Skip to content

The Cisco BGP switch must be configured to enable the Generalized TTL Security Mechanism (GTSM).

An XCCDF Rule

Description

<VulnDiscussion>As described in RFC 3682, GTSM is designed to protect a switch's IP-based control plane from DoS attacks. Many attacks focused on CPU load and line-card overload can be prevented by implementing GTSM on all Exterior Border Gateway Protocol-speaking switches. GTSM is based on the fact that the vast majority of control plane peering is established between adjacent switches; that is, the Exterior Border Gateway Protocol peers are either between connecting interfaces or between loopback interfaces. Since TTL spoofing is considered nearly impossible, a mechanism based on an expected TTL value provides a simple and reasonably robust defense from infrastructure attacks based on forged control plane traffic.</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>

ID
SV-221021r856414_rule
Severity
Low
References
Updated



Remediation - Manual Procedure

Configure TTL security on all external BGP neighbors as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)#router bgp xx
SW1(config-switch)#neighbor x.1.1.9 ttl-security hops 1
SW1(config-switch)#neighbor x.2.1.7 ttl-security hops 1