Identifying and Mitigating Exploitation of the Cisco IOS Software Internet Group Management Protocol Denial of Service Vulnerability
Advisory ID: cisco-amb-20100922-igmp
http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoAppliedMitigationBulletin/cisco-amb-20100922-igmp
Revision 1.0
For Public Release 2010 September 22 16:00 UTC (GMT)
Contents
Cisco ResponseDevice-Specific Mitigation and Identification
Additional Information
Revision History
Cisco Security Procedures
Related Information
Cisco Response
This Applied Mitigation Bulletin is a companion document to the PSIRT Security Advisory Cisco IOS Software IGMP Denial of Service Vulnerability and provides identification and mitigation techniques that administrators can deploy on Cisco network devices.
Vulnerability Characteristics
The Cisco IOS® and IOS XE Software contains a vulnerability when it processes a malformed Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) packet. This vulnerability can be exploited remotely without authentication and without end-user interaction. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may result in a denial of service (DoS) condition. Repeated attempts to exploit this vulnerability could result in a sustained DoS condition. The attack vector for exploitation is through IGMP version 3 packets. Note that according to the IGMP RFC (RFC 3376), IGMP packets may leverage the router alert "ip option." The router alert option has no bearing on this vulnerability and may or may not be present in packets attempting to exploit this vulnerability.
This vulnerability has been assigned CVE identifier CVE-2010-2830.
Information about vulnerable, unaffected, and fixed software is available in the PSIRT Security Advisory, which is available at the following link: http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20100922-igmp.
Mitigation Technique Overview
Cisco devices provide several countermeasures for this vulnerability. Administrators are advised to consider these protection methods to be general security best practices for infrastructure devices and the traffic that transits the network. This section of the document provides an overview of these techniques.
Cisco IOS Software can provide effective means of exploit prevention using transit access control lists (tACLs).
This protection mechanism filters and drops packets that are attempting to exploit this vulnerability.
Effective exploit prevention can also be provided by the Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliance and the Firewall Services Module (FWSM) for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches and Cisco 7600 Series routers using transit access control lists (tACLs).
Effective use of Cisco Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) event actions provides visibility into and protection against attacks that attempt to exploit this vulnerability.
Cisco IOS NetFlow records can provide visibility into network-based exploitation attempts.
Cisco IOS Software, Cisco ASA, and FWSM firewalls can provide visibility through syslog messages and counter values displayed in the output from show commands.
Risk Management
Organizations are advised to follow their standard risk evaluation and mitigation processes to determine the potential impact of this vulnerability. Triage refers to sorting projects and prioritizing efforts that are most likely to be successful. Cisco has provided documents that can help organizations develop a risk-based triage capability for their information security teams. Risk Triage for Security Vulnerability Announcements and Risk Triage and Prototyping can help organizations develop repeatable security evaluation and response processes.
Device-Specific Mitigation and Identification
Caution: The effectiveness of any mitigation technique depends on specific customer situations such as product mix, network topology, traffic behavior, and organizational mission. As with any configuration change, evaluate the impact of this configuration prior to applying the change.
Specific information about mitigation and identification is available for these devices:
- Cisco IOS Routers and Switches
- Cisco IOS NetFlow
- Cisco ASA and FWSM Firewalls
- Cisco Intrusion Prevention System
Cisco IOS Routers and Switches
Mitigation: Transit Access Control Lists
To protect the network from traffic that enters the network at ingress access points, which may include Internet connection points, partner and supplier connection points, or VPN connection points, administrators are advised to deploy transit access control lists (tACLs) to perform policy enforcement. Administrators can construct a tACL by explicitly permitting only authorized traffic to enter the network at ingress access points or permitting authorized traffic to transit the network in accordance with existing security policies and configurations.
The tACL policy denies unauthorized IGMP packets that are sent to affected devices. Care should be taken to allow required traffic for routing and administrative access prior to denying all unauthorized traffic.
Additional information about tACLs is in Transit Access Control Lists: Filtering at Your Edge.
For further details regarding time to live (TTL) related attack identification and mitigation can be found in the TTL Expiry Attack Identification and Mitigation whitepaper.
! !-- Define named extended access-list !-- Note: Numbered extended access-lists do not support the ttl !-- keyword ! ip access-list extended IGMP-DoS-Vulnerability ! !-- Include explicit permit statement for IGMP traffic !-- that requires access on the vulnerable protocol ! permit igmp any any ttl eq 1 ! !-- The following vulnerability-specific access control entries !-- (ACEs) can aid in identification of attacks ! deny igmp any any ! !-- Permit or deny all other Layer 3 and Layer 4 traffic in accordance !-- with existing security policies and configurations ! !-- Explicit deny for all other IP traffic ! deny ip any any ! !-- Apply tACL to interfaces in the ingress direction ! interface GigabitEthernet0/0 ip access-group IGMP-DoS-Vulnerability in
Note that filtering with an interface access list will elicit the transmission of ICMP unreachable messages back to the source of the filtered traffic. Generating these messages could have the undesired effect of increasing CPU utilization on the device. In Cisco IOS Software, ICMP unreachable generation is limited to one packet every 500 milliseconds by default. ICMP unreachable message generation can be disabled using the interface configuration command no ip unreachables. ICMP unreachable rate limiting can be changed from the default using the global configuration command ip icmp rate-limit unreachable interval-in-ms.
Identification: Transit Access Control Lists
After the administrator applies the tACL to an interface, the show ip access-lists command will identify the number of IGMP packets that have been filtered. Administrators are advised to investigate filtered packets to determine whether they are attempts to exploit this vulnerability. Example output for show ip access-lists IGMP-DoS-Vulnerability follows:
router#show ip access-lists IGMP-DoS-Vulnerability
Extended IP access list IGMP-DoS-Vulnerability
10 permit igmp any any ttl eq 1
20 deny igmp any any (26 matches)
30 deny ip any any
router#
In the preceding example, access list IGMP-DoS-Vulnerability has dropped 26 IGMP packets for access control list entry (ACE) line 20.
For additional information about investigating incidents using ACE counters and syslog events, reference the Identifying Incidents Using Firewall and IOS Router Syslog Events Applied Intelligence white paper.
Administrators can use Embedded Event Manager to provide instrumentation when specific conditions are met, such as ACE counter hits. The Applied Intelligence white paper Embedded Event Manager in a Security Context provides additional details about how to use this feature.
Identification: Access List Logging
The log and log-input access control list (ACL) option will cause packets that match specific ACEs to be logged. The log-input option enables logging of the ingress interface in addition to the packet source and destination IP addresses and ports.
Caution: Access control list logging can be very CPU intensive and must be used with extreme caution. Factors that drive the CPU impact of ACL logging are log generation, log transmission, and process switching to forward packets that match log-enabled ACEs.
For Cisco IOS Software, the ip access-list logging interval interval-in-ms command can limit the effects of process switching induced by ACL logging. The logging rate-limit rate-per-second [except loglevel] command limits the impact of log generation and transmission.
The CPU impact from ACL logging can be addressed in hardware on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches and Cisco 7600 Series routers with Supervisor Engine 720 or Supervisor Engine 32 using optimized ACL logging.
For additional information about the configuration and use of ACL logging, reference the Understanding Access Control List Logging Applied Intelligence white paper.
Cisco IOS NetFlow
Identification: Traffic Flow Identification Using NetFlow Records
Administrators can configure Cisco IOS NetFlow on Cisco IOS routers and switches to aid in the identification of traffic flows that may be attempts to exploit the vulnerability. Administrators are advised to investigate flows to determine whether they are attempts to exploit the vulnerability or whether they are legitimate traffic flows.
router#show ip cache flow
IP packet size distribution (90784136 total packets):
1-32 64 96 128 160 192 224 256 288 320 352 384 416 448 480
.000 .698 .011 .001 .004 .005 .000 .004 .000 .000 .003 .000 .000 .000 .000
512 544 576 1024 1536 2048 2560 3072 3584 4096 4608
.000 .001 .256 .000 .010 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000
IP Flow Switching Cache, 4456704 bytes
1885 active, 63651 inactive, 59960004 added
129803821 ager polls, 0 flow alloc failures
Active flows timeout in 30 minutes
Inactive flows timeout in 15 seconds
IP Sub Flow Cache, 402056 bytes
0 active, 16384 inactive, 0 added, 0 added to flow
0 alloc failures, 0 force free
1 chunk, 1 chunk added
last clearing of statistics never
Protocol Total Flows Packets Bytes Packets Active(Sec) Idle(Sec)
-------- Flows /Sec /Flow /Pkt /Sec /Flow /Flow
TCP-Telnet 11393421 2.8 1 48 3.1 0.0 1.4
TCP-FTP 236 0.0 12 66 0.0 1.8 4.8
TCP-FTPD 21 0.0 13726 1294 0.0 18.4 4.1
TCP-WWW 22282 0.0 21 1020 0.1 4.1 7.3
TCP-X 719 0.0 1 40 0.0 0.0 1.3
TCP-BGP 1 0.0 1 40 0.0 0.0 15.0
TCP-Frag 70399 0.0 1 688 0.0 0.0 22.7
TCP-other 47861004 11.8 1 211 18.9 0.0 1.3
UDP-DNS 582 0.0 4 73 0.0 3.4 15.4
UDP-NTP 287252 0.0 1 76 0.0 0.0 15.5
UDP-other 310347 0.0 2 230 0.1 0.6 15.9
ICMP 11674 0.0 3 61 0.0 19.8 15.5
IGMP 36 0.0 789 346 0.0 13.1 16.8
IPv6INIP 15 0.0 1 1132 0.0 0.0 15.4
GRE 4 0.0 1 48 0.0 0.0 15.3
Total: 59957957 14.8 1 196 22.5 0.0 1.5
SrcIf SrcIPaddress DstIf DstIPaddress Pr SrcP DstP Pkts
Gi0/0 192.168.10.201 Gi0/1 224.0.0.22 02 0000 0000 1
Gi0/0 192.168.11.54 Gi0/1 224.0.0.1 02 0000 0000 3
Gi0/1 192.168.150.60 Gi0/0 10.89.16.226 06 0016 12CA 1
Gi0/0 192.168.13.97 Gi0/1 224.0.0.22 02 0000 0000 5
Gi0/0 192.168.10.17 Gi0/1 224.0.0.22 02 0000 0000 1
Gi0/0 10.88.226.1 Gi0/1 192.168.202.22 11 007B 007B 1
router#
In the preceding example, there are multiple flows for IGMP packets (protocol hex value 02). Note that the output will vary depending on the IGMP message types traversing the environment.
To view only the traffic flows for IGMP packets (protocol hex value 02), the command show ip cache flow | include SrcIf|_02_ will display the related IGMP NetFlow records as shown here:
IGMP Flows
router#show ip cache flow | include SrcIf|_02_ SrcIf SrcIPaddress DstIf DstIPaddress Pr SrcP DstP Pkts Gi0/0 192.168.10.201 Gi0/1 224.0.0.22 02 0000 0000 1 Gi0/0 192.168.11.54 Gi0/1 224.0.0.1 02 0000 0000 3 Gi0/0 192.168.13.97 Gi0/1 224.0.0.22 02 0000 0000 5 Gi0/0 192.168.10.17 Gi0/1 224.0.0.22 02 0000 0000 1 router#
Cisco ASA and FWSM Firewalls
Mitigation: Transit Access Control Lists
To protect the network from traffic that enters the network at ingress access points, which may include Internet connection points, partner and supplier connection points, or VPN connection points, administrators are advised to deploy tACLs to perform policy enforcement. Administrators can construct a tACL by explicitly permitting only authorized traffic to enter the network at ingress access points or permitting authorized traffic to transit the network in accordance with existing security policies and configurations.
The tACL policy denies unauthorized IGMP packets that are sent to affected devices. Care should be taken to allow required traffic for routing and administrative access prior to denying all unauthorized traffic.
Additional information about tACLs is in Transit Access Control Lists: Filtering at Your Edge.
! !-- Include explicit deny statement for IGMP transit traffic !-- that communicates on the vulnerable protocol ! access-list tACL-Policy extended deny igmp any any ! !-- Permit or deny all other Layer 3 and Layer 4 traffic in accordance !-- with existing security policies and configurations ! !-- Explicit deny for all other IP traffic ! access-list tACL-Policy extended deny ip any any ! !-- Apply tACL to interface(s) in the ingress direction ! access-group tACL-Policy in interface outside
For further details regarding time to live (TTL) related attack identification and mitigation, refer to the TTL Expiry Attack Identification and Mitigation whitepaper. Note that while the Cisco firewall products filter packets containing ip options by default, which may include IGMP packets as they leverage the "router alert" option. The router alert option has no bearing on this vulnerability and may or may not be present in packets attempting to exploit this vulnerability.
Identification: Transit Access Control Lists
After the tACL has been applied to an interface, administrators can use the show access-list command to identify the number of IGMP packets that have been filtered. Administrators are advised to investigate filtered packets to determine whether they are attempts to exploit this vulnerability. Example output for show access-list tACL-Policy follows:
firewall#show access-list tACL-Policy access-list tACL-Policy; 2 elements access-list tACL-Policy line 1 extended deny igmp any any (hitcnt=34) access-list tACL-Policy line 2 extended deny ip any any (hitcnt=8) firewall#
In the preceding example, access list tACL-Policy has dropped 34 IGMP packets received from an untrusted host or network. In addition, syslog message 106023 can provide valuable information, which includes the source and destination IP address, the source and destination port numbers, and the IP protocol for the denied packet.
Identification: Firewall Access List Syslog Messages
Firewall syslog message 106023 will be generated for packets denied by an access control entry (ACE) that does not have the log keyword present. Additional information about this syslog message is in Cisco ASA 5500 Series System Log Message, 8.2 - 106023.
Information about configuring syslog for the Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliance is in Monitoring - Configuring Logging. Information about configuring syslog on the FWSM for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches and Cisco 7600 Series routers is in Monitoring the Firewall Services Module.
In the following example, the show logging | grep regex command extracts syslog messages from the logging buffer on the firewall. These messages provide additional information about denied packets that could indicate potential attempts to exploit the vulnerability that is described in this document. It is possible to use different regular expressions with the grep keyword to search for specific data in the logged messages.
Additional information about regular expression syntax is in Creating a Regular Expression.
firewall#show logging | grep 106023
Sep 21 2010 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny igmp src outside:192.0.2.18/2944
dst inside:192.168.60.191/3209 by access-group "tACL-Policy"
Sep 21 2010 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny igmp src outside:192.0.2.200/2945
dst inside:192.168.60.33/2765 by access-group "tACL-Policy"
Sep 21 2010 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny igmp src outside:192.0.2.99/2946
dst inside:192.168.60.240/7665 by access-group "tACL-Policy"
Sep 21 2010 00:15:13: %ASA-4-106023: Deny igmp src outside:192.0.2.100/2947
dst inside:192.168.60.115/8754 by access-group "tACL-Policy"
firewall#
In the preceding example, the messages logged for the tACL tACL-Policy show IGMP packets sent to the address block assigned to affected devices.
Additional information about syslog messages for ASA security appliances is in Cisco ASA 5500 Series System Log Messages, 8.2. Additional information about syslog messages for the FWSM is in Catalyst 6500 Series Switch and Cisco 7600 Series Router Firewall Services Module Logging System Log Messages.
For additional information about investigating incidents using syslog events, reference the Identifying Incidents Using Firewall and IOS Router Syslog Events Applied Intelligence white paper.
Cisco Intrusion Prevention System
Mitigation: Cisco IPS Signature Event Actions
Administrators can use Cisco Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) appliances and services modules to provide threat detection and help prevent attempts to exploit the vulnerability that is described in this document. Beginning with signature update S514 for sensors running Cisco IPS version 6.x and greater, the vulnerability can be detected by signature 28819/0 (Signature Name: Malicious IGMP Packet). Signature 28819/0 is not enabled by default, triggers a High severity event, has a signature fidelity rating (SFR) of 90, and is configured with a default event action of produce-alert.
Signature 28819/0 fires when a single malformed IGMP packet is detected. Firing of this signature may indicate a potential exploit of the vulnerability.
Administrators can configure Cisco IPS sensors to perform an event actionwhen an attack is detected. The configured event action performs preventiveor deterrent controls to help protect against an attack that is attempting toexploit the vulnerability that is described in thisdocument. Cisco IPS sensors are most effective when deployed in inline protectionmode combined with the use of an event action. Automatic Threat Preventionfor
Cisco IPS 6.x and greater sensors that are deployed in inline protection mode provides threatprevention against an attack that is attempting to exploit thevulnerability that is described in this document. Threat prevention is achieved through a default override that performs an event action for triggered signatures with a riskRatingValue greater than 90.
For additional information about the risk rating and threat rating calculation, reference Risk Rating and Threat Rating: Simplify IPS Policy Management.
Additional Information
THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND DOES NOT IMPLY ANY KIND OF GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR USE. YOUR USE OF THE INFORMATION ON THE DOCUMENT OR MATERIALS LINKED FROM THE DOCUMENT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. CISCO RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE OR UPDATE THIS DOCUMENT AT ANY TIME.
Revision History
|
Revision 1.0 |
2010-September-22 |
Initial public release. |
Cisco Security Procedures
Complete information on reporting security vulnerabilities in Cisco products, obtaining assistance with security incidents, and registering to receive security information from Cisco, is available on Cisco's worldwide website at http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/psirt/security_vulnerability_policy.html. This includes instructions for press inquiries regarding Cisco security notices. All Cisco security advisories are available at http://www.cisco.com/go/psirt.
Related Information
- Cisco Applied Mitigation Bulletins
- Cisco Security
- Cisco Security IntelliShield Alert Manager Service
- Cisco Guide to Harden Cisco IOS Devices
- Cisco IOS NetFlow - Home Page on Cisco.com
- Cisco IOS NetFlow White Papers
- NetFlow Performance Analysis
- Cisco Network Foundation Protection White Papers
- Cisco Network Foundation Protection Presentations
- Cisco Firewall Products - Home Page on Cisco.com
- Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)