Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.

Charles Bransi

John Edward McDowall

Martin Walter

Suiqiang Deng

James Sugg

Li Meng

Adoor V Balasubramanian

Steven Alsop

A virtual firewall configured with two interfaces assigned different security zones switches between Layer 3 routing and bump-in-the-wire (BITW) modes between sessions. After receiving a packet from a one-arm load balancer, an inner header is determined based on decapsulation which removes an outer header. A route lookup is performed based on the inner header to determine whether to communicate packets of the session with Layer 3 routing or according to the BITW model. The result of the route lookup indicates an egress interface. If the ingress and egress interfaces are the same, the firewall operates according to the BITW model for the session. If the egress and ingress interfaces are different, the firewall routes packets of the session with Layer 3 routing. Upon detection of subsequent packets, the firewall operates according to the determined mode for the session without performing additional inner header route lookups for operation mode determination.

Supporting zone-based policy enforcement for a firewall connected to a one-arm load balancer

Techniques for distributed offload leveraging different offload devices are disclosed. In some embodiments, a system, process, and/or computer program product for distributed offload leveraging different offload devices includes receiving a flow at a firewall of a security service (e.g., a cloud-based security service); inspecting the flow at the firewall to determine meta information associated with the flow; and offloading the flow to an offload entity (e.g., a SmartNIC, software executed on a Network Interface Card (NIC), and/or a network device, such as a network router and/or network switch) based on the meta information associated with the flow (e.g., an application identification associated with the flow determined using deep packet inspection) and based on a policy.

Distributed offload leveraging different offload devices

A request to establish a session with a first server is received from a client device. The first server is associated with a first hostname, and the request includes information identifying a second hostname purported to correspond to the first server. A Domain Name System (DNS) lookup using the second hostname is performed. A determination that the second hostname was spoofed by the client device is determined based on a response to the DNS lookup. In response to the determination being made that the request received from the client device includes the spoofed second hostname, a determination that the client device has injected or overridden at least one of an HTTP Host header and a Server Name Indicator in the request is made, and an action to take with respect to the client device is determined.

Hostname validation and policy evasion prevention

A request to access a network resource is received from a client device. The request includes a purported hostname of the network resource. A Domain Name System (DNS) lookup of the purported hostname is performed. A result of the lookup is used in making a determination that the request received from the client device is invalid. In response to the determination being made that the request received from the client device is invalid, an action to take with respect to the client device is determined.

A solution for tunnel path MTU discovery includes, at a first network device configured as an origination endpoint for a tunnel, storing a keep-alive packet having a size of an interface maximum transmission unit (MTU), the keep-alive packet indicating the packet should not be fragmented, the second network device configured as a termination endpoint for the tunnel. If the sending fails, the size of the keep-alive packet is iteratively changed to converge upon a path MTU, where the path MTU is the size of a largest keep-alive packet that can be sent from the first network device to the second network device without fragmentation.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Charles Bransi