Where Are All My Firewall People?
from irmadlad@lemmy.world to privacy@lemmy.ml on 18 Sep 01:04
https://lemmy.world/post/36077857
from irmadlad@lemmy.world to privacy@lemmy.ml on 18 Sep 01:04
https://lemmy.world/post/36077857
What do you run; Opnsense, pfsense, Smoothwall, maybe a WAF like wazuh?
Today was update/audit firewall day. I’m running a standalone instance of pFsense on a Protectli Vault FW4B - 4 Port - Intel Quad Core - 8GB RAM - 120GB mSATA SSD with unbound, pfBlockerNG, Suricata, ntopng, and heavily filtered. I did bump the swap to 8 GB as I’ve previously noticed a few ‘out of swap’ errors under load.
Before I signed off, I ran it through a couple porn sites to see if my adblocking strategy was working. Not one intrusive ad. Sweet!
Show me what you got.
threaded - newest
OpenBSD pf
Edit: just home/hobby now, I’m not in tech anymore.
I’d never heard of it so I went and checked it out. It seems to have a lot of pFsense/Opnsense features just managed from the cli. Cool.
It’s the ‘pf’ in pfSense.
pf is developed as part of the OpenBSD project and is the built in packet filter/firewall.
Also this. On some unremarkable HP office PC that’s probably about a decade old. No ad filtering or anything as it interferes with others in the house. I’ve thought about trying a second unbound service with adblocking for me, but haven’t gotten around to it.
I run a secondary wifi network with “Ads” in its name, whose vlan doesn’t get forced into pihole DNS. It mostly prevents me from having to hear complaints from others in the house, and they barely ever use it.
I quite like this idea, thanks! If I did this I could adblock all the rest of my network, which might help with blocking ads on things like smart TV’s. I could also DMZ that wireless network. I would consider their devices untrusted (not malicious, just not careful), and they wouldn’t notice the difference.
Ahhh the WAF (Wife Aceptance Factor). I made a seperate Vlan for my lady friend so when she comes over to visit, I don’t have to reinvent the wheel for her. She can have all the ads and slop she can stomach, just keep it on your seperate branch and we’ll both be happy.
Opnsense on dedicated device, several built in filters + several github backed filters for unbounddns.
Haven’t tested it heavily, but the times I am on an outside network not using VPN into my network, or using TOR, etc, i am inundated with ads… So i guess successful internally.
I swear I do not know how the regular Joe Schmoe internet user deals with all that clutter. Sometimes I am called by a friend to look at their computer for some issue they are having. It is mind bogglingly frustrating for me.
We’re behind our firewalls of course 😋 I’m using a random no root android firewall but I’m probably just going to root it and use something good
Pfsense with pfblocker in a VM. Works wonders. Pipe fail2ban to pfblocker for extra goodness.
The thought has crossed my mind on several occasions. If you don’t mind me asking and take up your time, how do you integrate f2b with pFsense? I’m running f2b on several VPS I have, and it just downright works. So, my thought was, what would f2b do to enhance pFsense’s capabilities, and how would you make that all homogenate?
Been a while since I set it up but as I recall it’s a 5-minute from job that runs a command that just dumps the pf block list fail2ban manages into a text file in my public_html directory. Then I just add a feed in pfblocker with the address of the text file and it loads from that feed.
I’ll see if I can dig up some info. I started searching, then got busy. So I put the few I had time to find in a selfhosted Readeck instance. I use it for ‘read it later’ kind of bookmarks.
Thanks for the share.
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Or swapping networks around!
I run iptables on Debian, on a cheap aliexpress minipc with dual NICs. Been using more or less the same config for about five years. It’s simple, boring, and works great.
One cannot quibble with long term success. Admitidly tho, I am a sucker for a good UI. One of the first things I do when researching a piece of opensource software is to do an image search to see what it looks like. LOL
Same. Immeasurably disappointed whenever the repo for a GUI program does not include any screenshots.
Opnsense on protectlii. Nothing but love.
I love my Protectli. I tried Opnsense. Seemed to be a well put together piece of open source software by people really who care. There’s nothing wrong with it. Does what it says on the tin. I guess I just liked the flow of pFsense. They both acomplish the same thing. I am aware of the pro’s and the cons of each. pFsense just appealed to me more.
My firewall varies from installation-to-installation, as it’s always client-side with a custom DNS provider. Right now, I’m using YaST Firewall on my main machine, iptables on my old ThinkPad, and my other machines are currently between operating systems. In the past, I have also dabbled in ufw, pf, and awall.
In addition to that, I generally use NextDNS (though I also get excellent results with Mullvad DNS).
My policy is simple: reject all incoming connections, except for Torrent and Syncthing.
I hear a lot of good things about NextDNS.
Do you call your network Virgin, because that’s pretty tight.
nftables. Deny all, start adding stuff until þings work.
My firewalls are simple, b/c I run a private VPN and just shut off all traffic except over WG. I’ve got one exposed VPS reverse proxying services from oþer VPSes over WG.
But: nftables, and only nftables. I’m a big believer in understanding how stuff works, and þe rulesets created by firewalld and ilk are convoluted - complexity adds risk.
Rock on!
Haha, I thought that said “until pings work”
Also an accurate reading.
Ubiquiti DM pro with its built in suricata. Honeypots, no remote mgmt, ACLs to minimum need, HA networks in isolation. DPI, multiple pi-holes. Phone alerts on intrusion wazuh just for node security compliance. ManageEngine for patches. NTFY alerts on console access.
It’s not perfect
Hiding behind my firewalls. Shhhhh.
Nock nock, someone’s home?
RST
Sitting in my bunker
Hid behind my wall…
In perfect isolation here behind my wall
Waiting for the worms to come
Opnsense with unbound DNS here. Running on an old PC that got converted to dedicated firewall (with added NIC card for ports). Nothing crazy, just enough to control what communicates out of my network.
Used to do the same thing with an old PC. Hell, at one time I was running one off a laptop with USB to RJ45 adapters for the WAN/LAN ports.
OpenWRT.
I’ve always wondered about OpenWRT. In my uneducated thinking, running an access point/wifi, firewall, router, etc, all in the same package would create a bottleneck right at the point you wouldn’t want it. What has been your experience?
Everything works fine. It’s super handy having such fine control over my router.
I run IPFire on a PC Engines apu4d4 (https://pcengines.ch/apu4d4.htm). I use dynDNS, WireGuard and set up a DMZ with it. I also have a WiFi card installed und use hostAPD to run that.
I think they stopped producing them because the AMD SOC they used is EOL. I was a big fan of their open platform.
pfSense on this:
a.co/d/6WpafWQ
I also block outgoing port 53 only allowing my Pihole through.
I use Tailscale to access the network while away.
Do you run unbound on pFsense?
No my pfSense setup is fairly minimal
you’re doing the same thing i am, so there’s not point. lol
Yeah, but you got charts n’ graphs and a big writeup. Nice job.
I’ve been using Ufw but airvpn’s kill switch seems to override it, should i be using something else?
I have found that a lot of VPN kill switches interfere with other security measures. For instance, I use tailscale on my VPS. I also run a local VPN. If I have the kill switch on the local VPN engaged, it interferes with tailscale and I cannot ssh in to my VPS. So, a not so elegant solution for me is to disengage the local VPN’s kill switch for that session, and then re-enable it after I am finished administering my VPS. After which I will do a DNS leak check to make sure everything is as it was. Takes a couple of quick steps, but it seems to work.
I think I have the same protectli as you and it is awesome. Need it for my 2.5gb uplink. I use openwrt on it… Didn’t really like opnsense. I am more used to linux than bsd.
I host lots of services and get bombarded by scrapers, scanners, and skids both at home and on my VPSs.
I use ipset for the usual blocklists which I download regularly. I also have tarpits on 22/tcp (endlessh). I pipe the IPs from the endlessh logs into fail2ban which feeds the ipsets. I have ipset blocks and fail2ban on my home firewall and all VPSs and coordinate over mqtt. So
any fail2ban trigger > mqtt > every ipset block. Touch my 22/tcp anywhere and you get banned instantly everywhere. The program I use for this is called vallumd and it runs on openwrt.I also put maltrail everywhere but I’m not totally sure how to interpret and respond to the results. Probably will implement a pipe from maltrail to my mqtt > blocklist setup.
I don’t do any network-level adblocking… Might be a future project.
Yes it is. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, and I’m sure I could have gone with a cheaper configuration, but I figured I’d get something with a little ass to it as to not create a bottleneck right at the firewall.
I too host most of the services I use on a couple of VPS I run. It has always amazed me as to the thickness of the bot layer on the internet. Clearnet experiences something like 2+ zetabytes per 24 hours. Around 50% of that is bot traffic, and they are very sophisticated bots as well. Open port 22 and here they come by the thousands like a feeding frenzy. I went as far as blocking everything with hosts.allow (do first) & hosts.deny (do last). I’ve set f2b on aggressive mode with only one shot. LOL UFW rocks in the background along with Crowdsec. I probably go overboard with security. LOL
Largest ddos attack of all time? 12 tb/sec.
But yeah, I believe it when you say you get 24,855 tb/sec on your VPS.
Beg pardon? I am going to need clarification.
I use firewalld with a script that automatically updates a blocklist of known shady IPs.
OpenWRT on a Linksys router, with adguard home for DNS blocking.
I used to run OPNSense on some older x86 hardware, but wanted to move to something simpler and less power hungry.
Pfsense guy here, and professionally Palo alto guy. Can someone tl;dr the purpose of blockerng and suricata? I thought I remember the Lawrence systems folks mentioning using it for IPS but with segmentation at home “human” IPS seems more relevant than digital
Some of the features of both overlap which might not be a bad thing.
Thanks for the succinct reply!
Nothing fancy, old ubiquiti gateway with a dedicated pihole server for my DNS.
Same. What’s the deal with having elaborate firewall stuff for a normal family home anyway?
If the built in stuff isn’t good enough then 99.9% of households would be compromised a long time ago already.
Some of it is for fun and testing, learning. Which I used to do. I used to have an old watchdog that I put pfsense on, just don’t need it nowadays.
Once i learn how it works and have run through the setup, I move on. Just need to spend my time in other areas, but now I have an understanding of it and can apply that logic or idea to other things and troubleshooting.
This is perfectly valid! I to a lot of tinkering with selfhosting using Docker containers, and I have learned a ton from that. I feel a bit silly that I didn’t make the connection with firewalls - just tinkering for fun!
The last stats I remember reading cited some 1.5 million home networks are compromised on a daily basis. Some people, such as myself, run more complex services on their local servers that are perhaps tied into remotes such as VPS. You’ll see a lot of selfhosters with rather elaborate firewall defenses set up. I self host a lot of services I use that the ‘normal family home’ would outsource to public entities. I have a rack in the closet and several VPS, so I need something more than just Windows Firewall, or similar, that I can dial in to my unique environment.
Also, because I can.
Valid! I also tinker with selfhosting using Docker containers, didn’t think of firewalls the same way. Thank you.
No worries mate. What do you host?
Nothing spectacular.
Git, Paperless, UniFi Controller, Pihole, Mattermost chat, Immich, Home Assistant, Frigate, Syncthing, Hoarder. Just stuff for myself, my home, and my friends. And 🏴☠️
And you?
The usual. Might be a few I’ve missed:
Opnsense on a thin client, riser with a quad port Intel NIC.