CHECKPOINT FIREWALL VERSION: R75 LAB GUIDE

Installation Type - SPLAT

Checkpoint Installation is accomplished in multiple ways which includes Installing Checkpoint on Secure Platform, on Windows Operating System or on Nokia Hardware. Here we discuss the SPLAT (Secure Platform) Installation in a Step by Step process. On the machine where SP

Once you hit Enter the Installation process starts,

Use Tab key to select OK and hit enter,

Language in which Checkpoint needs to be installed is selected, here we select US (i.e. English)

Here we see listed two Interfaces eth0 and eth1 present on our device on which Checkpoint is installed One of the interface is selected for configuration, below we select eth0

Configure IP address for the selected eth0 interface, default gateway information can be left empty since we

Select OK and hit enter,

Checkpoint will start Formatting process of the machines Hard Drive, select OK and Hit Enter

Checkpoint has finished copying files on the Hard Drive, select OK and hit enter

Firewall will reboot and get you to the login screen,

First time login will use default Username and Password as below: Username: admin Password: admin

Once default credentials are entered, a new Password and username needs to be created as shown above.

By now all the necessary Checkpoint files has been copied on the secure platform, to complete the initial Network and other configuration open up a browser and connect using the URL shown in the snapshot as an example

Open a Browser and launch the Web User GUI login page

After accepting the license agreement, login page comes up. Use the credentials created on the first time CLI login

Click next,

Click on the eth1 which we want to use as external interface and assign it an ip address

Once IP address is assigned to eht1, click next to continue configuration

Assign a Default route address for the firewall as below

Once ip address is entered, click on apply

Default route will be listed in the Routing table

Entering the DNS server information, Hostname of the Firewall and selecting the Management interface

Here we go for manual settings, NTP server can also be used for this purpose,

Specifying the clients/network to access the firewalls management interface

Now when you click on Any, it will edit the network/host properties as below, here we specify a machine

ip address which is allowed to connect to the firewall management interface

Select the Checkpoint products you wish to install,

Here we select this as a Primary Firewall

Specify the clients who can access the Firewall GUI (Smart Dashboard)

Define an Administrator Username and Password to access the Firewall GUI

Click next to continue configuration,

This completes the Initial setup of Checkpoint Firewall, now checkpoint will be start the configuration process

Click Yes,

Once you click OK, you will be redirected to the Web User Interface.

Click on Product Configuration to download the Smart console for accessing Security Management GUI

Once the download completes, install the smart console application. Note: Microsoft .Net version 2 is required on the machine where SmartConsole is being installed

Now you can login to the Firewall CLI and check for the Routing part, both towards External side and Internal side, making sure Internet and LAN are reachable from within the Firewall

Launch the smart Dashboard and login using the credentials created in web user interface configuration wizard,

Click Yes and Smart Dashboard starts loading up.

Smart Dashboard has a left panel which is called as Object Tree which holds multiple tabs within it and the right panel holds the Security policies created

Select the Network Objects tab from the left panel (the first tab), expand Checkpoint and right click on the cpmodule and click on Edit,

A new window opens up,

Go to Topology option and there click on Get Interfaces with Topology

Click Yes

Click on Accept, once done identify the difference between external and internal networks as shown below,

In the options on the top, click on policy and select the Global Properties,

Select the below options to enable the ICMP requests which are blocked by default

Stealth Rule and Cleanup Rule

Click on the Rules Options to add a rule in the Smart Dashboard

This Rule can be edited as per the requirement

The First rule should always be the Stealth Rule and the last rule is the Clean Up Rule. Source will be ANY

Expand the Destination part and select Firewall for the stealth rule

Right click on the Track part and select Log,

Stealth Rule should look like this,

Create Clean Up rule in the similar way as shown above. It should look like this,

Creating Administrative Profiles

Select the Users tab from the left panel, right click on the Administrators container and select the new Administrator

Specify the username for the type of Admin, in the below example we are creating a Read-Only Admin

Click on New and create a Permissions profile for this Admin user

Go to Authentication tab and select the type of authentication, in this case we are using Checkpoint password which will store the Admin user credentials on Checkpoint Firewall locally,

This user has to be added to a Group and we create a Group from the same Users tab under Administrator Group container as below

Name the Group accordingly and add the user into the group

If you want to create a user with Read/Write permissions, a Read-Write permissions profile has to be created with Full access or with a customized access as shown below

HIDE NAT
On the left panel, Network Objects tab which is the first tab, right click on Networks and select Network

A new window pops up, under the General Tab, specify the Name, Network Address, Net Mask and switch to NAT tab

Select Add automatic address rules and Hide behind Gateway option

You can see the LAN_Network object created

Create two new rules, add the source as LAN_NETWORK and destination ANY for any Service whereas in the next rule let the source and destination be Any and the service to be http

The Hide NAT rule should look as below,

To push the Configuration from Management Console to the Firewall Module, from the top menu options, select Policy and click on Install.

This displays the available Firewall Modules (if multiple firewall modules are present, here as of now only one), Selece the Firewall module and clock on OK. It starts installing the policies and configuration to the selected firewall module

If all the configurations and policies installed are proper then it will shows Installation completed successfully.

STATIC NAT
To configure the STATIC NAT we require two nodes, one for the available public ip and another for the internal private ip of the Server (It can be any server like web, ftp, smtp etc...) On the left panel, Network Objects tab which is the first tab, right click on Nodes and select Host

Specify the name and ip address of the Server in use

On the NAT tab select Add Automatic Translation rules and specify the free Public address available,

Creat another Node in the same way as explained above,

Both the newly created nodes appear under the Nodes option

Rules should look like as shown below,

Static NAT for different Services

To perform Static NAT behind a single Public IP to different Private IPs in a DMZ based upon the services, we look at a sample configuration. In the below example, Go to NAT tab and add manual static NAT rules according to the requirement.

Below example shows the Manual Hide NAT configuration, once you drag and drop the public server object a window pops up asking to choose from the two options as shown below,

The Manual Hide NAT rule looks as below,

Authentication
Select the Users tab from the left panel, right click on the Users container and select the new user and the default option

Specify the login username on the General Tab as shown below,

Go to Authentication Tab and select Check Point Password

Fill in the password fields ,

Now we create group and add user in this group. On the left panel users tab, right click the User Groups container and click on New Group

Specify the Group name

Select each user and add them to the group, including generic user

The user is added into the group and we can see the Group Lan_Users_Group displayed in the left panel

Creating Rule: A new rule should be created between stealth and clean up rule as shown below, Right click on the Source section and select Add User/Access Rule option,

Specify the name and select Specific networks option.

Add the LAN_NETWORK under specific networks and click OK.

Select the service according to the authentication scheme and on the actions tab right click go to Legacy and select User Auth

Once rule is created, under Action double click on the User Auth select All Servers. Install the Policy to enable authentication.

External authentication:
We look at the example of enabling authentication using TACACS+ server as an external source. To create TACACS+ server on checkpoint first we create a Node .

In the Network Objects tab create a node, defining the IP address of the TACACS+ server

Once done you will see TACACS+ server listed under Nodes option

Go to Server and OPSEC Applications tab, right click on the Servers option, select New and click on TACACS

Specify a name for the TACACS+ Server and for the Host option select the node that was created to specify the TACACS+ Server and select the type as TACACS+ and mention the secret key

Now on the Left panel users Tab, right click on External User Profiles go to New External User Profile and select Match all users

A new window opens up,

Go to Authentication tab and select TACACS as the Authentication Scheme:

Create a General user on the left panel users, we already have a user created, right click the username and click on Edit

A window opens up, go to Authentication and select the Authentication scheme as TACACS and select the TACACS Server

Creating Rule: Create the rule as explained in the User authentication process, Select the service according to the authentication scheme and on the actions tab right click go to Legacy and select Session Auth

The rule should look as below,

Now we go got client auth, here we need a client software to be installed on the users machine for auth to happen, the configuration required to setup will be same as explained above, the action tab will be having Client Auth in it. To see the sub configuration under the Client auth you need to double click on it and configure accordingly.

The rule should look as below,

Active Directory Integration with Checkpoint

To setup authentication using the user information stored in the LDAP server, the configuration is as below:

This opens a new window as below; where we need to create a new template

Provide name for the Template and select the auth as checkpoint password

We can see that a new template by name LDAP_Template is listed as below:

Create LDAP Server Node under the objects tree

Provide the necessary details for the creation of LDAP server node

Create an LDAP account unit under the servers tab

Provide the necessary details for the LDAP account unit and make sure that Microsoft_AD is selected from the dropdown and provide the domain name on which LDAP server is configured

Under the Servers tab of LDAP account unit, provide the LDAP server admin user name and password. Login DN contains the info as below: CN=administrator,CN=users,DC=netmetric,DC=com

Once completed LDAP server will be listed as below

Go to Objects management Tab and click on Fetch branches, by doing this the Domain information will be pulled from the LDAP server

Under Authentication tab, select the LDAP template which was created initially

Go to Manage > Users and Administrators and create a new LDAP group

Under the account unit of this LDAP group, Select the LDAP Account unit we create above

We can see new objects for LDAP Template, LDAP Group and LDAP account unit are created under the objects tree

Write a Rule by specifying the LDAP group under the source column as below

If we want a session authentication agent to pop up on the users machine upon the authentication challenge, the client Auth settings will be as below, this window opens after double clicking on the client auth under action tab as below:

IPSec VPN
To configure the IPSec VPN we need to go to Network Objects tab, right click the CP module and click on Edit

Enable the IPSec VPN option under Network Security tab,

To create an IPSec VPN between Checkpoint Firewalls right click on Checkpoint under Network objects and select Externally Managed VPN Gateway

A new window opens up, enter the Remote Checkpoint Gateway name and its ip address and verify the OS option, in this case we are using SecurePlatform (in short SPLAT)

Go to the Topology option, select Manually defined and select the remote network object

You will see a new Gateway created under the Network objects,

To create a VPN between Checkpoint and non checkpoint firewall, right click on the Network objects and uncheck Do not show empty folders

Right click on the Interoperable Devices and click on Interoperable Device,

A window opens up, Specify the name and ip address of the remote firewall

Go to Topology option and select Manually defined and select the remote network object

Now, we can see the non checkpoint firewall listed under Interoperable Devices,

Select the VPN community tab and right click on Site to Site, go to New Site to Site and click on Meshed

A window opens up, specify the community name,

On the Participating tab, click on Add and select all the Firewalls,

On the Encryption tab, select the appropriate Encryption Method and Encryption Suite

Under the Shared Secret tab, select each firewall and click on Edit and specify the shared secret key

Under Advanced VPN options, select the appropriate DH groups and check Disable NAT inside the VPN community

Create a Rule above the Stealth Rule and specify source and destination, under VPN section right click and select Edit cell

Select, only connections encrypted in specific VPN communities

Policy should look like this, Note: This security policy comes above the Stealth Rule.

Remote Access SSL VPN

To configure the Remote Access VPN we need to go to Network Objects tab, right click the CP module and click on Edit

Enable the Mobile Access option under Network Security tab,

Once you click on the Mobile access option, below window pops up

Selecting a Demo application for testing

Creating a Test User

Specifying a URL to be used for a Remote Access VPN connection

Write a Policy as shown below,