Mysterious Palo Alto firewall reboots? You're not alone

Administrators of Palo Alto Networks' firewalls have complained the equipment falls over unexpectedly, and while a fix has bee prepared, it's not yet generally available. Multiple customers have reported that some hardware running version 11.1.4-h7/h9 of PAN-OS, the software that powers Palo Alto’s firewalls, reboot at random moments. "We have had three of our eight firewalls unexpectedly reboot in the past few months," observed one netizen. We know having firewalls mysteriously spontaneously reboot is not ideal. These strange failures can be interpreted as something more malicious going on, such as some security bug exploitation or an intrusion, or something as frustrating as an intermittent hardware fault. A glitching firewall can therefore be taken as a sign of something serious and such false alarms are not what overworked and stressed defenders need. Thankfully there's a fix. Palo Alto told The Register a patch is available albeit as a limited release at the moment, and that the restarts are caused by specific network traffic. "The hotfix 11.1.4-h12, which resolves the unexpected reboot issue, was initially shipped with limited availability on January 31. This version was made available to customers requiring immediate resolution, accessible through their account team," a spokesperson told us. "We are currently validating an additional unrelated regression fix in hotfix 11.1.4-h13. Our goal is to release this as a generally available (GA) update by February 20 or sooner....