Fortiguard Download Down

[Elwanda Menhennett]

Ifall servers in the list have F(ailed), this may mean either all FortiGuard servers on the Fortinet side are down (unlikely), or that this FortiGate has a problem reaching them at the network level.

With Anycast, FortiGate is only aware of one single server IP. This is a floating IP address that will connect to the closest server geographically, and if this server is down, it will point to another server instead. With Unicast, the FortiGate must maintain a list of servers that it tries and if one stops working it then switches over to another.

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The Fortinet Security Fabric brings together the concepts of convergence and consolidation to provide comprehensive cybersecurity protection for all users, devices, and applications and across all network edges.

but if you use the dns of fortiguard it would not be advantageous since if the fortiguard servers go down, you would have problems browsing the internet. It seems to me that two months ago there was a problem so the dns of fortiguard fell.

While it is not strictly speaking "advised against" using FortiGuard DNS servers for regular DNS queries, there are simply no benefits to using them. The common sense, on the other hand, will tell us that the disadvantages would be:

Most critical of them is Web Filter rating query - if your Fortigate cannot get answer what category the web site belongs to, access to this web site will be blocked by default. It means that if for any reason Fortigate cannot reach Fortiguard servers and it has security rules with Web Filtering by Category configured - those rules will BLOCK users access to ANY website, not just malicious ones.

First, check status of license/subscription and FortiGuard connection status in System -> FortiGuard - the Web Filtering status should be in green. This checks subscription license status, but not always detects connection to the FortiGuard status. If you see it red, it is most probably a license/subscription issue to be checked with Fortinet TAC, as subscription checks are done once in a while and are cached. To check actual connectivity to the FortiGuard servers - on the same page, under Filtering subsection, there is Test Connectivity button to push. It should return status as Up/green. Also pay attention to the widget on the same page in the right bottom corner FortiGuard Filter Rating Servers, it shows real time stats and IP addresses of the servers the Fortigate is trying to reach. If timings are unusually high and in red, there could be network connectivity problem, we will look at next.

Even better check is to run ping exe ping to all the hostnames above to see if the Fortigate can resolve AND can reach them. The most important of them being service.fortiguard.net.

Here:

Status - shows if Web Filtering as a service is enabled.

Protocol - via what protocol this Fortigate is trying to reach FortiGuard servers (more on this below).

Anycast - whether this Fortigate is trying to reach Anycast servers of FortiGuard (more on this below).

Server List - actual list of FortiGuard servers that this Fortigate was/is trying to reach. Here most important is status legend:

- F: failed, bad - Fortigate tried few times to reach this server to no avail. Note that it is bad only if ALL servers in the list have this status. It is OK if only few of the servers are unreachable.

- D: this server was successfully resolved from FQDN to its IP address, but it does not indicate its reachability yet.

- I: server to which Fortigate tries to initiate connection, most frequently goes with D,it does not indicate if a server is working or not yet.

- T: server was found, it answered, and is now being "timed", i.e. its answer time/RTT is being measured.

- TZ: Time Zone, while not a status indicator, Fortigate tries and prefers servers with the least time zone difference in hope of geographic proximity. Therefore, it is quite important to set correctly the time zone for your Fortigate.

Fortigate communicates for its functions with just one server at a time - the one on top of the list. The rest of the servers are being constantly monitored and their RTT, and packet loss measured. If the top-list server fails, it will be replaced with the next best one and so on. We do not have capability to influence this server list manually.

So if all servers in the list have F(ailed), what do we do next?. This may mean either all Fortiguard servers at the Fortinet side are down (less likely), or that this Fortigate has the problem of reaching them at the network level.

Fortigate can use several ports to talk to Fortiguard servers (or Fortiguard Distribution Network as they call it) - 53, 8888, 443, the default being 8888. The port 53 is a well known DNS protocol/port, only that Fortigate uses proprietary UDP/53 obfuscated/encrypted protocol to query the servers, and for this reason some IPS/anti-DDoS/etc protections on the way from Fortigate to FortiGuard may mark such traffic as malicious and drop it. You can check if it is the case by going to System -> FortiGuard -> Filtering and change (if set so) from port 53 to port 8888. On newer FortiOS versions (6.4 and up) they moved this to CLI only: config sys fortiguard then set port 538888443. So, as first debug measure it is recommended to try all possible ports and see if status of connection to the FortiGuard servers changes. Note about protocol I mentioned before - in 6.4 and newer they added option to force the communication to FortiGuard servers to be a valid HTTPS traffic, which is most likely to pass the Internet successfully. For this you have to enable it (in addition to setting port to 443) via CLI: config sys fortiguard, then set protocol https end.

Important note if you have VDOMs enabled - all communication to the Fortiguard network is initiated from management/root VDOM only! The frequent human error I've seen - someone by mistake changes management domain to the VDOM that has no/limited access to the Internet and as a consequence, it cannot reach FortiGuard network. Very common, indeed. To verify who is the management VDOM:

Anycast servers - starting with FortiOS 6.4 the default setting to reach FortiGuard is anycast. The intention was good - to improve reachability of FortiGuard servers, but unfortunately the implementation did not live up to the expectations. More often than not it actually creates a problem in reaching the Fortinet servers. It may improve in the future, but for now my advice is to disable anycast and switch back to unicast servers. You do so in CLI:

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Aamir: Some of the fundamentals of cybersecurity still apply today as they did years ago, hygiene and training for example, but what I have seen in recent years is an increase in sophistication from cybercriminals. Attackers are starting off with enumeration techniques, attempting to establish persistence, escalating privileges, and injecting additional systems within an organization as their basic attack. Some recent ransomware attacks have had significant reconnaissance involved. Other attacks have had complex anti-analysis techniques built into them from the start. These are not ordinary or average attacks. It is important to also callout that even if some attacks are sophisticated, not all are of course. As we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the recent attacks have been fairly mundane in terms of techniques used.

Aamir: To add to that, through the continuous gathering of threat information, including 5.6M+ sensors deployed worldwide, and an extensive intelligence-sharing partner community, FortiGuard Labs has access to one of the broadest sets of threat data resources in the industry. This is an important point when you are tracking the amount of threats that are out there on a daily basis. You cannot block 64 million phishing attempts per day or thwart 19 million botnet C&C attempts per minute without it. Another important point is the personal aspect that defenders bring to the organization. Many of us have been affected by cyberattacks in some way. We have seen systems that have been compromised, malware that has propagrated within organizations, or have known someone who has experienced ransomware. We know the frustrations, fear, and annoyance that is felt when you have been attacked. With hundreds of like-minded individuals on the team, the drive to find and stop attacks multiplies as the entire team gets motivated into finding and stopping attacks.

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