IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Safeguard Catalogue - Communications Remarks
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administrator as, otherwise, unsupervised changes to the WINS configuration
are possible.
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
SNMP is used for supervision and administration of a TCP/IP-based network.
The SNMP service is installed if the appropriate options are selected when
installing Windows NT TCP/IP. Following installation the SNMP service
must be configured with valid information for SNMP to be operational.
Only members of the administrator group of the local computer may configure
SNMP. During configuration, Communities and Trap-Targets will be defined:
- A Community is a group of hosts to which one server belongs which
executes the SNMP service. The Windows NT system on which SNMP has
been installed will send Traps to one or more entered Communities. The
name of the community will be recorded in the SNMP packet when
sending Traps. If the SNMP service receives a request which does not
contain the correct Community name and does not correspond to any of the
accepted hosts, the SNMP service can send a trap to the Trap-Target(s)
drawing attention to the fact that the confirmation of authenticity failed.
- Trap-Targets are the names or IP addresses of hosts to whom the SNMP
service will send traps, i.e. messages of pre-defined events, with the
selected Community names.
Note: In principal, SNMP should be configured in such a way that it only
accepts requests from the defined Communities (and if possible not the predefined
Community public).
SNMP security allows Communities and Hosts to be defined from which a
computer accepts requests. Furthermore, it can be defined whether a
confirmation of authenticity Trap is sent if a Community or Host requests
information without authority. These determinations must be carefully
planned and the possibility to send Traps must be used. The resulting logs
must be checked regularly.
Additional controls:
- Are only the minimal necessary network services installed / activated?
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IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000