By Manny Fernandez

May 26, 2024

Cisco Wildcard Objects in FortiOS

Recently, I was working with a customer that had a lot of Cisco wildcard addresses in access-lists they were using for both firewall rules as well as route-maps.  To create these on the FortiOS, you need to do it via the CLI only.

From the cli, type the following command config firewall address this will get you to the addresses section.  You will need to create a new entry by typing the keyword edit followed by the name of the object you want to create, in my example Cisco-WildCard.

config firewall address 
   edit Cisco-WildCard
     new entry 'Cisco-WildCard' added
     set type wildcard 
     set wildcard 10.0.0.0 0.16.255.255
     set comment "Cisco Wildcard in FortiOS"
end

This object can be used in various locations of the FortiGate such as Firewall Policies .

Sometimes it is tricky to understand what you are letting in or blocking based on these wildcard addresses.  When I was a big Cisco guy I used some pretty crazy ones.  When creating FortiOS access-list for routing, you can enter the Wildcard mask directly into those sections.

I use sipcalc with Homebrew on my macOS.

[CIDR]
Host address - 10.1.0.0
Host address (decimal) - 167837696
Host address (hex) - A010000
Network address - 10.1.0.0
Network mask - 255.255.255.224
Network mask (bits) - 27
Network mask (hex) - FFFFFFE0
Broadcast address - 10.1.0.31
Cisco wildcard - 0.0.0.31
Addresses in network - 32
Network range - 10.1.0.0 - 10.1.0.31
Usable range - 10.1.0.1 - 10.1.0.30

As you can see above, the wild card is 255-%the-masked-bits% (255-224=31)

Hope this helps

Recent posts

  • If you've spent any time configuring user authentication on... Full Story

  • DNS is one of those technologies that quietly underpins... Full Story

  • BGP issues on FortiGate firewalls usually trace back to... Full Story

  • Every time your laptop talks to your router, a... Full Story

  • If you've spent any time configuring NAT on a... Full Story

  • If you have spent any time configuring firewall policies... Full Story

  • High availability on FortiGate is one of those features... Full Story

  • If you've configured SD-WAN on a FortiGate, you've almost... Full Story

  • FortiLink is the management protocol that turns a FortiSwitch... Full Story

  • FortiSwitches are pretty rock solid from Mean Time Between... Full Story

  • This is a quicky tip.  Have you ever gone... Full Story

  • DNS is one of those quiet pieces of internet... Full Story

  • This article is an updated version of the previous... Full Story

  • You will add ns2 as a secondary (slave) BIND9... Full Story

  • In the process of deploying my lab, I needed... Full Story

  • RFC 8805, used to be known as Self-Correcting IP... Full Story

  • Years back, I wrote an article about certificate pinning. ... Full Story

  • FortiGates have the ability to send alerts to Microsoft... Full Story

  • In this post, I am going to walk through... Full Story

  • Troubleshooting VoIP on a FortiGate can feel like trying... Full Story

  • Prior to FortiOS 7.0, there were three commands to... Full Story

  • In this post, I am going to go over... Full Story

  • What we are going to do:  We are going... Full Story

  • Choosing between FGCP (FortiGate Clustering Protocol) and FGSP (FortiGate... Full Story

  • Creating a VLAN on macOS (The "Pro" Move) A... Full Story

  • This blog post explores the logic behind how macOS... Full Story

  • Pretty Fly for a Wi-Fi Tell My Wi-Fi Love... Full Story

  • Part of my daily gig is creating BoMs (Bill-of-Materials)... Full Story

  • ICMP introduces several security risks, but careful filtering, rate... Full Story

  • The command diag debug application dhcps -1 enables full... Full Story

  • In the world of FortiOS, execute tac report is... Full Story

  • LLDP; What is it The Link Layer Discovery Protocol... Full Story

  • What it actually does When you run diagnose fdsm... Full Story

  • Monkey Bites are bite-sized, high-impact security insights designed for... Full Story

  • I have run macOS in macOS with Parallels but... Full Story

  • Don't be confused with my other FortiNAC posts where... Full Story

  • This is the third session in a multi-part article... Full Story

  • Today I was configuring key-based authentication on a FortiGate... Full Story

  • Netcat, often called the "Swiss Army knife" of networking,... Full Story

  • At its core, IEEE 802.1X is a network layer... Full Story

  • In case you did not see the previous FortiNAC... Full Story

  • This is our 5th session where we are going... Full Story

  • Now that we have Wireshark installed and somewhat configured,... Full Story

  • The Philosophy of Packet Analysis Troubleshooting isn't about looking... Full Story

  • Overview FortiOS 8.0 introduces custom tags as a first-class... Full Story

  • These are two distinct mechanisms on FortiOS, and conflating... Full Story

  • Replacement messages are the pages and text blocks that... Full Story