6.3 Ensure that UDP access from the Internet is evaluated and restricted

Information

Network security groups should be periodically evaluated for port misconfigurations. Where certain ports and protocols may be exposed to the Internet, they should be evaluated for necessity and restricted wherever they are not explicitly required.

Rationale:

The potential security problem with broadly exposing UDP services over the Internet is that attackers can use DDoS amplification techniques to reflect spoofed UDP traffic from Azure Virtual Machines. The most common types of these attacks use exposed DNS, NTP, SSDP, SNMP, CLDAP and other UDP-based services as amplification sources for disrupting services of other machines on the Azure Virtual Network or even attack networked devices outside of Azure.

Solution

Where UDP is not explicitly required and narrowly configured for resources attached to the Network Security Group, Internet-level access to your Azure resources should be restricted or eliminated.
For internal access to relevant resources, configure an encrypted network tunnel such as:
ExpressRoute
Site-to-site VPN
Point-to-site VPN

Default Value:

By default, UDP access from internet is not enabled.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/12346

Item Details

Category: SECURITY ASSESSMENT AND AUTHORIZATION, SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|CA-9, 800-53|SC-7, 800-53|SC-7(5), CSCv7|9.2

Plugin: microsoft_azure

Control ID: 9a077bf6c993b7fdbb36e09685ced9a3931e557178ca9effc97e26d1f5da1442