Network Security Hacks

Firewall with Netfilter

Protect your network with Linux’s powerful firewalling features.

Linux has long had the capability for filtering packets, and it has come a long way since the early days in terms of both power and flexibility. The first generation of packet-filtering code was called ipfw (for “IP firewall”) and provided basic filtering capability. Since it was somewhat inflexible and inefficient for complex configurations, ipfw is rarely used now. The second generation of IP filtering was called IP chains. It improved greatly on ipfw and is still in common use. The latest generation of filtering is called Netfilter and is manipulated with the iptables command. It is used exclusively with the 2.4.x and later series of kernels. Although Netfilter is the kernel component and iptables is the user-space configuration tool, these terms are often used interchangeably.

An important concept in Netfilter is the chain , which consists of a list of rules that are applied to packets as they enter, leave, or traverse through the system. The kernel defines three chains by default, but new chains of rules can be specified and linked to the predefined chains. The INPUT chain applies to packets that are received and are destined for the local system, and the OUTPUT chain applies to packets that are transmitted by the local system. Finally, the FORWARD chain applies whenever a packet will be routed from one network interface to another through the system. It is used whenever the system ...