STIGhubSTIGhub
STIGsRMF ControlsCompare
STIGhub— A free STIG search and compliance tool·STIGs updated 3 days ago
Powered by Pylon·Privacy·Terms·© 2026 Beacon Cloud Solutions, Inc.
← Back to Cisco ACI Router Security Technical Implementation Guide

V-272098

CAT III (Low)

The Cisco ACI must be configured to use its loopback address as the source address for internal Border Gateway Protocol (iBGP) peering sessions.

Rule ID

SV-272098r1168415_rule

STIG

Cisco ACI Router Security Technical Implementation Guide

Version

V1R2

CCIs

CCI-000366

Discussion

Using a loopback address as the source address offers a multitude of uses for security, access, management, and scalability of the BGP routers. It is easier to construct appropriate ingress filters for router management plane traffic destined to the network management subnet since the source addresses will be from the range used for loopback interfaces instead of a larger range of addresses used for physical interfaces. Log information recorded by authentication and syslog servers will record the router's loopback address instead of the numerous physical interface addresses. When the loopback address is used as the source for external BGP (eBGP) peering, the BGP session will be harder to hijack since the source address to be used is not known globally, making it more difficult for a hacker to spoof an eBGP neighbor. By using traceroute, a hacker can easily determine the addresses for an eBGP speaker when the IP address of an external interface is used as the source address. The routers within the iBGP domain should also use loopback addresses as the source address when establishing BGP sessions.

Check Content

Review the switch configuration to verify a loopback address has been configured.

Tenants >> {{your_Tenant}} >> L3Out >> {{your_l3out}} >> Logical Node Profiles >> {{your_Logical_node_Profile}} >> Policy >> BGP Peer Connectivity add your loopback

If the switch does not use its loopback address as the source address for all iBGP sessions, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Configure BGP for the relevant L3Out to use the switch's loopback address as the source address for all iBGP peering. This configures the switch to use the loopback interface as the source IP for all BGP updates sent to the specified peer. 

- Navigate to Tenants >> {{your_Tenant}} >> Networking >> L3Out >> {{your_l3out}} >> Logical Node Profiles >> {{your_Logical_node_Profile}} >> Policy >> Node.
- Double click the Node(Leaf) and look for the option to select "use Router ID as loopback" or set the loopback address to which to build the BGP connection and unselect "use router ID as Loopback".

After setting the loopback address, navigate to Tenants >> {{your_Tenant}} >> L3Out >> {{your_l3out}} >> Logical Node Profiles >> {{your_Logical_node_Profile}} >> Policy >> BGP Peer Connectivity. Add the loopback.