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CISC-L2-000160 - The Cisco switch must have Storm Control configured on all host-facing switchports.

Information

A traffic storm occurs when packets flood a LAN, creating excessive traffic and degrading network performance. Traffic storm control prevents network disruption by suppressing ingress traffic when the number of packets reaches a configured threshold level.

Traffic storm control monitors ingress traffic levels on a port and drops traffic when the number of packets reaches the configured threshold level during any one-second interval.

The primary intent of this control is to mitigate the risk of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, not to arbitrarily restrict bandwidth needed for operations. Consequently, some ports may be configured to operate at full line-rate speed if deemed necessary by the engineer to meet mission requirements. The ultimate responsibility for managing bandwidth to prevent a DoS while ensuring service availability rests with the network engineer.

NOTE: Nessus has provided the target output to assist in reviewing the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Configure storm control for each host-facing interface as shown in the example below:

SW1(config)#int range g0/2 - 8
SW1(config-if-range)#storm-control unicast bps 62000000
SW1(config-if-range)#storm-control broadcast level bps 20000000

Note: The acceptable range is 10000000-1000000000 (10Mb-1Gb) for a gigabit Ethernet interface, and 100000000-10000000000 (100Mb-10Gb) for a 10-gigabit interface. Storm control is not supported on most FastEthernet interfaces.

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Cisco_IOS_Switch_Y26M07_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6b., CAT|III, CCI|CCI-000366, Rule-ID|SV-220636r1205856_rule, STIG-ID|CISC-L2-000160, STIG-Legacy|SV-110243, STIG-Legacy|V-101139, Vuln-ID|V-220636

Plugin: Cisco

Control ID: d0266b014071c2bc3a376158fd3718535069950d3230f8b5e00ae50153309454