Text strings

Text strings are used to name entities in the FortiGate configuration. For example, the name of a firewall address, administrator, or interface are all text strings.

The following characters cannot be used in text strings, as they present cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities:

• “ - double quotes
• ' - single quote
• > - greater than
• < - less than

Most GUI text fields prevent XSS vulnerable characters from being added.

VDOM names and hostnames can only use numbers (0-9), letters (a-z and A-Z), dashes, and underscores.

The tree CLI command can be used to view the number of characters allowed in a name field. For example, entering the following commands show that a firewall address name can contain up to 79 characters, while its FQDN can contain 255 characters:

# tree firewall address
-- [address] --*name    (79)
             |- uuid 
             |- subnet 
             |- type 
             |- route-tag       (0,4294967295)
             |- sub-type 
             |- clearpass-spt 
             |- [macaddr] --*macaddr    (127)
             |- start-ip 
             |- end-ip 
             |- fqdn    (255)
             |- country         (2)
             |- wildcard-fqdn   (255)
             |- cache-ttl       (0,86400)
             |- wildcard 
             |- sdn     (35)
             |- [fsso-group] --*name    (511)
             |- interface       (35)
             |- tenant  (35)
             |- organization    (35)
             |- epg-name        (255)
             |- subnet-name     (255)
             |- sdn-tag         (15)
             |- policy-group    (15)
             |- obj-tag         (255)
             |- obj-type 
             |- tag-detection-level     (15)
             |- tag-type        (63)
             |- dirty 
             |- hw-vendor       (35)
             |- hw-model        (35)
             |- os      (35)
             |- sw-version      (35)
             |- comment 
             |- associated-interface    (35)
             |- color   (0,32)
             |- filter 
             |- sdn-addr-type 
             |- node-ip-only 
             |- obj-id 
             |- [list] --*ip    (35)
                       |- obj-id        (127)
                       +- net-id        (127)
             |- [tagging] --*name       (63)
                          |- category   (63)
                          +- [tags] --*name     (79)
             |- allow-routing 
             +- fabric-object