How-to: Create recurring scripts on a FortiGate

Not many people realise that you can create recurring scripts on the FortiGate to run any command you'd like. These can range from rebooting the FortiGate to automating backups to an external server.

In this blog we'll be creating a script to backup the FortiGate's configuration to an external FTP server every day.


config system auto-script
edit daily-backup
set interval 86400 << how often this runs in seconds (86400 is 1 day)
set repeat 0 << repeat forever
set start auto << automatically start it
set script 'execute backup full-config ftp fgt-backup.conf 192.168.1.1 username password'
end

How-to: Configure Static IP Address in TC Linux

1. Create a new file (/opt/eth0.sh) and add the interface IP details below (changing IP, broadcast, and gateway):

#!/bin/sh

ifconfig eth0 10.0.1.219 

netmask 255.255.255.0 

broadcast 10.0.1.255 up

route add default gw 10.0.1.254

2. Make the file executable

sudo chmod +x /opt/eth0.sh

3. Add this line to the end of /opt/bootload.sh

/opt/eth0.sh &

4. Add this line to the end of /opt/.filetool.lst

opt/eth0.sh

5. Save changes to disk

sudo filetool.sh -b

6. Reboot

sudo reboot

How-to: Use the grep command on a FortiGate

Grep is a fast and easy way of filtering lots of information from the console. The FortiGate allows you to pipe grep to many commands including show, get and diagnose.

To use grep you must pipe it with the search value after a command ex: | grep <value>

There are a few options available with grep that can be seen with the -h flag. Below is a show command that's been piped with grep to display all the options available:

gate1 # show | grep -h
Usage: grep [-invfcABC] PATTERN
Options:
        -i      Ignore case distinctions
        -n      Print line number with output lines
        -v      Select non-matching lines
        -f      Print fortinet config context
        -c      Only print count of matching lines
        -A      Print NUM lines of trailing context
        -B      Print NUM lines of leading context
        -C      Print NUM lines of output context

How-to: Configure Collector mode on a FortiAnalyzer

The FortiAnalyzer allows you to aggregate logs from multiple FortiGate firewalls giving you a central console to view logs, alerts and run reports for all the FortiGates in your organisation.

 Each FortiAnalyzer can only handle a certain number of logs per second, be it the hardware or VM models. If you have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of FortiGates it would not be feasible to have all these devices send their logs to one FortiAnalyzer. Good news is that FortiAnalyzers can be configured in a 'collector' mode and deployed regionally to take the burden from your Analyzer that is doing the reporting.

One advantage of this is that FortiAnalyzer VMs that have been configured as a collector have no GB per day limitation as their standard config does. This means you'll only need a FortiAnalyzer VM BASE license for each of the remote regions.

In this example I'll configure two FortiGates and FortiAnalyzers that have been configured in collector modes. This will simulate two regions for my organisation and the firewalls within each region. The collectors will then forward their logs to the global Analyzer from where I can run reports for the entire organisation.

The FortiGates are running 5.4.0 and the FortiAnalyzers 5.2.5.

How-to: Configure a workflow in FortiManager to enforce change management policies

The FortiManager allows you to enforce change management policies so that while junior members are able to make configuration changes, they will not be applied until management approves them.

This blog will go through the steps on how-to set this up.

How-to: Configure a pre-login warning message on a FortiGate

By default when you login to a FortiGate there is no warning message. This blog will go through howto enable the banner and edit the default message to help scare away those baddies.

How-to: Change WebGUI HTTPS certificate on Fortinet devices

Below is a list of commands required to change the default HTTPS certificate that gets presented on the admin WebGUI.

For each of these examples I've already loaded a certificate called 'webgui-cert'. Change this value to match the certificate you import.

How-to: Disable SSLv3 on Fortinet devices

With the release of the POODLE vulnerability, Fortinet have released a great article on howto disable SSLv3 on all the Fortinet devices that are affected.

The list goes on to include:

• FortiGate
• FortiMail
• FortiAnalyzer
• FortiManager
• FortiAuthenticator
• FortiCache
• FortiWeb
• FortiDDOS
• FortiADC-D
• FortiClient
• FortiVoice-Enterprise
• FortiRecorder
• FortiDB
• FortiSwitchOS
• FortiSwitch ATCA

Fortunately disabling SSLv3 is very simple on all devices, with some just requiring an upgrade.

I won't go into detail on howto disable SSLv3 on every box as it's covered in the article linked above. I just wanted to go through on how you can test to ensure that SSLv3 has been disabled once you've made the configuration change.

How-to: Configure Quotas by Data Usage on a FortiGate

Long ago, you had two options when it came to usage quotas on the FortiGate; it was either based on data usage, or time usage. Fortinet then decided to remove the data usage quota and only have time based ones available. Recently Fortinet have decided to reintroduce the data based quotas (albeit it can only be configured via the CLI).

We'll go through creating a data usage quota on a web filtering profile, and some things you should know.

Uploaded license for Fortinet VM appliance but get stuck on 'please wait for authentication with registration servers'

Fortinet VM appliances require the installation of a license file to get the full functionality and support. Once you've uploaded the file the device will reboot and try to connect to the Fortinet authentication servers to confirm it's valid.

When you try to log back into the device after the reboot you may get the following screen:

Obviously you'll need an internet connection for it to contact the registration servers, but sometimes it will get stuck on this screen regardless of your internet connection or how many times you reboot the device.

Luckily you can force this update which will take a matter of seconds. Login to the CLI and issue the execute update-now command. The device will log you out, and the license registration status will change to VALID. Once this is done log back in to the GUI and you should see the normal configuration page.

Getting iprope_in_check() errors when routing is configured correctly

I was working on a FG90D for a customer a while back and had just finished configuring some extra routes, but no traffic was passing through the device.

Using the 'diag debug flow' command I was seeing the below message:

id=36870 pri=emergency trace_id=8 msg="iprope_in_check() check failed, drop"

This usually means a packets arrived where no forwarding or return routes exist, so the firewall drops it.

Knowing this I double (and triple!) checked the routes and routing table, and confirmed that everything was correct.

So having confirmed it's configured correctly, the could only assume that the routing table hasn't been refreshed when I added the new routes. This is something that's done automatically on the firewall when a change is made to the routing table (ex: a route has been added/deleted, interface up/down etc) but for some reason wasn't happening.

Using the below command I flushed the routing table and forced it to refresh:

diagnose firewall iprope flush

After that, the traffic is now routing correctly! :)

How-to: Factory reset a FortiGate config but preserve the interface IP address

Not many people realise the FortiGates allow to you factory reset the device while maintaining the interface IP and static route settings. It's useful when you want to wipe away the entire config but still have management access to the device when it reboots.

This is done via the CLI using the follow command: execute factoryreset2.

I've included a screenshot of the command and confirmation prompt below.

How-to: Seperate UTM security logs from traffic logs

With FortiOS 5.0 Fortinet had decided to consolidate all logs into the traffic log. This improves performance, and allows you to search for all logs (traffic and security) in the one screen.

While I can see the benefit and reasoning behind this, I prefer to have my security logs separated from my traffic ones since they are generally the kind that I would look through.

Thankfully Fortinet haven't disabled this feature and still allow you to configure the device to separate the security and traffic logs. We'll go through the steps required to enable this for each of the security profiles.

How-to: Automatically revert a config on a FortiGate

There's nothing worse than remotely configuring a firewall and then loosing access once you've made your changes. Having a failsafe mechanism in place to revert to a previous config automatically will help you minimise potential issues and save you alot of stress! Luckily the FortiGate's give you a few options on how to save your running config which we'll discuss below.

How-to: Configure SMS Two Factor Authentication on a FortiGate

A while ago I wrote a 'How-to' guide on the steps required to configure SMS Two Factor Authentication using a FortiAuthenticator and a FortiGate. This involved configuring the a SMS gateway on the FortiAuthenticator using HTTP and then getting the FortiGate to send authentication requests to it.

A little known fact is that the FortiGate can actually do two factor SMS authentication out of the box, all for free and with no licenses required! There's two ways of configuring the SMS authentication. Firstly with the prepaid FortiGuard SMS servers (preconfigured) and then with your own custom SMS server.

Ttoday I decided to test out this feature with my custom SMS server and initially struggled as there's no proper documentation on how it actually works, what it sends etc. Below are the steps I took and the bits of information that I gleamed during the configuration.

How-to: Factory reset a FortiGate

We get dozens of FortiGates back from evaluations and the standard way of factory reseting the configuration is by running the command execute factoryreset.

This will reset the full configuration back to factory default.

The problem is that it does nothing to the flash, and sometimes clients make revision configuration saves to the flash.

How-to: Automate FortiGate configuration backups

The FortiGates don't have any backup automation abilities out of the box. Generally you'd use a FortiManager for the config, backup and control of multiple FortiGates.

I've recently setup a lab with several FortiGates for testing and wanted a simple way of backing up the configs every day so I could always revert back to a previous day quickly.

You could just backup the config before making changes, but I wanted to automate this process. Below is a quick and dirty script to automate the config backup.

A few notes to begin with; this script requires a read only user to be created on each FortiGate that have the same password. These passwords are stored in the script itself; so while it never gets transmitted in cleartext over the link, be aware that it is stored in the file. Since this is a lab and it's a readonly account I'm not too fussed. Another thing to note is that the strict host check for the SSH keys has been disabled (so you don't get a confirmation request for new IP addresses). There is a more secure way to do this without using passwords but ssh keys which I may create a blog on at a latter date.

The only dependency is that the script requires sshpass to be installed.

My guide goes through setting this all up on a Debian based Linux system (like Mint or Ubuntu). It should be fine to work on other distributions with few command changes.

How-to: Configure DHCP Custom Options on a FortiGate

FortiGates allow you to configure upto six custom DHCP options beyond the standard default gateway, DNS, NTP and domain options.

We'll go through the steps to configure a DHCP server from scratch and configure the most commonly used options as well as a few custom ones.

How-to: Enable disk logging on a FortiGate running FortiOS 5

By default disk logging has been disabled on FortiOS v5.0. One of the reasons this was done is because the flash memory on some devices are not designed for constant read/writes, so saving logs to it can degrade the disk (resulting in corrupted sectors). Having said that, we've got a few FortiGates that have been logging to disk for a few years now with no problems.

How-to: Re-image a Fortigate device

Sometimes you will need to re-image a Fortigate device if you suspect that there is a corruption with the image, or if you get CRC errors upon bootup. All you need is a computer with a network card, a console cable, a TFTP program and a network cable.