Firewall Configuration Reference

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Sympl contains an easy to use firewall system based on iptables which protects the server by controlling inbound and outbound connections, comprised of a set of rules as well as automatic whitelist and blacklist configuration.

Configuration changes can be made via SSH or serial/VNC console as the sympl user, and will take effect immediately.

Basic Firewall Configuration

The default configuration for Sympl should cover the majority of use cases, and caution should be taken when making any changes in case you lock yourself out. If this happens, you can still access the server via the serial or VNC console.

The configuration of the sympl-firewall package is built from a series of files and directories in the /etc/sympl/firewall/ directory, with incoming connections controlled by the files in /etc/sympl/firewall/incoming.d/ and the outgoing connections controlled by the files in /etc/sympl/firewall/outgoing.d/.

These files are in the format of index_number-service_name_or_number with the index_number controlling order of the rules, and the service_name_or_number as either a service name taken from /etc/services, a TCP/UDP port number, or one of a few special keywords.

Each of these files can either be empty, or contain a list of hostnames or IP addresses which the rule applies to, one per line.

If hostnames are used in the configuration files rather than IP addresses, they will be translated when the firewall is updated, and the result cached for up to 15 minutes. If the DNS result changes in this period then the result will not update, therefore IP addresses should be used where possible.

Firewall Keywords

Sympl uses a number of specific keywords for a number of non port-related rules, in the incoming.d/ and outgoing.d/ directories.

As with normal service name rules, these can contain a target IP address or hostname, one per line which the rule will apply to.

Keyword	Action
accept	Accepts all connections. Uses the iptables ACCEPT target.
allow	Alias of accept.
whitelist	Alias of accept.
new	Permit new connections. Uses the iptables NEW target.
established	Permit traffic from connections which are already established. Uses the iptables ESTABLISHED target.
related	Accept new connections associated with existing connections, such as DNS queries and FTP transfers. Uses the iptables RELATED target.
reject	Reject all connections. Uses the iptables REJECT target. Returns a 'TCP reset' or 'port unreachable' message.
blacklist	Alias of reject.
drop	Drops all traffic. Uses the iptables DROP target.
ping	Permits ICMP echo-request, echo-reply and ttl-exceeded traffic, which allows the server to respond to pings and show up on traceroute tests.
icmp	Permit all ICMP traffic. Applies to IPv4 only.
icmpv6	Permit all ICMP6 traffic. Applies to IPv6 only.
essential-icmpv6	Accept required ICMP traffic for IPv6 to operate. Allows destination-unreachable, packet-too-big, parameter-problem, router-solicitation, router-advertisement, neighbour-solicitation and neighbour-advertisement traffic. If this rule is removed IPv6 will very likely cease working properly. Applies to IPv6 only.
dns	Accept TCP and UDP connections from port 53 to high-numbered unprivileged ports. Designed to allow replies to DNS queries, but may be removed in favour of related. Applies to incoming connections only.
ftp	Permit connections on both port 20 (ftp-data) and 21 (ftp-control).
collector	Permit TCP connections on port 1919.
imager	Permit TCP connections on port 5000.

Detailed definitions for these rules are contained in /usr/share/sympl/firewall/rule.d/, and new rules can be created in /usr/local/sympl/symbiosis/firewall/rule.d/ if desired.

Firewall Example

Here is an example of a basic firewall configuration for incoming traffic in Sympl. The files below all reside in /etc/sympl/firewall/incoming.d/

File	Containing	Result
00-established	empty	Accepts packets from any already established connections.
00-related	empty	Accepts packets from sources related to any already established traffic.
05-essential-icmpv6	empty	Allows the required ICMP traffic for IPv6 to function.
05-ping	10.11.12.13	Allows ICMP ping traffic, but only from the IPv4 address 10.11.12.13. IPv6 traffic is not allowed by this rule.
07-ssh	10.11.12.13 2001:0db8:85a3::/64	Allows connections to port 22 (SSH) from IPv4 addresses between 10.11.12.13, and IPv6 traffic from the range 2001:0db8:85a3::/64
10-http	empty	Allows traffic to port 80 (HTTP).
10-https	empty	Allows traffic to port 443 (HTTPS).
100-pop3	empty	Allows traffic to port 110 (POP3). Note that this is processed at this point as the numbers are sorted as text.
20-25	172.16.17.0/24	Allows connections to port 25 (SMTP) from the 172.16.17.0/24 range only.
99-reject	empty	Rejects any other traffic.

You can view the generated incoming firewall rules being used by iptables with sudo iptables -L INPUT -vn, which for the above looks like this:

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
 pkts bytes target    prot opt in out source          destination
    0     0 ACCEPT    all  --  lo *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0
   16  1024 whitelist all  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0
    0     0 blacklist all  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0
    0     0 ACCEPT    all  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 state ESTABLISHED
    0     0 ACCEPT    all  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED
    0     0 ACCEPT    icmp --  *  *   10.11.12.13     0.0.0.0/0 icmp type 8
    0     0 ACCEPT    icmp --  *  *   10.11.12.13     0.0.0.0/0 icmp type 0
    0     0 ACCEPT    icmp --  *  *   10.11.12.13     0.0.0.0/0 icmp type 11
    0     0 ACCEPT    tcp  --  *  *   10.11.12.13     0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:22
    0     0 ACCEPT    udp  --  *  *   10.11.12.13     0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:22
    0     0 ACCEPT    tcp  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80
    0     0 ACCEPT    udp  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:80
    0     0 ACCEPT    tcp  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443
    0     0 ACCEPT    udp  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:443
    0     0 ACCEPT    tcp  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:110
    0     0 ACCEPT    udp  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:110
    0     0 ACCEPT    tcp  --  *  *   172.16.17.0/24  0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:25
    0     0 ACCEPT    udp  --  *  *   172.16.17.0/24  0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:25
    0     0 REJECT    all  --  *  *   0.0.0.0/0       0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable

Note in the above result, the IPv6 address is not listed. This uses the alternate ip6tables tool to list it's rules.

Configuration Reference

File or Directory	Used For	More

See also Configuration Reference for other configuration files.