Firewall: Rules page in the pfSense web GUI.
In the previous article about NAT port forwarding, we used “Add associated filter rule” in order to generate the firewall rule for the Apache web server. We could, however, have chosen “None” for the “Filter Rule Association” and created the rule ourselves. This next article describes how to create firewall rules.
Adding Firewall Rules
In order to do this, first browse to Firewall -> Rules. There will be two pre-configured firewall rules by default: “Block private networks” (for blocking 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x, and 192.168.x.x addresses) and “Block bogon networks” (for blocking bogus addresses). There will be at least three tabs: “Floating“, “WAN” and “LAN“. Select “WAN” if it isn’t already selected. Press the “Plus” button to add a new firewall rule. Under “Action”, there are three options: “Pass“, “Block”, and “Reject“. The web GUI has the following explanation of the difference between “Block” and “Reject“:
Hint: the difference between block and reject is that with reject, a packet (TCP RST or ICMP port unreachable for UDP) is returned to the sender, whereas with block the packet is dropped silently. In either case, the original packet is discarded.
In this case, you can leave the default unchanged as “Pass“. Next is the option to “Disable this rule“; we don’t want to do this so leave this box unchecked. At “Interface”, you will again have a choice of “LAN“, “WAN” and whatever other interfaces were configured; choose “WAN“.
Adding a firewall rule in pfSense.
At “Protocol“, there are a number of options in addition to the four listed under NAT port forwarding. “ICMP” stands for Internet Control Message Protocol and is used to send error messages indicating, for example, that a requested service is not available or that a host or router could not be reached. ICMP can also be used to relay query messages. “AH” stands for Authentication Header, which is part of the IPsec suite and provides connectionless integrity and data origin authentication for IP datagrams and provides protection against replay attacks. “IGMP” stands for Internet Group Management Protocol and is a connectionless protocol used by hosts and adjacent routers on IP networks to establish multicast group memberships; it is used for one-to-many networking applications such as online streaming video and gaming, among other uses. “OSPF” stands for Open Shortest Path First, a link-state routing protocol for IP networks that uses a link state routing algorithm and falls into the group of interior routing protocols. “CARP” stands for Common Address Redundancy Protocol, a protocol which allows multiple hosts on the same local network to share a set of IP addresses. Its primary purpose is to provide failover redundancy. Finally, “pfsync” is a computer protocol used to synchronize firewall states between machines running Packet Filter (PF) for High Availability. If is used along with CARP to make sure a backup firewall has the same information as the main firewall. In this case, we should leave the default protocol “TCP” unchanged.
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At “Source“, specify “any”, as the “Type” and at “Source Port Range“, also specify any. The “Type” options are the same as the options under “Source” and “Destination” for NAT port forwarding; therefore I will not go into detail on them here. In “Destination“, select “Single host or alias” as the type, and specify 192.168.1.125 (our Apache server) for the “Address”. At “Destination Port Range“, specify “HTTP“. You can leave “Log packets that are handled by this rule” unchecked unless you have reason to log the packets. Specify a “Description” if you wish and press the “Save” button to save the changes.
Firewall Rules: The Source Port Range is Usually Unknown
It should be noted that when a firewall rule is created, the “Source Port Range” is almost always set to “any“. This is because the client decides which port to open on the client computer, which may or may not be the same as the port requested on the server. The source port is an an ever-changing port which the end user probably never knows about. So most of the time, we will not know the Source Port Range of the traffic being allowed in.
In the next article, I will go into some detail on rules governing firewall rules, and some of the advanced options for firewall rules under pfSense 2.0.
External Links:
Firewall Rule Basics at doc.pfsense.org
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