End-of-Life (EoL)
Identify
Sessions That Use an Excessive Percentage of the Packet Buffer
When a firewall exhibits signs of resource
depletion, it might be experiencing an attack that is sending an
overwhelming number of packets. In such events, the firewall starts
buffering inbound packets. You can quickly identify the sessions
that are using an excessive percentage of the packet buffer and
mitigate their impact by discarding them.
Perform the following
task on any hardware-based firewall platform (not a VM-Series firewall)
to identify, for each slot and dataplane, the packet buffer percentage
used, the top five sessions using more than two percent of the packet
buffer, and the source IP addresses associated with those sessions.
Having that information allows you to take appropriate action.
- View firewall resource usage, top sessions, and session details. Execute the following operational command in the CLI (sample output from the command follows):admin@PA-7050> show running resource-monitor ingress-backlogs -- SLOT:s1, DP:dp1 -- USAGE - ATOMIC: 92% TOTAL: 93% TOP SESSIONS: SESS-ID PCT GRP-ID COUNT 6 92% 1 156 7 1732 SESSION DETAILS SESS-ID PROTO SZONE SRC SPORT DST DPORT IGR-IF EGR-IF APP 6 6 trust 192.168.2.35 55653 10.1.8.89 80 ethernet1/21 ethernet1/22 undecidedThe command displays a maximum of the top five sessions that each use 2% or more of the packet buffer.The sample output above indicates that Session 6 is using 92% of the packet buffer with TCP packets (protocol 6) coming from source IP address 192.168.2.35.
- SESS-ID—Indicates the global session ID that is used in all othershow sessioncommands. The global session ID is unique within the firewall.
- GRP-ID—Indicates an internal stage of processing packets.
- COUNT—Indicates how many packets are in that GRP-ID for that session.
- APP—Indicates the App-ID extracted from the Session information, which can help you determine whether the traffic is legitimate. For example, if packets use a common TCP or UDP port but the CLI output indicates an APP ofundecided, the packets are possibly attack traffic. The APP isundecidedwhen Application IP Decoders cannot get enough information to determine the application. An APP ofunknownindicates that Application IP Decoders cannot determine the application; a session ofunknownAPP that uses a high percentage of the packet buffer is also suspicious.
To restrict the display output:On a PA-7000 Series platform, you can limit output to a slot, a dataplane, or both. For example:admin@PA-7050>show running resource-monitor ingress-backlogs slot s1 admin@PA-7050> show running resource-monitor ingress-backlogs slot s1 dp dp1On a PA-5000 Series platform, you can limit output to a dataplane. For example:admin@PA-5060>show running resource-monitor ingress-backlogs dp dp1 - Use the command output to determine whether the source at the source IP address using a high percentage of the packet buffer is sending legitimate or attack traffic.In the sample output above, a single-session attack is likely occurring. A single session (Session ID 6) is using 92% of the packet buffer for Slot 1, DP 1, and the application at that point isundecided.
- If you determine a single user is sending an attack and the traffic is not offloaded, you can Use the CLI to End a Single Attacking Session. At a minimum, you can Configure DoS Protection Against Flooding of New Sessions.
- On a hardware platform that has a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), the firewall offloads traffic to the FPGA when possible to increase performance. If the traffic is offloaded to hardware, clearing the session does not help because then it is the software that must handle the barrage of packets. You should instead Discard a Session Without a Commit.
To see whether a session is offloaded or not, use theshow session id<session-id>operational command in the CLI as shown in the following example. Thelayer7 processingvalue indicatescompletedfor sessions offloaded orenabledfor sessions not offloaded.
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