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Security Best Practice: Familiarize Yourself with the Header Spoofing Protection

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Check Point Reference: SBP-2008-22
Date Published:
Severity:
Last Updated:
Source: IPS Research Center
Protection Provided by: Security Gateway
  • R70
VPN-1
  • NGX R65
VSX
  • NGX R65
Who is Vulnerable?
Web Servers
Vulnerability Description
One of the first steps an attacker takes before attacking a website is to analyze the web server response in order to gather as much information as possible about it. This is known as "fingerprinting".
Vulnerability Details
Some headers in the HTTP response from the web server contain information that can be used by an attacker to identify the web server. The attacker can then launch an attack that exploits weaknesses in that particular web server.

Protection Overview
This protection allows you to remove or change a specific header (that can appear in the HTTP Response) by giving a regular expression to identify the header name and header value. For example, a typical server header will contain the web server name and version number. Use this protection to spoof out the version information.

To configure the defense, select your product from the list below and follow the related protection steps.

Security Gateway R70

How Can I Protect My Network?
1. In the IPS tab, click Protections > By Protocol > Web Intelligence > Information Disclosure.
2. In the right pane, double-click the Header Spoofing protection.
3. In the Protection Details window, click on Edit. Choose the protection's Action (Override IPS Policy with: Prevent/Detect), and apply Additional Settings.
4. Install policy on all modules.

How Do I Know if My Network is Under Attack?
SmartView Tracker will log the following entries:

Attack Name: Header Spoofing
Attack Information:
Header spoofing
Replacing header

VPN-1 NGX R65 & VPN-1 VSX NGX R65

How Can I Protect My Network?
1. In the SmartDefense tab, click Web Intelligence > Information Disclosure> Header Spoofing.
2. In the configuration pane, under Settings > Mode, check Active.
3. Install policy on all modules.

How Do I Know if My Network is Under Attack?
SmartView Tracker will log the following entries:

Attack Name: Header Spoofing
Attack Information:
Header spoofing
Replacing header