Source Of Information

Just to prevent any confusion. Administration Guides, Release Notes, and Data Sheets are directly from Fortinet. Apparently, someone believed that I was trying to pass this as my own original insight. Let’s face it, this site is 2 months old. There is no way I put over 2,000 pages of original content on this site in that time frame. Lets not be silly. That being said, original Fortinet GURU specific content is in fact posted here and will grow as the site develops. We take our experiences and post them here to provide insight while at the same time post reference material from Fortinet. Not everyone knows how to get their hands on the official Fortinet text and this site helps people find that information via the internet.

So in case anyone else out there is butt hurt, Nope, not all of this is mine, in fact, a very small bit of it so far is. I’m also not going to reinvent the wheel. Fortinet invented this stuff and developed documentation that explains in a pretty good manner how to handle various situations. I guess I could just read each paragraph and then reword it but that’s retarded.

So there you have it folks. The Administration Guides for each product, Release notes, and various other items that look like they are straight from Fortinet it is because they are. I thought that was pretty obvious but some people just need that shit spelled out. I am in no way trying to take credit for their work nor am I interested in you not visiting their sites. That is why I have them linked from the side bar and much of the content on this site has links to Fortinet directly in the content!


Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!

Fortinet GURU Community

I am seriously considering opening up a forum for visitors to surf and ask questions on. I know, I know, Fortinet already has a support forum. Yeah, well I want one that is better. There, I said it. Anyways, comment below and let me know what your thoughts are on this. I think it would, at the very least, be fun. A community of assholes that love working on Fortinet gear and getting the most out of their equipment. What could go wrong?


Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!

I deserve more Fortinet SWAG

I feel as though I do a lot for Fortinet. True, I don’t work directly for them. I do help their customers utilize their hardware though. Oh well, Saturday night rants for grown men aren’t that interesting. A big Fortinet banner would look fly as hell in my office though. I tried to steal some from the Fortinet Global Partner Conference back in 2015…..but let’s face it. I was entirely too drunk the entire trip to pull that off.


Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!

Route based VPN is WAY better than Policy based VPN

I am in the middle of helping a client absorb one of their clients. This involves moving all of the client’s client’s (redundant I know) IPSec tunnels into my clients FortiGate. This is all fine and dandy. I do IPSec tunnels all the time. Unfortunately for me though, my client’s client utilizes policy based VPN’s which work fine I suppose but jesus they are annoying. Yes, I know they do things just fine. Yes, I know they have their place. I may just be an old dog set in my ways but to me…..Route based IPSec tunnels is bae, Route based IPSec tunnels is life.


Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!

Firewall

Firewall

 

Display change in Policy listing (284027)

Alias names for interfaces, if used now appear in the headings for the Interface Pair View or what used to be called the Section View.

 

RPC over HTTP traffic separate (288526)

How protocol options profiles and SSL inspection profiles handle RPC (Remote Procedure Calls) over HTTP traffic can now be configured separately from normal HTTP traffic.

 

CLI syntax changes

config firewall profile-protocol-options edit 0

set rpc-over-http {disable | enable}

end

 

config firewall ssl-ssh-profile edit deep-inspection

set rpc-over-http {disable | enable}

end

 

Disable Server Response Inspection supported (274458)

Disable Server Response Inspection (DSRI) option included in Firewall Policy (CLI only) to assist performance when only using URL filtering as it allows the system to ignore the http server responses.

CLI syntax for changing the status of the DSRI setting:

conf firewall policy|policy6 edit NNN

set dsri enable/disable end

conf firewall interface-policy|interface-policy6 edit NNN

set dsri enable/disable end

conf firewall sniffer edit NNN

set dsri enable/disable end

 

Policy counter improvements (277555 260743 172125)

  • implicit deny policy counter added
  • first-hit time tracked for each policy
  • “Hit count” is tracked for each policy (total number of new sessions since last reset)
  • Most counters now persist across reboots

 

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) (247622)

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) protocol support has been added to Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM), to detect failures between forwarding engines.

 

TCP sessions can be created without TCP syn flag checking (236078)

A Per-VDOM option is avaialble to enable or disable the creation of TCP sessions without TCP syn flag checking

 

Mirroring of traffic decrypted by SSL inspection (275458)

This feature sends a copy of traffic decrypted by SSL inspection to one or more FortiGate interfaces so that it can be collected by raw packet capture tool for archiving and analysis.

This feature is available if the inspection mode is set to flow-based. Use the following command to enable this feature in a policy. The following command sends all traffic decrypted by the policy to the FortiGate port1 and port2 interfaces.

conf firewall policy edit 1

set ssl-mirror enable/disable set ssl-mirror-intf port1 port2

next

 

Support for full cone NAT (269939)

Full cone NAT maps a public IP address and port to a LAN IP address and port. This means that a device on the Internet can send data to the internal LAN IP address and port number by directing it a the external IP address and port number. Sending to the correct IP address but a different port will cause the communication to fail. This type of NAT is also known as port forwarding.

Full cone NATing is configured only in the CLI. It is done by properly configuring an IP pool for the NATing of an external IP address. The two important settings are:

  • set type – it must be set to port-block-allocation to use full cone
  • set permit-any-host – enabling it is what enables full cone NAT An example fo the IP pool configuration would be:

config firewall ippool edit “full_cone-pool1”

set type port-block-allocation set startip 10.1.1.1

set endip 10.1.1.1

set permit-any-host enable end

 

Enable or disable inspecting IPv4 and IPv6 ICMP traffic (258734)

There is now a system setting that determines if ICMP traffic can pass through a Fortigate even if there is no existing sesson.

config sytem settings

set asymroute-icmp enable set asymroute6-imap enable

end

When feature enabled:

  • Allows ICMP or ICMPv6 reply traffic can pass through firewall when there is no session existing – asmetric routing case.
  • Prevents TCP ACK messages from passing through the firewall when there is no session existing.

 

When feature disabled:

Prevents ICMP or ICMPv6 replies from passing through firewall when there is no session existing.


Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!

Explicit web proxy

Explicit web proxy

New explicit proxy firewall address types (284753)

New explicit proxy firewall address types improve granularity over header matching for explicit web proxy policies. You can enable this option using the Show in Address List button on the Address and Address Group New/Edit forms under Policy & Objects > Addresses.

The following new address types have been added:

  • URL Pattern – destination address
  • Host Regex Match – destination address
  • URL Category – destination address (URL filtering)
  • HTTP Method – source address
  • User Agent – source address
  • HTTP Header – source address
  • Advanced (Source) – source address (combines User Agent, HTTP Method, and HTTP Header)
  • Advanced (Destination) – destination address (combines Host Regex Match and URL Category)

 

Disclaimer messages can be added to explicit proxy policies (273208)

Disclaimer options are now available for each explicit proxy policy or split policy of ID-based policy. This feature allows you to create user exceptions for specific URL categories (including warning messages) based on user groups.

The Disclaimer Options are configured under Policy & Objects > Explicit Proxy Policy. You can also configure a disclaimer for each Authentication Rule by setting Action to Authenticate.


Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!

Diagnose command changes

Diagnose command changes

Most diagnose sys dashboard commands removed (129248)

The diagnose sys dashboard reset command is still available.

 

FortiView network segmentation tree diagnose command (286116)

Enter diagnose sys nst {downstream | query} to display information about the FortiView network segmentation tree, downstream shows connected downstream FortiGates.

query query the network segmentation tree.

 

Changes to diagnose hardware deviceinfo disk command (271816)

Extraneous information has been removed from the diagnose hardware deviceinfo disk command output and some field names have been changed.


Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!

Device identification

Device identification

802.1x Mac Authentication Bypass (197218)

Some FortiGate models contain a hardware switch. On the hardware switch interface, 802.1X authentication is available. You might want to bypass 802.1X authentication for devices such as printers that cannot authenticate, identifying them by their MAC address.

In the CLI, enable MAC authentication bypass on the interface:

config system interface edit “lan”

set ip 10.0.0.200 255.255.255.0 set security-mode 802.1X

set security-mac-auth-bypass enable set security-groups “Radius-group”

end

The devices that bypass authentication have entries in the RADIUS database with their MAC address in the User- Name and User-Password attributes instead of user credentials.

Vulnerability Scan status change(293156)

The FortiGate will no longer function as a vulnerability scanner, even in CLI mode. Vulnerability scans / assessments will handled by the FortiClient software.

FortiFone devices are now identified by FortiOS (289921)

FortiFone devices are now identified by FortiOS as Fortinet FON.

Support for MAC Authentication Bypass (MAB) (197218)

MAC Authentication Bypass allows devices without 802.1X capability (printers and IP phones for example) to bypass authentication and be allowed network access based on their MAC address. This feature requires RADIUS-based 802.1X authentication in which the RADIUS server contains a database of authorized MAC addresses.

MAC Authentication Bypass is configurable only in the CLI and only on interfaces configured for 802.1X authentication. For example:

config system interface edit “lan”

set ip 10.0.0.200 255.255.255.0 set vlanforward enable

set security-mode 802.1X

set security-mac-auth-bypass enable set security-groups “Radius-group”

end end

MAC Authentication Bypass is also available on WiFi SSIDs, regardless of authentication type. It is configurable only in the CLI. You need to enable the radius-mac-auth feature and specify the RADIUS server that will be used. For example:

config wireless-controller vap edit “office-ssid”

set security wpa2-only-enterprise set auth usergroup

set usergroup “staff”

set radius-mac-auth enable

set radius-mac-auth-server “ourRadius” end

end

 

Active device identification (279278)

Hosts whose device type cannot be determined passively are actively scanned using the same techniques as the vulnerability scan. This active scanning is enabled by default on models that support vulnerability scanning. You can turn off Active Scanning on any interface. In the GUI, go to the interface’s page in Network > Interfaces.

 

CLI Syntax:

config system interface edit port1

set device-identification enable

set device-identification-active-scan disable end

 

 

Device Page Improvements (Detected and custom devices) (280271)

Devices are now in two lists on the User & Device menu. Detected devices are listed in the Device List where you can list them alphabetically, by type, or by interface. On the Custom Devices and Groups page you can

  • create custom device groups
  • predefine a device, assigning its device type and adding it to custom device groups

 

Device offline timeout is adjustable (269104)

A device is considered offline if it has not sent any packets during the timeout period. Prior to FortiOS 5.4, the timeout value was fixed at 90 seconds. Now the timeout can be set to any value from 30 to 31 536 000 seconds (365 days). The default value is 300 seconds (5 minutes). The timer is in the CLI:

config system global

set device-idle-timeout 300 end

 

Improved detection of FortiOS-VM devices (272929)

A FortiGate-VM device is an instance of FortiOS running on a virtual machine (VM). The host computer does not have the Fortinet MAC addresses usually used to detect FortiGate units. Device detection now has two additional ways to detect FortiGate-VMs:

  • the FortiGate vendor ID in FortiOS IKE messages
  • the FortiGate device ID in FortiGuard web filter and spamfilter requests

 

Custom avatars for custom devices (299795)

You can upload an avatar for a custom device. The avatar is then displayed in the GUI wherever the device is listed, such as FortiView, log viewer, or policy configuration. To upload an avatar image,click Upload Image on the New Device or Edit Device page of User & Device > Custom Devices & Groups. The image can be in any format your browser supports and will be automatically sized to 36 x 36 pixels for use in the FortiGate GUI.

 


Having trouble configuring your Fortinet hardware or have some questions you need answered? Check Out The Fortinet Guru Youtube Channel! Want someone else to deal with it for you? Get some consulting from Fortinet GURU!