Misconfigured Firewall and ACL Issues


Access Denied Issues

  • misconfiguration can block traffic that should be allowed through
    • services, ports, addresses
  • deny type of error can be easy to identify
    • users will report incidents connected with the failure of the data traffic
  • can confirm by
    • testing connection from inside vs outside firewall

Multiple Firewall Issues

  • may have both network-based and host-based firewall settings
  • to diagnose host firewall
    • attempt connection with it disabled
      • if connection succeeds, then
        • network firewall ACL is allowing packets
        • but host firewall is blocking
      • if connection fails
        • investigate network firewall ACL first
          • inspect log files to discover what rules have been applied to block traffic at a particular time

Security Violation Issues

  • an outcome of badly configured firewall is
    • packet may be allowed through that should be blocked
  • results in opening the system to security vulnerabilities
  • not easy to detect
    • does not cause anything to stop functioning
    • so no incidents arise
  • mitigate by
    • conducting regular firewall audits
    • having thorough change control process for firewall change requests