Five ways to secure your Cisco routers and switches

Fundamentals:
Five ways to secure your Cisco routers and switches

Author: David Davis
(april 2008)

Recently, Cisco Subnet blogger Brad Reese wrote the article, “Expert warns of scam to blackmail companies for cash to get back access to their Cisco routers.” In that post, he wrote about hackers who manage to hijack a company’s routers and then extort money from them by threatening to take down the network. The hackers were able to obtain control of the network because of poorly written Cisco IOS ACLs, easily guessed passwords, and unencrypted SNMP community strings (or easily guessed community strings).

Don’t let this happen to you and your network. Here are my top five best practices to secure your routers, your network, and your company from malicious attacks.

1. Understand the basics of router security

You must understand the basics of router security. Here are the essentials:

Physically secure the routers
If your routers are not physically secured, anyone can walk up, perform a password reset, and gain full access to that router’s configuration. Even if this isn’t a core router, they could take down your network by poisoning the routing tables on all routers. For this reason, routers should be in a locked room and preferably have video surveillance. Additionally, reliable electrical power and cooling must be provided.

Lock down the router with passwords
Routers must be secured with passwords at both the login mode (to prevent initial access) and the privileged mode (to prevent configuration changes). For more information on these different levels in the Cisco IOS, please see my article, “Understand the levels of privilege in the Cisco IOS.”

Apply login mode passwords on Console, AUX, and VTY (telnet/ssh) interfaces
Password controlled access needs not only to be on the VTY lines to prevent network access, but also on the Console and AUX ports. If the Console port is locked but the AUX port doesn’t have a password, then locking the Console wasn’t of much use, was it?

Set the correct time and date
To ensure that logs are correct and have not been tampered with, you must ensure that the router has the correct time and date. For more information, please see “Synchronize a Cisco router’s clock with Network Time Protocol (NTP).”

Enable proper logging
Logging should be enabled, preferably, back to a central source like a syslog server. At minimum, you need to configure a buffered log on the router. However, if the power is lost to that router, that local buffered log is lost. For this reason, to really be secure, you need to configure a syslog server (see the article, “SolutionBase: Monitor your network with Kiwi Syslog“), and send all router logs to that server. You could also put in the open source or commercial version of Tripwire. Preferably, you should increase the level of logging and even log configuration changes to the router. For example, you can use the following command to enable SNMP traps for configuration changes:

snmp-server enable traps config

For more information on Cisco router logging, please see, “Get to know your logging options in the Cisco IOS.”

Back up router configurations to a central source
Let’s say that someone does take control of your router or wipes out your router configurations. To replace that router quickly or replace the configuration, you need to have a backup of that configuration. To do this, ensure that your routers are backed up whenever configuration changes are made or each week or day. I have enjoyed using Kiwi CatTools to do this. For more information, see “Automate changes to your Cisco router with Kiwi CatTools.”

Secure other network devices such as switches and wireless access
Most of the items listed here also apply to Cisco switches and wireless access points. Here are a couple of articles on those topics that you should check out:

* 10 things you should know about securing wireless connections
* Lock Down Switch Port Security

Two more areas that I consider to be at the basic level of router security are locking down network access to the router with a stateful firewall or ACL and encrypting sensitive network traffic, but I will cover these points in more detail below (sections three and five, respectively).


2. Know your network: Diagram, audit, and document

If you are responsible for the security of a network you should know that network like you know the vulnerable doors and windows (think entry points) of your house.

You should diagram your network so that you have a map to help you and others visualize the entire network.

You should have the router configurations backed up (see Kiwi CatTools above). Finally, you should periodically audit your network security, both internally and externally (via a third party). There are tons of network scanning and auditing tools available. Here is a recent article of mine that covered one of them: “Audit your Cisco router’s security with Nipper.”

3. Protect your router with a firewall and ACLs

In Reese’s post about the hackers, he mentioned the fact that the company had poor access control lists (ACLs) in place on their routers. ACLs are typically what protect routers from attack. However, due to their complexity, many of them end up being misconfigured or ineffective. Make sure that your ACLs allow only traffic to the router and through the router that should be there. For internal routers this will only be internal traffic.

Make sure you understand that whatever isn’t permitted will be denied (the implicit deny), that ACLs are processed from the top down, that there should never be a permit any in the ACL, and that the ACL must be applied to an interface in the proper direction to be enabled. For more information on ACLs, please see some of my articles and video on this topic:

* Secure your router with Cisco’s SDM Firewall Policy Wizard
* Cisco IOS access lists: 10 things you should know
* Use advanced parameters on your Cisco IOS ACLs
* VIDEO: Harden your Cisco Router with IOS ACLs

Keep in mind that ACLs aren’t just used to prevent traffic from going through the router. They are also used to control SSH traffic, routing update, and to throttle traffic. For more information, see:

* Learn additional uses for Cisco IOS access control lists
* Control unwanted traffic on your Cisco router with CAR

Besides ACLs, the Cisco IOS offers a real stateful firewall if you use the Security/Firewall version of the IOS. A stateful firewall will be much better than just using ACLs. I recommend checking out my article, “Protect your network with the Cisco IOS Firewall,” and consider implementing one on your routers.

4. Change your passwords and make them complex

Another method that hackers use to take control of networks is password guessing or password sniffing. To prevent this, you should CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS TO COMPLEX PASSWORDS TODAY. Don’t wait another day! An example of a complex password is MySuper!S3cr3tPa$.

Make sure you always use type 5 password encryption on your routers (see “Be aware of how easily someone can crack a Cisco IOS password“).

Make sure this command is on your router to encrypt most (but not all) passwords with type 5 encryption:

service password-encryption

Also, keep in mind that we aren’t just talking about login passwords. This includes all SNMP community strings and routing protocol update passwords. All of those should be complex and changed periodically.

For more information on this topic, please see, “How to Configure Passwords to Secure your Cisco Router.”

5. Always encrypt sensitive network traffic

Finally, hackers can obtain passwords to your routers by sniffing network traffic when you log in to your router with telnet, perform a “show run” via telnet, or use unencrypted SNMP strings.

You should always encrypt sensitive network traffic by using SSH and SNMP encryption. Start by enabling SSH and disable telnet to all network devices that support it (see “Configure SSH on your Cisco Router“).

If you are using SNMP, enable SNMP v3 with encryption and use it exclusively (for more information, see AES and 3-DES Encryption Support for SNMP Version 3).

Be careful

The point of this article is to (1) encourage you to take action to secure your network before malicious attackers take control of it and (2) to show you exactly which actions you need to take.

You shouldn’t assume that your network isn’t a target because your company isn’t high profile or your data wouldn’t be valuable to an attacker. Take every reasonable step to protect your network; as you can see from this post, these steps aren’t necessarily difficult or costly.

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David DavisDavid Davis has worked in the IT industry for 15+ years and holds several certifications, including CCIE, CCNA, CCNP, MCSE, CISSP, VCP. He has authored hundreds of articles and numerous IT training videos. Today, David is the Director of Infrastructure at Train Signal.com. Train Signal, Inc. is the global leader in video training for IT Professionals and end users. Read his full bio and profile.

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