Check Point CCSE Notes

Following my post on Check Point CCSA Exam notes, in this post I’m gonna write notes on CCSE exam. Though this time I won’t fall into configuration and try to only point out the more important and real-world-applicable things.

Management Server HA

  • When adding a new Check Point host as a Secondary Management Server, do not Initialize SIC before selecting Network Policy Management feature!
  • After adding the host, save and Install the policy; synchronization will then work.

As a reminder, whenever you reset the SIC for a Gateway from Management Server, it should be re-initialized from the Gateway by cpconfig; don’t forget to exit cpconfig!

ClusterXL

Check Point calls its clustering solution ClusterXL which supports up to 8 Cluster members and can be implemented in two main flavors:

  1. Load-sharing
    • Multicast mode: 50/50, very efficient and excellent performance
    • Unicast mode: 70/30, to be used in environments where an intermediate device has issues with multicast MAC address (IGMP Snooping)
  2. High Availability (HA)
    • New Mode: Each member has its own physical IP address
    • Legacy Mode: Both members have the same physical IP address

To make kernel changes permanent, they should be written in $FWDIR/modules/fwkern.conf

To make sure that Clustering Synchronization is in good shape:

GAiA-1> fw tab -t connections -s
HOST             NAME            ID     #VALS #PEAK #SLINKS
localhost             connections                      8158    32    56   30

GAiA-2> fw tab -t connections -s
HOST             NAME            ID     #VALS #PEAK #SLINKS
localhost             connections                      8158    33    62   31

In a clustered environment, it’s a good practice to disable synchronization for uncritical services; this will extremely decrease utilization on the cluster and improve the performance in enterprise throughput environments.

As it’s obvious in the CLI snippets, cphaprob state indicates the Cluster status.

When configuring a Cluster Synchronisation Network over a VLAN interface, it is only supported on the lowest VLAN tag of the interface!

Here, you will find a really good overview of Check Point Clustering solutions.

Manual Failover

To initiate a manual Failover, there’s a special shell script at $FWDIR/bin/clusterXL_admin on/off which sets the member’s ClusterXL state respectively.
Check Point has provided a good read on this here.

Performance Optimizations

Check Point provides two software based features to maximize the firewall performance; CoreXL and SecureXL. Both are included in the OS without any license requirement.

SecureXL

With SecureXL, some CPU intensive operations are processed by virtualized software instead of the Firewall kernel; thus the firewall can provide better inspection and process the traffic more efficient and accelerate the throughput.

From SecureXL perspective, there are three traffic flows:

  • Slow path: Packets and connections are inspected by the Firewall and SecureXL won’t process them.
  • Medium path: These are packets which need deeper inspection and can’t use Accelerated path. Although it could be unnecessary for the Firewall to inspect them and they can be offloaded by another feature. As an example mentioned in the Check Point documentation, packets that are inspected by IPS cannot use the accelerated path and can be offloaded to the IPS PSL (Passive Streaming Library). As a result, these packets will be processed faster by SecureXL than the packets on Slow path.
  • Accelerated path: Packets which are offloaded from the Firewall to SecureXL, and are quickly processed.

The initial packets of a TCP connection are processed in the Slow path and will be identified by the five tuple attributes: source address, destination address, source port, destination port and protocol. From that point on, packets matching that tuple will take the Accelerated path. This explains how SecureXL provides Throughput Acceleration.

SecureXL should be enabled via cpconfig, and then can be dynamically disabled/enabled by  fwaccel command. Keep in mind that fwaccel configuration doesn’t survive a reboot!

To check the status of SecureXL (Firewall Acceleration) and enabled features:

Expert@GAiA-2:0]# fwaccel stat
Accelerator Status : on
Accept Templates   : enabled
Drop Templates     : disabled
NAT Templates      : disabled by user


Accelerator Features : Accounting, NAT, Cryptography, Routing,
                       HasClock, Templates, Synchronous, IdleDetection,
                       Sequencing, TcpStateDetect, AutoExpire,
                       DelayedNotif, TcpStateDetectV2, CPLS, WireMode,
                       DropTemplates, NatTemplates, Streaming,
                       MultiFW, AntiSpoofing, ViolationStats,
                       Nac, AsychronicNotif, ERDOS
Cryptography Features : Tunnel, UDPEncapsulation, MD5, SHA1, NULL,
                        3DES, DES, CAST, CAST-40, AES-128, AES-256,
                        ESP, LinkSelection, DynamicVPN, NatTraversal,
                        EncRouting, AES-XCBC, SHA256
It worths mentioning that when SecureXL is on, then FW Monitor and tcpdump will show only the non-accelerated packets (e.g., ‘TCP SYN’ will be shown, and ‘TCP ACK’ will not).

CoreXL

It’s definitely a must-to-implement on multi-core platforms! With CoreXL the firewall kernel is copied into multiple instances, each running on one processing unit, as a totally independent inspection kernel.

Do note that CoreXL is not supported when one of the following features are enabled:

  • Check Point QoS (Quality of Service)
  • Route-based VPN
  • IPv6 on IPSO
  • Overlapping NAT

CoreXL is enabled/disabled via cpconfig and requires a reboot to take effect.
Number of instances can be set when CoreXL is enabled by following the same menu.

IKE DoS Protection

The IKE protocol requires the receiving Security Gateway to allocate memory for the first IKE Phase 1 request packet that it receives.

An attacker can send a huge amount of well-formed IKE first packets, while spoofing a different source IP address for each. Following IKE requirement, the receiving firewall must reply to each, and assign memory for every single IKE first packet. This can utilize Memory and CPU resources, and as a result could prevent legitimate users’ connections.

Check Point Security Gateway classifies VPN sources in two categories with respective DoS protection mechanisms:

  • Identified: an allowed source machine/IP; the gateway by default requires the peer to respond to an IKE notification in a way that proves that the IP address of the peer is not spoofed. This is called Stateless IKE DoS protection.
  • Unidentified: Unknow sources, such as a SecuRemote / SecureClient, or a Check Point Security Gateway with a dynamic IP address; here the Security Gateway requires the peer to solve a mathematical puzzle. Solving this puzzle consumes peer CPU resources in a way that makes it difficult to initiate multiple IKE negotiations simultaneously. This IKE DoS protection method is called Puzzles.

Each mentioned method, plus None, can be used in both cases; although it doesn’t make sense to interchange them. Why would someone want to degrade performance by requiring a known peer to solve a puzzle?!

Bonus Trick!

I had to remove Secondary Management role from a Firewall. What I found easiest to achieve this was to running the First Time Configuration Wizard again.

Upon completing the initial configuration, the First Time Configuration Wizard creates the following special (empty) file on the appliance:

  • SecurePlatform OS:
    /opt/spwm/conf/wizard_accepted
  • Gaia OS:
    /etc/.wizard_accepted

The existence of this file is checked each time the user tries to configure the appliance.

In my case, running GAiA R77 I had to do as below:

[Expert@GAiA-1]# rm -i /etc/.wizard_accepted
[Expert@GAiA-1]# rm -i $FWDIR/conf/ICA.crl
[Expert@GAiA-1]# rm -i $FWDIR/conf/InternalCA.*
And no reboot is required. You can read more about it here.
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Author: Mo Moghaddas

Building zeeg.me to give users more time back and make scheduling a pleasant experience.

3 thoughts on “Check Point CCSE Notes”

  1. i am done with this part i am looking for commands.
    can you provide commands used in CP firewall with description ?

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