topic ASA unexpected bi-directional access in Network Security

ASA unexpected bi-directional access

mikedelafield — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 15:18:44 GMT

Hello.

My Cisco ASA firewall is set to allow inbound HTTPS connections to a webserver, which works great.

Exemplified by the log entry below;

access-list outside_access_in permitted tcp outside/22.44.55.77(22913) -> inside/WEBSERVER(443) hit-cnt 1 first hit [0xdfea2982, 0x0]

However there is also a log entry reflecting traffic back to the client in the other direction "FROM" tcp/443.

access-list inside_access_in permitted tcp inside/WEBSERVER(443) -> outside/22.44.55.77(22913) hit-cnt 1 first hit [0xdfea2982, 0x0]

I was not expecting this entry or connection as I had planned to block all "outbound" connections from this server.

I thought the ASA would be aware of an already existing inbound connection and not need to establish outbound.

Can someone please explain this?

Thanks.

Re: ASA unexpected bi-directional access

roshan.maskey — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:10:59 GMT

Hi,

The second access-list you have seen is for the return traffic to the originating source.

The traffic to secure webserver was initiated from outside zone with (SYN flag set). The server has to respond to the connection i.e allow the traffic through that session, server sends back (SYN/ACK) and other request-response via 443 to the source service port.

The acl you have seen is normal, it is dynamically opened by ASA and will shutdown as you terminate the session to the server.

Re: ASA unexpected bi-directional access

vikram_anumukonda — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:22:49 GMT

couple of questions.

1) do you have a " service-policy " configured/applied globally on the firewall .

2) do you see hits in your ACL for the return traffic.

Re: ASA unexpected bi-directional access

mikedelafield — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:08:52 GMT

Hi.

Thanks for your reply.

1) there is no service policy

2) yes there are hits for the return traffic on the outbound ACL.

I would like to remove the ACL though as it is initiated inbound so should not be required?

Re: ASA unexpected bi-directional access

vikram_anumukonda — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:39:24 GMT

Copy paste the below code after which you should not require an ACL for return traffic. This is supposed to be there by default . If this does not help, Pls post your configs.

class-map inspection_default

match default-inspection-traffic

policy-map global_policy

class inspection_default

inspect dns maximum-length 512

inspect ftp

inspect h323 h225

inspect h323 ras

inspect netbios

inspect rsh

inspect rtsp

inspect skinny

inspect esmtp

inspect sqlnet

inspect sunrpc

inspect tftp

inspect sip

inspect xdmcp

service-policy global_policy global

HTH

Vikram