Cat9k: HTTP server hardening / ACL

[Johannes Luther]

Hi all,

We want to use RESTCONF in our network (Cat9k / IOS-XE 16.12). However, I want to restrict access by using an ACL.

So, there are two options:

• ip http access-class ipv4 <ACL-NAME>
• restconf ipv4 access-list name <ACL-NAME>

Both options are not really an option, because the switch still answers to not allowed IPs with HTTP 403 (ip http access-class) or HTTP 401 (restconf ipv4 access-list). This is not really what I understand under hardending. For the SNMP or VTY ACL functionality, the packet is dropped, before it reaches the corresponding daemon.

Open socket means, that the whole HTTP server (nginx) is still attackable.

CoPP is not an option, because user classes are not supported on IOS-XE for Catalyst 9k

MPP is not an option, because it's not implemented on IOS-XE for Catalyst 9k.

How to handle this?

[balaji.bandi]

Genereally I have used in the Lab enviroment to test - we use these as seperate network for the manging the config, like OOB IP range, so normal user can not have access to that VLAN as part of Security mechanism. you  can completely block with VLAN ACL or do not advertise them in the other routing table.

hope you might have looked below config : ( as per your syntax you already looked)

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/prog/configuration/1611/b_1611_programmability_cg/service_level_ACLs_NETCONF_RESTCONF.html

[Johannes Luther]

Hey BB,

unfortunately the OOB / OBM access doesn't solve this one.

The HTTP server on the switch listens on all IP interfaces. If you have a L3 switch (e.g. core/distribution) layer, you need to somehow limit all IPs...

Infrastructure ACLs (pACL, vACL) are not really an option here. These ACLs also block data plane traffic. You need to be careful how to design those rules.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

[Alex Moore]

I agree that this is a very frustrating limitation. I would have thought it should be fairly basic functionality for it to be possible to specify one or more interfaces on which the various management services listen for incoming connections. In fact I am shocked that has not been implemented.

As it stands, there is no way to enable HTTP(S)-based services in IOS-XE that is sufficiently secure for my needs. To add to the problems with the current options highlighted by Johannes:

• Even on platforms for which MPP is available (such as the ASR1k), as far as I can tell it only supports IPv4. If any interfaces have IPv6 addresses, the router's management services will be available via those IPv6 addresses regardless of whether or not MPP is supposedly applying restrictions.
• And regarding the per-interface ACL approach, not only is it a pain if you have a large number of interfaces to deal with, it's also not "secure by default". In other words if someone defines a new interface later on, management services will be available on that interface by default, unless they remember to add an ACL to the new interface that blocks access to them.

[Rich R]

Just found this discussion - did any of you ever find a satisfactory solution as just looking at the same thing now?

[Johannes Luther]

Not really... for RESTCONF I decided to use the HTTP ACL, because of one simple reason. I wanted to reuse an existing ACL, which has minush/dash in the name. Because of bug CSCvy24754, this was not supported (at least not in the former release I was using).

Also I tuned the HTTP services, that no WebUI access is possible etc.

Long story short: No! However I have the feeling nobody cares about it and I'm the only paranoic person around

[Rich R]

Ha ha thanks for the update @Johannes Luther 

[jcohoe]

Unfortunatley a lot of people care about it now all of a sudden...

"Long story short: No! However I have the feeling nobody cares about it and I'm the only paranoic person around"

[Rich R]

Indeed @jcohoe but the problem we're finding is that most Cisco staff do not seem to understand how 9800 series WLC uses the web server for wireless client web-auth so turning off web services is not an option if you use web-auth, and using ACLs is not a solution to the problem because those clients need to be able to access the web server for captive portal redirects or local web auth!

So will Cisco now be taking IOS-XE web services security a bit more seriously?  CSDL?