Users
User Authentication allows an administrator to grant or reject access to specific users from specific IP addresses, based on their user credentials.
Before any traffic is allowed to pass through any policies configured with username or groups, the user must first authenticate him/her-self. The DFL-700 can either verify the user against a local database or passes along the user information to an external authentication server, which verifies the user and the given password, and transmits the result back to the firewall. If the authentication is successful, the DFL.700 will remember the source IP address of this user, and any matching policies with usernames or groups configured will be allowed. Specific policies that deal with user authentication can be defined, thus leaving policies that not require user authentication unaffected.
The DFL-700 supports the RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) authentication protocol. This protocol is heavily used in many scenarios where user authentication is required, either by itself or as a front-end to other authentication services.
The DFL-700 RADIUS Support
The DFL-700 can use RADIUS to verify users against for example Active Directory or Unix password-file. It is possible to configure up to two servers, if the first one is down it will try the second IP instead.
The DFL-700 can use CHAP or PAP when communicating with the RADIUS server. CHAP (Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol) does not allow a remote attacker to extract the user password from an intercepted RADIUS packet. However, the password must be stored in plaintext on the RADIUS server. PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) might be defined as the less secure of the two. If a RADIUS packet is intercepted while being transmitted between the firewall and the RADIUS server, the user password can be extracted, given time. The upside to this is that the password does not have to be stored in plaintext in the RADIUS server.
The DFL700 uses a shared secret when connecting to the RADIUS server. The shared secret enables basic encryption of the user password when the RADIUS-packet is transmitted from the firewall to the RADIUS server. The shared secret is case sensitive, can contain up to 100 characters, and must be typed exactly the same on both the firewall and the RADIUS server.
