CISC-L2-000120 - The Cisco switch must have Unknown Unicast Flood Blocking (UUFB) enabled.

Information

Access layer switches use the Content Addressable Memory (CAM) table to direct traffic to specific ports based on the VLAN number and the destination MAC address of the frame. When a router has an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) entry for a destination host and forwards it to the access layer switch and there is no entry corresponding to the frame's destination MAC address in the incoming VLAN, the frame will be sent to all forwarding ports within the respective VLAN, which causes flooding.

Large amounts of flooded traffic can saturate low-bandwidth links, causing network performance issues or complete connectivity outage to the connected devices. Unknown unicast flooding has been a nagging problem in networks that have asymmetric routing and default timers.

To mitigate the risk of a connectivity outage, the UUFB feature must be implemented on all access layer switches. The UUFB feature will block unknown unicast traffic flooding and only permit egress traffic with MAC addresses that are known to exit on the port.

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

Solution

Configure the switch to have UUFB enabled as shown in the configuration example below:

SW1(config)#int range g0/0 - 9
SW1(config-if-range)#switchport block unicast

See Also

https://dl.dod.cyber.mil/wp-content/uploads/stigs/zip/U_Cisco_IOS_Switch_Y24M07_STIG.zip

Item Details

Category: SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|SC-5, CAT|II, CCI|CCI-002385, Rule-ID|SV-220632r856226_rule, STIG-ID|CISC-L2-000120, STIG-Legacy|SV-110235, STIG-Legacy|V-101131, Vuln-ID|V-220632

Plugin: Cisco

Control ID: 7097d50385288336d47237f4c72a236bc9de1c75fd19be479793a0070e5612e2