FortiGate Securing Remote Administration
KB ID 0001734 Problem When considering Securing FortiGate remote administration, I’ve written about changing the https management port to something other than TCP 443 before, I suppose that’s security by obfuscation (though even a script kiddy with one hours experience, will be able to spot an html responses). Typically with other vendors you limit remote administration access, to specific IP addresses (or ranges). So...
FortiGate LDAPS Authentication Failure
KB ID 0001733 Problem Here’s a brief one that tripped me up a couple of weeks ago, I was deploying FortiGate LDAPS authentication for some FortiClient SSL VPN connections into a FortiGate firewall like so; Despite my best efforts I was getting authentication failures? If I tested the username and password in the GUI web management portal, that worked fine? Testing FortiGate LDAPS First step is to test authentication at command...
FortiGate High Availability (Active / Passive)
KB ID 0001730 So my aim was to setup FortiGate High Availability failover in Active / Passive mode. I’m setting this up in EVE-NG and here’s what my lab looks like; Note: Im using TWO connections for Heartbeat/Failover, you can simply use one if you prefer. FortiGate High Availability (Pre-Requisites) Obviously the firewalls need to be the same! For physical firewalls that’s straightforward, but be careful if you are...
FortiGate: SSL Inspection (HTTPS Inspection)
KB ID 0001729 Problem Do you inspect the traffic on your network? You have a firewall? Maybe an IDS appliance? That’s good news, do you inspect HTTPS traffic? In most cases the answer is no. Because either you do not have the capability, or enabling SSL Inspection will degrade the firewall’s performance so much that you accept the risk. At time of writing (Early 2021) it’s estimated that 85% of all web traffic is now...
FortiGate: SSL-VPN With FortiClient (AD Authenticated)
KB ID 0001725 Problem FortiGate Remote Access (SSL-VPN ) is a solution that is a lot easier to setup than on other firewall competitors. Here’s how to setup remote access to a FortiGate firewall device, using the FortiClient software, and Active Directory authentication. This is what my topology looks like; Note: I’ve changed the FortiGates default management HTTPS port from 443 to 4433 (before I started). This was to let...
FortiGate: Change the HTTPS Fortigate Management Port
KB ID 0001723 Problem Like all firewalls that have ‘web management’ the default ports are 80 and 443 for insecure and secure management. IF you have secure (https) management on the outside interface of your firewall on the normal TCP port of 443. Then you can’t use the same interface to terminal SSL-VPNs. So you will need to change the FortiGate Management Port. You can set SSL-VPN to use a different port of course,...
Cisco ASA to Fortigate VPN (Properly!)
KB ID 0001721 Problem A while ago I did a run through on site to site VPNs from Cisco ASA to Fortigate firewalls. Back then I said that the default settings were a bit ‘shoddy’ and that I’d revisit it once I had more time. What do you mean shoddy? Well, Cisco and Fortinet are both guilty of enabling ‘Everything’ to make the tunnel come up, so people can just use a wizard and not put to much thought into...
Cisco ASA: Received a DELETE PFKey message from IKE
KB ID 0001720 Problem I was debugging a VPN tunnel today. (From a Fortigate to a Cisco ASAv). I was messing around with the encryption and hashing, when the tunnel fell over. Phase 1 was establishing fine but not Phase 2 (IPSEC). I’ve got better skills on the ASA, so that’s where I was debugging; IPSEC: Received a PFKey message from IKE IPSEC: Parsing PFKey GETSPI message IPSEC: Creating IPsec SA IPSEC: Getting the...
Fortigate: Cannot Ping an Interface?
KB ID 0001718 Problem With other firewall vendors (i.e. Cisco) you can ping any interface you are ‘directly connected to’. With Fortigate however you cannot (by default). That’s not the end of the world you can check connectivity using ARP (see below) which is what really cool network techs do instead! But if you want to be able to ping an interface (even for a short period of time). Here’s how to do it....
Fortigate to Cisco ASA Site to Site VPN
KB ID 0001717 Problem Continuing with my ‘Learn some Fortigate’ theme’. One of the basic requirements of any edge firewall is site to site VPN. As the bulk of my knowledge is Cisco ASA it seems sensible for me to work out how to VPN both those firewalls together, like so; Well that’s the pretty picture, I’m building this EVE-NG so here’s what my workbench topology looks like; Disclaimer (Read First!...