PDF HPE6-A84 Study Guide

A beacon is a type of network traffic that is sent from a compromised device to a command and control (C2) server, which is a remote system that controls the malicious activities of the device . A beacon is used to establish and maintain communication between the device and the C2 server, as well as to receive instructions or exfiltrate data .

A common characteristic of a beacon is that it is periodic, meaning that it is sent at regular intervals, such as every few minutes or hours . This helps the C2 server to monitor the status and availability of the device, as well as to avoid detection by network security tools .

Another common characteristic of a beacon is that it is small and identically sized, meaning that it contains minimal or fixed amount of data, such as a simple acknowledgment or a random string . This helps the device to conserve bandwidth and resources, as well as to avoid detection by network security tools .

According to the AOS-CX Switches Multiple Vulnerabilities1, one of the vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-41001) affects the Telnet service on AOS-CX switches. This vulnerability allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to cause a denial-of-service condition on the switch by sending specially crafted Telnet packets. The impact of this vulnerability is high, as it could result in a loss of management access and network disruption. Therefore, one immediate remediation that you should recommend is to disable Telnet on the switch. This way, the switch can prevent any malicious Telnet traffic from reaching it and avoid the exploitation of this vulnerability.

The correct answer is B. Create a new VLAN on the AOS-CX switch and configure that VLAN as the UBT client VLAN.

User-based tunneling (UBT) is a feature that allows the AOS-CX switches to tunnel the traffic from wired clients to a mobility gateway cluster, where they can be assigned a role and a VLAN based on their authentication and authorization 1. To enable UBT, the switches need to have a UBT zone configured with the IP addresses of the gateways, and a UBT client VLAN configured with the ubt-client-vlan command 2.

The UBT client VLAN is a special VLAN that is used to encapsulate the traffic from the tunneled clients before sending it to the gateways. The UBT client VLAN must be different from any other VLANs used on the switch or the network, and it must not be assigned to any ports or interfaces on the switch 2. The UBT client VLAN is only used internally by the switch for UBT, and it is not visible to the clients or the gateways.

In this scenario, the customer wants to tunnel the clients that pass user authentication to the gateway cluster, where they will be assigned to VLAN 20. Therefore, the switch must have a UBT client VLAN configured that is different from VLAN 20 or any other VLANs on the network. For example, the switch can use VLAN 4000 as the UBT client VLAN, as shown in one of the web search results 3. The switch must also have a UBT zone configured with the system IP addresses of the gateways as the primary and backup controllers, as explained in question 3.

The other options are not correct or relevant for this issue:

• Option A is not correct because assigning VLAN 20 as the access VLAN on any edge ports to which tunneled clients might connect would conflict with UBT. The access VLAN is the VLAN that is assigned to untagged traffic on a port, and it is used for local switching on the switch 4. If VLAN 20 is assigned as the access VLAN, then the traffic from the clients will not be tunneled to the gateways, but rather switched locally on VLAN 20. This would defeat the purpose of UBT and cause inconsistency in role and VLAN assignment.
• Option C is not correct because VIA licenses are not required for UBT. VIA licenses are required for enabling VPN services on Aruba Mobility Controllers for remote access clients using Aruba Virtual Intranet Access (VIA) software . VIA licenses are not related to UBT or wired clients.
• Option D is not correct because changing the port-access auth-mode mode to client-mode on any edge ports to which tunneled clients might connect would not affect UBT. The port-access auth-mode mode determines how a port handles authentication requests from multiple clients connected to a single port . Client-mode is the default mode that allows only one client per port, while multi-client-mode allows multiple clients per port. The port-access auth-mode mode does not affect how UBT works or how traffic is tunneled from a port.

The UBT solution requires that the VLAN assignments for the wired clients are done by the gateway, not by the switch. Therefore, the role configurations on the gateways should not have any VLAN assignments, as they would override the VLAN 20 that is specified in the enforcement profile. Instead, the role configurations should only have policies that define the access rights for the clients in the “eth-internet” role. This way, the gateway can assign the clients to VLAN 20 and apply the appropriate policies based on their role1