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Linux Firewall

Linux has built-in firewall capabilities that have been improved over time. The primary firewall used is iptables, which replaces the earlier ipchains firewall. Iptables uses tables, chains, and rules to filter packets, with three main tables for packet filtering, network address translation, and packet alteration. Basic iptables configuration uses commands to flush existing rules, create new chains, and accept established connections to provide a functional packet filtering firewall.

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116 views2 pages

Linux Firewall

Linux has built-in firewall capabilities that have been improved over time. The primary firewall used is iptables, which replaces the earlier ipchains firewall. Iptables uses tables, chains, and rules to filter packets, with three main tables for packet filtering, network address translation, and packet alteration. Basic iptables configuration uses commands to flush existing rules, create new chains, and accept established connections to provide a functional packet filtering firewall.

Uploaded by

Gaurav Sharma
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Linux Firewalls

Linux has firewall capabilities built into the operating system. This has been a part
of the Linux operating system for many years, with occasional improvements in
the technology.

3.7.1 Iptables

The first widely used Linux firewall was called ipchains. It was essentially a chain
of rules for filtering traffic. It was first introduced in version 2.2 of the Linux
kernel and superseded the previous ipfwadm (which was not widely used). The
more modern iptables replaced ipchains and is the primary firewall for Linux. The
iptables service was first introduced in Linux kernel 2.4.

On most Linux systems, iptables is installed as /usr/sbin/iptables. However, if it


was not included in your particular Linux installation, you can add it later. 

An iptables firewall is made up of three different kinds of objects: tables, chains,


and rules. Basically, the tables contain chains of rules. Put another way, iptables is
an expansion on the concept of ipchains. Each chain has a series of rules that
define how to filter packets. There are actually three tables and each has some
standard rule chains in it. You can, of course, add your own custom rules. The
three tables and their standard chains are as follow:

 Packet filtering: This table is the essential part of the firewall. It is a packet


filtering firewall and it contains three standard chains: INPUT, OUTPUT,
and Forward. The INPUT chain processes incoming packets, and the
OUTPUT chain processes traffic sent out from the machine. If the firewall
system is also acting as a router, only the FORWARD chain applies to
routed packets.
 Network address translation: This table is used for performing network
address translation on outbound traffic that initiates a new connection. This
is used only if your machine is serving as a gateway or proxy server.
 Packet alteration: This table is used only for specialized packet alteration.
It is often called the mangle table because it alters, or mangles, packets. It
contains two standard chains. This table might not even be needed for many
standard firewalls.

3.7.2 Iptables Configuration

Iptables requires some configuration. You can do it through the GUI (KDE,
GNOME, etc.) but the shell commands are common to most distributions. Let’s
take a look at some common basic configuration.
To cause iptables to function as a basic packet filtering firewall, you need these
commands:

 iptables -F
 iptables -N block
 iptables -A block -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

Obviously, that is the most basic and essential iptables configuration. However,
here are some others.

To list the current iptables rules use:

 iptables –L

To allow communication on a specific port, SSH port 22 and HHTP port 80 for
example use:

 iptables –A INPUT –p tcp –dport ssh –j ACCEPT


 iptables –A INPUT –p tcp –dport 80 –j ACCEPT

Also there are several flags that can be passed to the iptables command. Below are
listed the most common flags and what they do. Several other flags exist but are
not listed. 

A: Append this rule to a rule chain

-L: List the current filter rules

-p: The connection protocol used

--dport: The destination port required for the rule. A single port can be given or a
range.

-i: Only match if the packet is coming in on the specified interface.

-v: Verbose output

-s, --source: address source specification

-d, --destination: address destination specification

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