Simple stateful firewall

This page explains how to set up a simple stateful firewall using iptables. It also tries to explain what the rules mean and why they are needed. For simplicity, this HOWTO is split into two parts. The first part deals with a single machine, the second part sets up a NAT gateway.

BIG FAT WARNING: For simplicity, the rules are given in the order that they are executed later. If you are logged into a remote machine, following the rules in the exact order they are given MAY result in your machine being unavailable to the network. Only do the steps below while you are logged in locally unless you know what you are doing. You have been warned.

Prerequisites

Before we start, we need to make sure that the necessary tools are available:

$ pacman -Q iptables
iptables 1.3.5-1

If iptables is installed, you have to make sure that your kernel supports iptables. All Arch Linux stock kernels have iptables support.

This HOWTO assumes that there are currently no iptables rules set. To check this, try the command

# iptables -nvL
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination         

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination         

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0K packets, 0 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination         

If the output looks like the above (except the packet counters), there are no rules set and you are good to go. If not, reset the tables like this:

# iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
# iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
# iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
# iptables -F
# iptables -X

Setting up a single machine

Creating necessary chains

For this basic setup, we will create two custom chains. Their meaning is explained later:

# iptables -N open
# iptables -N interfaces

The INPUT chain

Every packet that is received by any network interface and has one of the local host's IP addresses in the destination header will pass the INPUT chain first. In this chain we make sure that only the packets that we want are accepted.

The first rule will accept all ICMP messages. ICMP means Internet Control Message Protocol. Some ICMP messages are very important, some are less important (like echo requests (pings)), but none of them hurt, so it is generally a good idea not to block them:

# iptables -A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT

The next rule will make sure that none of the traffic that belongs to already established connections will be dropped. This can be done with the state match. A package can have one of the four states ESTABLISHED, RELATED, NEW and INVALID. So, we want to accept all packets that are in state ESTABLISHED or RELATED, hence the name "stateful firewall":

# iptables -A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

In most cases, we do not want to deny all incoming connections, and that's why we set up the two custom chains open and interfaces. For now though, we will add a rule for each of them:

# iptables -A INPUT -j interfaces
# iptables -A INPUT -j open

Now, with the last two rules, we drop everything that hasn't been explicitly accepted above. For TCP packets, we deny the connection with a tcp-reset. Incoming UDP packets are answered with an ICMP message. This way, we imitate Linux's default behaviour:

# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset 
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-port-unreachable 

All other protocols than TCP, UDP and ICMP are dropped (unless they matched the state match above). We do this by setting the policy for the INPUT chain to DROP

# iptables -P INPUT DROP

The FORWARD chain

If you want to set up your machine as a NAT gateway, please look at the second section of this HOWTO. For a single machine, however, we simply set the policy of the FORWARD chain to DROP and move on:

# iptables -P FORWARD DROP

The OUTPUT chain

We have no intention of filtering any outgoing traffic, as this would make the setup much more complicated and would require some extra thought. In this simple case, we set the OUTPUT policy to ACCEPT.

# iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT

The interfaces chain

We use the interfaces chain to accept any traffic from trusted interfaces. The first rule is absolutely necessary:

# iptables -A interfaces -i lo -j ACCEPT

This accepts every traffic from the loopback interface, which is necessary for many applications to work properly. You can add more interfaces here. For example, if you want to accept all incoming traffic from the interface eth0, add this rule:

# iptables -A interfaces -i eth0 -j ACCEPT

Incoming connections on other interfaces will be denied, unless they hit another exception in the open chain.

The open chain

The open chain contains rules for accepting incoming connections on specific ports or protocols. For example, if you want to accept ssh connections on every interface, add this rule:

# iptables -A open -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

You can change the ssh incoming port by editing the configuration file in /etc/ssh/sshd_config as the SSH wiki refers to.

However, it is probably not a good idea to let the world connect to your machine on port 22 unless you run a public server. Therefore, you can limit which machines can connect to ssh daemon (sshd) by modifying the /etc/hosts.allow file :

# Let local users connect via ssh
sshd: 127.0.0.1

# Allow these adress to connect via ssh
sshd: 192.168.0.1
sshd: 172.272.0.32

Note: to block bruteforce attacks check the script.

To accept incoming HTTP connections on the interface ppp0:

# iptables -A open -i ppp0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

To accept all incoming tcp connections with destination ports 65000 to 65005 on interface foo:

# iptables -A open -i foo -p tcp --dport 65000:65005 -j ACCEPT

The same is of course possible with udp:

# iptables -A open -i foo -p udp --dport 65000:65005 -j ACCEPT

or with other protocols than tcp and udp:

# iptables -A open -i foo -p 123 -j ACCEPT

See man iptables for more advanced rules, like matching multiple ports or protocols.

Protection against common attacks

Force SYN packets check

Make sure NEW incoming tcp connections are SYN packets; otherwise, we need to drop them:

  iptables -A INPUT -p tcp ! --syn -m state --state NEW -j DROP

Force Fragments packets check

Packets with incoming fragments. Drop them.

  iptables -A INPUT -f -j DROP

XMAS packets

Incoming malformed XMAS packets. Drop them:

  iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL ALL -j DROP

Drop all NULL packets

Incoming malformed NULL packets:

  iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL NONE -j DROP

Spoofing attack

Blocking reserved private networks incoming from the internet

  iptables -I INPUT -i eth0 -s 10.0.0.0/8 -j DROP
  iptables -I INPUT -i eth0 -s 172.16.0.0/12 -j DROP
  iptables -I INPUT -i eth0 -s 192.168.0.0/16 -j DROP
  iptables -I INPUT -i eth0 -s 127.0.0.0/8 -j DROP

You can also add the following line to your /etc/sysctl.conf to enable source address verification which is built into Linux kernel itself.

  net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1

"Hide" your computer

If you are running a desktop machine, it might be a good idea to block some incoming requests.

Block Ping Request

A 'Ping' request is an ICMP packet sent to the destination address to ensure connectivity between the devices. If your network works well, you can safely block all ping requests.

  iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -i eth0 -j DROP

You can also add the following line to your /etc/sysctl.conf file:

  net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_all = 1

ICMP type match blocking

If your computer is not a router (like most desktops):

  iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type redirect -j DROP
  iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type router-advertisement -j DROP
  iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type router-solicitation -j DROP
  iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type address-mask-request -j DROP
  iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type address-mask-reply -j DROP

Block nmap's uptime detection

Prevent uptime detection from port scanners like nmap

Add the following line to your /etc/sysctl.conf file

  net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0

Other kernel parameters

Add the following lines to your /etc/sysctl.conf file to prevent certain kinds of attacks:

net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 1
net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses = 1

Saving the rules

Now, the rules are ready and should be saved to your hard drive. First, we need edit the configuration file /etc/conf.d/iptables:

# Configuration for iptables rules

IPTABLES=/usr/sbin/iptables

IPTABLES_CONF=/etc/iptables/iptables.rules
IPTABLES_FORWARD=0  # disable IP forwarding!!!

You can specify another filename than iptables.rules if you want.

Now, save the rules with the command:

# /etc/rc.d/iptables save

and make sure your rules are loaded when you boot by editing /etc/rc.conf, iptables should be added preferably before 'network'.

 DAEMONS=(... iptables network ...)

Setting up a NAT gateway

This section of the HOWTO deals with NAT gateways. It is assumed that you already read the first part of the HOWTO and set up the INPUT, OUTPUT, open and interfaces chains like described above. All rules so far have been created in the filter table. In this section, we will also have to use the nat table.

Setting up the filter table

Before we start, make sure that the FORWARD chain is empty:

# iptables -F FORWARD

Creating necessary chains

In our setup, we will use another two chains in the filter table, the fw-interfaces and fw-open chains. Create them with the commands

# iptables -N fw-interfaces
# iptables -N fw-open

Setting up the FORWARD chain

Setting up the FORWARD chain is similar to the INPUT chain in the first section.

Some networks and servers block ICMP messages and are preventing path MTU detection. If your outgoing interface's MTU is lower than the MTU on the local network (like with PPPoE connections), this may prevent you from communicating with such servers. The first rule works around this problem, at least for TCP connections:

# iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -j TCPMSS --clamp-mss-to-pmtu

Now we set up a rule with the state match, identical to the one in the INPUT chain:

# iptables -A FORWARD -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

The next step is to enable forwarding for trusted interfaces and to make all packets pass the fw-open chain.

# iptables -A FORWARD -j fw-interfaces 
# iptables -A FORWARD -j fw-open 

The remaining packets are denied with an ICMP message:

# iptables -A FORWARD -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-unreachable
# iptables -P FORWARD DROP

Setting up the fw-interfaces and fw-open chains

The meaning of the fw-interfaces and fw-open chains is explained later, when we deal with the POSTROUTING and PREROUTING chains in the nat table, respectively.

Setting up the nat table

All over this section, we assume that the outgoing interface (the one with the public internet IP) is ppp0. Keep in mind that you have to change the name in all following rules if your outgoing interface has another name.

Setting up the POSTROUTING chain

Now, we have to define who is allowed to connect to the internet. Let's assume we have the subnet 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 (which means all addresses that are of the form 192.168.0.*) on eth0. We first need to accept the machines on this interface in the FORWARD table, that's why we created the fw-interfaces chain above:

# iptables -A fw-interfaces -i eth0 -j ACCEPT

Now, we have to alter all outgoing packets so that they have our public IP address as the source address, instead of the local LAN address. To do this, we use the MASQUERADE target:

# iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE

Don't forget the -o ppp0 parameter above, if you omit it, your network will be screwed up.

Let's assume we have another subnet, 10.3.0.0/255.255.0.0 (which means all addresses 10.3.*.*) on interface eth1. We add the same rules as above again:

# iptables -A fw-interfaces -i eth1 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.3.0.0/255.255.0.0 -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE

The last step is to enable IP Forwarding (if it isn't already enabled):

# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Machines from these subnets can now use your new NAT machine as their gateway. Note that you may want to set up a DNS and DHCP server like dnsmasq or a combination of bind and dhcpd to simplify network settings DNS resolution on the client machines. This is not the topic of this HOWTO.

Setting up the PREROUTING chain

Sometimes, we want to forward an incoming connection from the gateway to a LAN machine. To do this, we use the fw-open chain defined above, as well as the PREROUTING chain in the nat table

I will give two simple examples: First, we want to forward all incoming SSH connections (port 22) to the ssh server in the machine 192.168.0.5:

# iptables -A fw-open -d 192.168.0.5 -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i ppp0 -p tcp --dport 22 -j DNAT --to 192.168.0.5

The second example will show you how to forward packets to a different port than the incoming port. We want to forward any incoming connection on port 8000 to our web server on 192.168.0.6, port 80:

# iptables -A fw-open -d 192.168.0.6 -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i ppp0 -p tcp --dport 8000 -j DNAT --to 192.168.0.6:80

The same setup also works with udp packets.

Saving the rules

Like above, we have to save the rules. Only this time, we have to enable IP forwarding in /etc/conf.d/iptables:

# Configuration for iptables rules

IPTABLES=/usr/sbin/iptables

IPTABLES_CONF=/etc/iptables/iptables.rules
IPTABLES_FORWARD=1  # enable IP forwarding!!!

Save the rules

# /etc/rc.d/iptables save

and make sure your rules are loaded when you boot

DAEMONS=(... iptables ...)

Working with knockd

knockd is a port knocking daemon that can provide an added layer of security to your network. The knockd wiki provides three example port knocking configurations. These configs can be easily altered to intergrate properly with firewall described here. You should simply substitue the INPUT chain specification, with the custom open chain used in the firewall.

For example:

 [options]
       logfile = /var/log/knockd.log
 [opencloseSSH]
       sequence      = 2222:udp,3333:tcp,4444:udp
       seq_timeout   = 15
       tcpflags      = syn,ack
       start_command = /usr/sbin/iptables -A open -s %IP% -p tcp --syn --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
       cmd_timeout   = 10
       stop_command  = /usr/sbin/iptables -D open -s %IP% -p tcp --syn --dport 22 -j ACCEPT 

It is wise to randomly select the ports that you use for the knock sequence. Random.org [link] can help you generate a selection of ports between 1 and 65535. Once you have selected your port range check that you haven't inadvertantly selected a commonly used port; this port database can help you check.

Example of an Iptables Script

The script below is an example of implementation of this wiki. It will block any bruteforcing occurrences to SSH protocol (blocks by IP)

It's needed to turn it an executable with the 'chmod' command

 chmod +x iptables_script.sh

then run it as root user

su -c ./iptables_script.sh

or

sudo bash iptables_script.sh

#! /bin/bash

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# script to set the iptables firewall
#
#	http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Simple_stateful_firewall_HOWTO
#
# :: blocks bruteforce attacks (useful for securing SSH servers)
#
# by quarkup
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------


# allow local connections (disable for testing purposes only)
allow_lo="yes";


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# interfaces (confirm)


localnet="lo";
internet="eth+";	# the ending '+' is a wildcard for matching patterns
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------




# stop the iptables
/etc/rc.d/iptables stop


#  reset iptables rules
iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
iptables -F
iptables -X


# create the chains
iptables -N open
iptables -N interfaces
iptables -N BRUTEGUARD


# >> INPUT chain
iptables -A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -j interfaces
iptables -A INPUT -j open
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset
iptables -A INPUT -p udp -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
iptables -P INPUT DROP


# set the default policies for OUTPUT and FORWARD chains
iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
iptables -P FORWARD DROP


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# >> interfaces chain :: allow all connections from these interfaces
#
[[ "${allow_lo}" == "yes" ]] && iptables -A interfaces -i ${localnet} -j ACCEPT


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# the 'open' chain :: rules for accept incoming external connections (daemons)
#
iptables -A open -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT	# apache/http
iptables -A open -p tcp -m tcp --dport 113 -j ACCEPT	# oidentd/auth


   # accept ssh and avoid bruteforcings with BRUTEGUARD chain
iptables -A open -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j BRUTEGUARD
iptables -A open -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -m state --state  NEW,RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT


 # the BRUTEGUARD chain :: block excessive connections (and bruteforcings)
iptables -A BRUTEGUARD -m recent --set --name BF
iptables -A BRUTEGUARD -m recent --update --seconds 1800 --hitcount 8 --name BF -j LOG \
                                 --log-level info --log-prefix "[BRUTEFORCE ATTEMPT] "
iptables -A BRUTEGUARD -m recent --update --seconds 1800 --hitcount 8 --name BF -j DROP
 

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Protection against common attacks
#
 

 # allow only SYN packets
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp ! --syn -m state --state NEW -j DROP
 # force fragments packets check
iptables -A INPUT -f -j DROP
 # drop incoming malformed XMAS packets
iptables  -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL ALL -j DROP
 # drop all NULL packets
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL NONE -j DROP


 

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Hide the computer						# (optional) #
#


 # block reserved private networks incoming from the internet
iptables -I INPUT -i ${internet} -s 10.0.0.0/8 -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -i ${internet} -s 172.16.0.0/12 -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -i ${internet} -s 192.168.0.0/16 -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -i ${internet} -s 127.0.0.0/8 -j DROP


 # block PING request
iptables -A INPUT -i ${internet} -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP


 # ICMP type match blocking
iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type redirect -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type router-advertisement -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type router-solicitation -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type address-mask-request -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type address-mask-reply -j DROP


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# the end


/etc/rc.d/iptables save


/etc/rc.d/iptables start


# print the iptables
iptables -L;




exit 0;

See Also

• Sharing ppp connection with wlan interface
• Internet Share
• NAT'ing firewall - Share your broadband connection
• Methods to block SSH attacks
• Using iptables to Block Brute Force Attacks