Packet-Based Attack Protection
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Packet-Based Attack Protection

Table of Contents
End-of-Life (EoL)

Packet-Based Attack Protection

Protect your network against bad IP, TCP, ICMP, IPv6, and ICMPv6 packets.
Packet-based attacks take many forms. Zone Protection profiles check IP, TCP, ICMP, IPv6, and ICMPv6 packet headers and protect a zone by:
  • Dropping packets with undesirable characteristics.
  • Stripping undesirable options from packets before admitting them to the zone.
Select the drop characteristics for each packet type when you Configure Packet Based Attack Protection. The best practices for each IP protocol are:
  • IP Drop
    —Drop
    Unknown
    and
    Malformed
    packets. Also drop
    Strict Source Routing
    and
    Loose Source Routing
    because allowing these options allows adversaries to bypass Security policy rules that use the Destination IP address as the matching criteria. For internal zones only, check
    Spoofed IP Address
    so only traffic with a source address that matches the firewall routing table can access the zone.
  • TCP Drop
    —Retain the default
    TCP SYN with Data
    and
    TCP SYNACK with Data
    drops, drop
    Mismatched overlapping TCP segment
    and
    Split Handshake
    packets, and strip the
    TCP Timestamp
    from packets.
    Enabling
    Rematch Sessions
    (
    Device
    Setup
    Session
    Session Settings
    ) is a best practice that applies committed newly configured or edited Security Policy rules to existing sessions. However, if you configure Tunnel Content Inspection on a zone and
    Rematch Sessions
    is enabled, you must also disable
    Reject Non-SYN TCP
    (change the selection from
    Global
    to
    No
    ), or else when you enable or edit a Tunnel Content Inspection policy, the firewall drops all existing tunnel sessions. Create a separate Zone Protection profile to disable
    Reject Non-SYN TCP
    only on zones that have Tunnel Content Inspection policies and only when you enable
    Rematch Sessions
    .
  • ICMP Drop
    —There are no standard best practice settings because dropping ICMP packets depends on how you use ICMP (or if you use ICMP). For example, if you want to block ping activity, you can block
    ICMP Ping ID 0
    .
  • IPv6 Drop
    —If compliance matters, ensure that the firewall drops packets with non-compliant routing headers, extensions, etc.
  • ICMPv6 Drop
    —If compliance matters, ensure that the firewall drops certain packets if the packets don’t match a Security policy rule.

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