Configure Certificate-Based Administrator Authentication on a Palo Alto Networks Firewall

Source

As a “more secure” alternative to password-based authentication to the firewall web interface, you can configure certificate-based authentication for administrator accounts that are local to the firewall. Certificate-based authentication involves the exchange and verification of a digital signature instead of a password.
Configuring certificate-based authentication for any administrator disables the username/password logins for all administrators on the firewall; administrators thereafter require the certificate to log in.
To avoid any issues I created a snapshot of the PA VM. This took out my internet for roughly 30 seconds or so.

Step 1) Generate a certificate authority (CA) certificate on the firewall.
You will use this CA certificate to sign the client certificate of each administrator.
Create a Self-Signed Root CA Certificate.
Alternatively, Import a Certificate and Private Key from your enterprise CA or a third-party CA.

I do have a PKI I can use but no specfic key-pair that’s nice for this purpose, for the ease of testing I’ll create a local CA cert on the PAN FW.

Step 2) Configure a certificate profile for securing access to the web interface.
Configure a Certificate Profile.
Set the Username Field to Subject.
In the CA Certificates section, Add the CA Certificate you just created or imported.

Now for ease of use and testing I’m not defining CRL or OCSP.

Step 3) Configure the firewall to use the certificate profile for authenticating administrators.
Select Device -> Setup – > Management and edit the Authentication Settings.
Select the Certificate Profile you created for authenticating administrators and click OK.

Step 4) Configure the administrator accounts to use client certificate authentication.
For each administrator who will access the firewall web interface, Configure a Firewall Administrator Account and select Use only client certificate authentication.
If you have already deployed client certificates that your enterprise CA generated, skip to Step 8. Otherwise, go to Step 5.

Step 5) Generate a client certificate for each administrator.
Generate a Certificate. In the Signed By drop-down, select a self-signed root CA certificate.

Step 6) Export the client certificate.
Export a Certificate and Private Key. (I saved as pcks12, with a password)
Commit your changes. The firewall restarts and terminates your login session. Thereafter, administrators can access the web interface only from client systems that have the client certificate you generated.

File was in my downloads folder.

Step 7)Import the client certificate into the client system of each administrator who will access the web interface.

Refer to your web browser documentation. I am using windows, so I’m assuming the browser (Edge) will use the windows store, so I installed it to my user cert store by simply double clicking the file and providing the password in the import wizard prompt. Then checked my local user cert store.
Time to commit and see what happens…
as soon as I committed I got a prompt for the cert:
If I open a new InPrivate window and don’t offer the certificate I get blocked:
If I provide the certificate the usual FBA login page loads.
So now any access to the firewall requires the use of this key, and a known login creds. Though the notice stated it “disables the username/password logins for all administrators on the firewall” my testing showed that not to be true, it simply locks down access to the FBA page requiring the user of the created certificate.