V-66617

Discussion

Without confidentiality protection mechanisms, unauthorized individuals may gain access to sensitive information via a remote access session. The Advance Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm is critical to ensuring the privacy of the IKE session responsible for establishing the security association and key exchange for an IPsec tunnel. AES is used for encryption operations. Remote access is access to DoD-non-public information systems by an authorized user (or an information system) communicating through an external, non-organization-controlled network. Remote access methods include broadband and wireless connections. While there is much debate about the security and performance of AES, there is a consensus that AES is significantly more secure than other algorithms currently supported by IPsec implementations. AES is available in three key sizes: 128, 192, and 256 bits, versus the 56 bit DES. Therefore, there are approximately 1021 times more AES 128-bit keys than DES 56-bit keys. In addition, AES uses a block size of 128 bits—twice the size of DES or 3DES.

Check Content

Verify all IKE proposals are set to use the AES encryption algorithm.

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show security ike

View the value of the encryption algorithm for each defined proposal.

If the value of the encryption algorithm for any IKE proposal is not set to use an AES algorithm, this is a finding.