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Palo Alto NGFW lab 30 of 30

Custom App-ID and threat signatures: write them, tune them, prove them

Name traffic the firewall doesn't know and stop what no signature covers yet. Write a custom application for a home-grown protocol and another on top of web-browsing, score your patterns, then write custom vulnerability and spyware signatures. Tune them with severity actions, a threshold signature for brute force and an exception for a scanner, proving each result in the logs.

Run this lab

It needs Lite: its 4 nodes are set to 5 vCPU and 7,680 MB in total. That fits the free demo too.

In your workspace: Shared, then Palo Alto NGFW PAN-OS 11 guided labs, then 30 - Custom App-ID and threat signatures - write them tune them prove them

Try it free for 30 minutesRun it on Lite from £3 a day

The free demo needs no card and no email. Every lab plan includes every guided lab.

Level
Advanced
Time
About 80 minutes
Nodes need
5 vCPU, 7,680 MB
Smallest plan
Lite

The scenario

Calder's security team has three worries, and none of them is covered by anything the firewall ships with:

  • Calder Track 2, the new parcel service on web01 (TCP 7778), is allowed by a port rule. Anything can use that port.
  • The finance pages at /finance/ are ordinary web traffic to the firewall, so every user who can reach the intranet can reach them.
  • The old portal at /portal/ has a path-traversal flaw and no patch is coming, and someone has been guessing logins. A piece of malware has also been seen sending the user agent CalderBeacon/1.0.

You'll teach the firewall all of this yourself, with custom applications and custom threat signatures, and then tune them so they stop what they should and nothing else.

Client-PC has two addresses: 10.1.1.10 is an ordinary user, and 10.1.1.20 is both the finance PC and the security team's scanner. curl --interface 10.1.1.20 ... sends from the second one. track-client is a small program written for this lab that holds a conversation with Calder Track 2.

Limits of this lab. This firewall has no Threat Prevention licence and no threat content, so every commit from Task 4 on warns No Valid Threat License, and no built-in threats are detected. In our tests on this image, custom signatures still matched, blocked and logged. Treat that as what this lab firewall does, not as a licensing rule: a production firewall should have the licence.

Before you start. Start all the nodes. The firewall takes 6-8 minutes to boot and comes up with this lab's starting configuration already loaded. Wait until the FW1 console shows FW1 login:, then log in as admin / Lab-Access-1. Until the management plane is ready it answers Login incorrect, even with the right password. The Linux hosts are ready within seconds.

What you’ll practise

  • Write a custom application on a TCP protocol, and replace a port rule with it
  • Write a custom application with web-browsing as its parent, and control it separately
  • Score signature patterns with the test commands and improve a weak one
  • Write custom vulnerability and spyware signatures, and apply them through profiles
  • Build a threshold signature from a child signature
  • Tune with severity-based actions and an exception for one address, and prove it in the threat log

The tasks

  1. What the firewall sees today
  2. A custom application for Calder Track
  3. Replace the port rule, and control the finance pages
  4. A virtual patch for the portal
  5. A spyware signature
  6. Catch the login guessing
  7. A false positive

The Lab Tasks pane has the scenario, these tasks, the checks to run, hints and the full solution.

Topology and devices

The network as it opens in EVE-NG, drawn from the lab’s own canvas, and the image each node runs.

Topology of Custom App-ID and threat signatures - write them tune them prove them4 nodes and 3 networks, 7 links. Every link is listed as text below the diagram.FW1Client-PCweb01InternetInsideOutsideDMZeth0ethernet1/3eth0mgmtethernet1/2eth0ethernet1/1
4 nodes and 3 networks, with the interface names each link uses. On a narrow screen, scroll the diagram sideways.
Every link, as text
  • FW1 mgmt to Inside (network)
  • FW1 ethernet1/1 to Outside (network)
  • FW1 ethernet1/2 to Inside (network)
  • FW1 ethernet1/3 to DMZ (network)
  • Client-PC eth0 to Inside (network)
  • web01 eth0 to DMZ (network)
  • Internet eth0 to Outside (network)
Nodes in Custom App-ID and threat signatures: write them, tune them, prove them, with the image each runs and the vCPU and RAM it’s set to
NodeDeviceImage in Add NodeSet to
FW1Palo Alto Networks VM-Series (PAN-OS)paloalto-11.2.52 vCPU, 5,632 MB
Client-PCEVE-NG GUI server (Docker)eve-gui-server:latest1 vCPU, 1,024 MB
web01EVE-NG GUI server (Docker)eve-gui-server:latest1 vCPU, 512 MB
InternetEVE-NG GUI server (Docker)eve-gui-server:latest1 vCPU, 512 MB

How to open this lab

  1. Sign in to your workspace at lab.cloudlabbox.com.

  2. In File Manager, open Shared, then the folder Palo Alto NGFW PAN-OS 11 guided labs.

  3. Open 30 - Custom App-ID and threat signatures - write them tune them prove them and start its nodes, then open Lab Tasks for the scenario and the steps.

The lab is read-only. You can start the nodes and configure the devices, but changes to the topology can’t be saved. To change it, rebuild it in your own folder.

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CloudLabBox is independent of Palo Alto Networks and Cisco. The lab follows exam topics and isn’t vendor training material; vendor names identify the exams and the images in the workspace.