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Chapter 5. Preparations

This chapter is aimed at getting you started and to help you understand the role Netfilter and iptables play in Linux today. This chapter should hopefully get you set up and finished to go with your experimentation, and installation of your firewall. Given time and perseverance, you'll then get it to perform exactly as you want it to.

The iptables user-space package can be downloaded from the . The iptables package also makes use of kernel space facilities which can be configured into the kernel during make configure. The necessary steps will be discussed a bit further down in this document.

To run the pure basics of iptables you need to configure the following options into the kernel while doing make config or one of its related commands:

CONFIG_PACKET - This option allows applications and utilities that need to work directly with various network devices. Examples of such utilities are tcpdump or snort.

CONFIG_PACKET is strictly speaking not needed for iptables to work, but since it contains so many uses, I have chosen to include it here. If you do not want it, don't include it.

CONFIG_NETFILTER - This option is required if you're going to use your computer as a firewall or gateway to the Internet. In other words, this is most definitely required for anything in this tutorial to work at all. I assume you will want this, since you are reading this.

And of course you need to add the proper drivers for your interfaces to work properly, i.e. Ethernet adapter, PPP and SLIP interfaces. The above will only add some of the pure basics in iptables. You won't be able to do anything productive to be honest, it just adds the framework to the kernel. If you want to use the more advanced options in Iptables, you need to set up the proper configuration options in your kernel. Here we will show you the options available in a basic 2.4.9 kernel and a brief explanation :

CONFIG_IP_NF_CONNTRACK - This module is needed to make connection tracking. Connection tracking is used by, among other things, NAT and Masquerading. If you need to firewall machines on a LAN you most definitely should mark this option. For example, this module is required by the script to work.

CONFIG_IP_NF_FTP - This module is required if you want to do connection tracking on FTP connections. Since FTP connections are quite hard to do connection tracking on in normal cases, conntrack needs a so called helper; this option compiles the helper. If you do not add this module you won't be able to FTP through a firewall or gateway properly.

CONFIG_IP_NF_IPTABLES - This option is required if you want do any kind of filtering, masquerading or NAT. It adds the whole iptables identification framework to the kernel. Without this you won't be able to do anything at all with iptables.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_LIMIT - This module isn't exactly required but it's used in the example . This option provides the LIMIT match, that adds the possibility to control how many packets per minute that are to be matched, governed by an appropriate rule. For example, -m limit --limit 3/minute would match a maximum of 3 packets per minute. This module can also be used to avoid certain Denial of Service attacks.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MAC - This allows us to match packets based on MAC addresses. Every Ethernet adapter has its own MAC address. We could for instance block packets based on what MAC address is used and block a certain computer pretty well since the MAC address very seldom changes. We don't use this option in the example or anywhere else.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MARK - This allows us to use a MARK match. For example, if we use the target MARK we could mark a packet and then depending on if this packet is marked further on in the table, we can match based on this mark. This option is the actual match MARK, and further down we will describe the actual target MARK.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MULTIPORT - This module allows us to match packets with a whole range of destination ports or source ports. Normally this wouldn't be possible, but with this match it is.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TOS - With this match we can match packets based on their TOS field. TOS stands for Type Of Service. TOS can also be set by certain rules in the mangle table and via the ip/tc commands.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TCPMSS - This option adds the possibility for us to match TCP packets based on their MSS field.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_STATE - This is one of the biggest news in comparison to ipchains. With this module we can do stateful matching on packets. For example, if we have already seen traffic in two directions in a TCP connection, this packet will be counted as ESTABLISHED. This module is used extensively in the example.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_UNCLEAN - This module will add the possibility for us to match IP, TCP, UDP and ICMP packets that don't conform to type or are invalid. We could for example drop these packets, but we never know if they are legitimate or not. Note that this match is still experimental and might not work perfectly in all cases.

CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_OWNER - This option will add the possibility for us to do matching based on the owner of a socket. For example, we can allow only the user root to have Internet access. This module was originally just written as an example on what could be done with the new iptables. Note that this match is still experimental and might not work for everyone.

CONFIG_IP_NF_FILTER - This module will add the basic filter table which will enable you to do IP filtering at all. In the filter table you'll find the INPUT, FORWARD and OUTPUT chains. This module is required if you plan to do any kind of filtering on packets that you receive and send.

CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_REJECT - This target allows us to specify that an ICMP error message should be sent in reply to incoming packets, instead of plainly dropping them dead to the floor. Keep in mind that TCP connections, as opposed to ICMP and UDP, are always reset or refused with a TCP RST packet.

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