ICMP
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ICMP

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ICMP

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) (RFC 792) is another one of the main protocols of the Internet Protocol suite; it operates at the Network layer of the OSI model. ICMP is used for diagnostic and control purposes, to send error messages about IP operations, or messages about requested services or the reachability of a host or router. Network utilities such as traceroute and ping are implemented by using various ICMP messages.
ICMP is a connectionless protocol that does not open or maintain actual sessions. However, the ICMP messages between two devices can be considered a session.
Palo Alto Networks® firewalls support ICMPv4 and ICMPv6. You can control ICMPv4 and ICMPv6 packets in several ways:
  • Create Security Policy Rules Based on ICMP and ICMPv6 Packets and select the icmp or ipv6-icmp application in the rule.
  • Configure Flood Protection, specifying the rate of ICMP or ICMPv6 connections per second (not matching an existing session) that trigger an alarm, trigger the firewall to randomly drop ICMP or ICMPv6 packets, and cause the firewall to drop ICMP or ICMPv6 packets that exceed the maximum rate.
  • Configure Packet-Based Attack Protectionpacket based attack protection:
    • For ICMP, you can drop certain types of packets or suppress the sending of certain packets.
    • For ICMPv6 packets (Types 1, 2, 3, 4, and 137), you can specify that the firewall use the ICMP session key to match a security policy rule, which determines whether the ICMPv6 packet is allowed or not. (The firewall uses the security policy rule, overriding the default behavior of using the embedded packet to determine a session match.) When the firewall drops ICMPv6 packets that match a security policy rule, the firewall logs the details in Traffic logs.