.
SRG-APP-000156-NDM-000250
1 Rule
The network device must implement replay-resistant authentication mechanisms for network access to privileged accounts.
Medium Severity
A replay attack may enable an unauthorized user to gain access to the application. Authentication sessions between the authenticator and the application validating the user credentials must not be vulnerable to a replay attack. An authentication process resists replay attacks if it is impractical to achieve a successful authentication by recording and replaying a previous authentication message. Techniques used to address this include protocols using nonces (e.g., numbers generated for a specific one-time use) or challenges (e.g., TLS, WS_Security). Additional techniques include time-synchronous or challenge-response one-time authenticators.
SRG-APP-000516-NDM-000335
1 Rule
The network device must be configured with both an ingress and egress ACL.
Medium Severity
Changes to the hardware or software components of the network device can have significant effects on the overall security of the network. Therefore, only qualified and authorized individuals should be allowed administrative access to the network device for implementing any changes or upgrades. This requirement applies to updates of the application files, configuration, ACLs, and policy filters.
SRG-APP-000373-NDM-000298
1 Rule
The network device must be configured to synchronize internal information system clocks using redundant authoritative time sources.
Medium Severity
The loss of connectivity to a particular authoritative time source will result in the loss of time synchronization (free-run mode) and increasingly inaccurate time stamps on audit events and other functions. Multiple time sources provide redundancy by including a secondary source. Time synchronization is usually a hierarchy; clients synchronize time to a local source while that source synchronizes its time to a more accurate source. The network device must use an authoritative time server and/or be configured to use redundant authoritative time sources. This requirement is related to the comparison done in CCI-001891. DoD-approved solutions consist of a combination of a primary and secondary time source using a combination or multiple instances of the following: a time server designated for the appropriate DoD network (NIPRNet/SIPRNet); United States Naval Observatory (USNO) time servers; and/or the Global Positioning System (GPS). The secondary time source must be located in a different geographic region than the primary time source.
SRG-APP-000164-NDM-000252
1 Rule
The password configured on the WLAN access point for key generation and client access must be set to a 15-character or longer complex password as required by USCYBERCOM CTO 07-15 Rev1.
Medium Severity
If the organization does not use a strong passcode for client access, an adversary is significantly more likely to be able to obtain it. Once this occurs, the adversary may be able to obtain full network access, obtain DoD sensitive information, and attack other DoD information systems.