Iptables Tutorial 1.2.1
Oskar Andreasson
Copyright © 2001-2006 Oskar Andreasson
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1; with the Invariant Sections being "Introduction" and all sub-sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being "Original Author: Oskar Andreasson", and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
All scripts in this tutorial are covered by the GNU General Public License. The scripts are free source; you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2 of the License.
These scripts are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License within this tutorial, under the section entitled "GNU General Public License"; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
http://iptables-tutorial.frozentux.net/iptables-tutorial.html
Dedications
I would like to dedicate this document to my wonderful sister for inspiring me and for giving me feedback. She is a source of joy and a ray of light when I have need of it. Thank you!
Second of all, I would like to dedicate this work to all of the incredibly hard working Linux developers and maintainers. It is people like those who make this wonderful operating system possible.
Table of Contents
Conventions used in this document
1. Introduction
1.1. Why this document was written
1.2. How it was written
1.3. Terms used in this document
2.1. TCP/IP Layers
2.2. IP characteristics
2.3. IP headers
2.4. TCP characteristics
2.5. TCP headers
2.6. UDP characteristics
2.7. UDP headers
2.8. ICMP characteristics
2.9. ICMP headers
2.9.1. ICMP Echo Request/Reply
2.9.2. ICMP Destination Unreachable
2.9.3. Source Quench
2.9.4. Redirect
2.9.5. TTL equals 0
2.9.6. Parameter problem
2.9.7. Timestamp request/reply
2.9.8. Information request/reply
2.10. TCP/IP destination driven routing
2.11. What's next?
3.1. What is an IP filter
3.2. IP filtering terms and expressions
3.4. Whats next?
4. Network Address Translation Introduction
4.1. What NAT is used for and basic terms and expressions
4.2. Caveats using NAT
4.3. Example NAT machine in theory
4.3.1. What is needed to build a NAT machine
4.3.2. Placement of NAT machines
4.3.3. How to place proxies
4.3.4. The final stage of our NAT machine
4.4. What's next?
5. Preparations
5.2. Kernel setup
5.3. User-land setup
5.3.1. Compiling the user-land applications
5.3.2. Installation on Red Hat 7.1
6. Traversing of tables and chains
6.1. General
6.2. mangle table
6.3. nat table
6.4. Filter table
7.1. Introduction
7.3. User-land states
7.4. TCP connections
7.5. UDP connections
7.6. ICMP connections
7.7. Default connections
7.8. Complex protocols and connection tracking
8. Saving and restoring large rule-sets
8.1. Speed considerations
8.3. iptables-save
8.4. iptables-restore
9.1. Basics of the iptables command
9.2. Tables
9.3. Commands
10. Iptables matches
10.1. Generic matches
10.2. Implicit matches
10.2.1. TCP matches
10.2.2. UDP matches
10.2.3. ICMP matches
10.3. Explicit matches
10.3.1. AH/ESP match
10.3.2. Conntrack match
10.3.3. DSCP match
10.3.4. ECN match
10.3.5. Helper match
10.3.6. IP range match
10.3.7. Length match
10.3.8. Limit match
10.3.9. MAC match
10.3.10. Mark match
10.3.11. Multiport match
10.3.12. Owner match
10.3.13. Packet type match
10.3.14. Recent match
10.3.15. State match
10.3.16. TCPMSS match
10.3.17. TOS match
10.3.18. TTL match
10.3.19. Unclean match
11. Iptables targets and jumps
11.1. ACCEPT target
11.2. CLASSIFY target
11.3. DNAT target
11.4. DROP target
11.5. DSCP target
11.6. ECN target
11.7. LOG target options
11.8. MARK target
11.9. MASQUERADE target
11.10. MIRROR target
11.11. NETMAP target
11.12. QUEUE target
11.13. REDIRECT target
11.14. REJECT target
11.15. RETURN target
11.16. SAME target
11.17. SNAT target
11.18. TCPMSS target
11.19. TOS target
11.20. TTL target
11.21. ULOG target
12.1. Debugging, a necessity
12.2. Bash debugging tips
12.3. System tools used for debugging
12.4. Iptables debugging
12.5. Other debugging tools
12.5.1. Nmap
12.5.2. Nessus
12.6. What's next?
13. rc.firewall file
13.1. example rc.firewall
13.2. explanation of rc.firewall
13.2.1. Configuration options
13.2.2. Initial loading of extra modules
13.2.3. proc set up
13.2.4. Displacement of rules to different chains
13.2.5. Setting up default policies
13.2.6. Setting up user specified chains in the filter table
13.2.7. INPUT chain
13.2.8. FORWARD chain
13.2.9. OUTPUT chain
13.2.10. PREROUTING chain of the nat table
13.2.11. Starting SNAT and the POSTROUTING chain
14. Example scripts
14.1. rc.firewall.txt script structure
14.1.1. The structure
14.2. rc.firewall.txt
14.3. rc.DMZ.firewall.txt
14.4. rc.DHCP.firewall.txt
14.5. rc.UTIN.firewall.txt
14.6. rc.test-iptables.txt
14.7. rc.flush-iptables.txt
14.8. Limit-match.txt
14.9. Pid-owner.txt
14.10. Recent-match.txt
14.11. Sid-owner.txt
14.12. Ttl-inc.txt
14.13. Iptables-save ruleset
15. Graphical User Interfaces for Iptables/netfilter
15.1. fwbuilder
15.2. Turtle Firewall Project
15.3. Integrated Secure Communications System
15.4. IPMenu
15.5. Easy Firewall Generator
15.6. What's next?
16. Commercial products based on Linux, iptables and netfilter
16.1. Ingate Firewall 1200
A. Detailed explanations of special commands
A.1. Listing your active rule-set
A.2. Updating and flushing your tables
B. Common problems and questions
B.2. State NEW packets but no SYN bit set
B.4. Internet Service Providers who use assigned IP addresses
B.5. Letting DHCP requests through iptables
B.6. mIRC DCC problems
C. ICMP types
D. TCP options
G. History
H. GNU Free Documentation License
0. PREAMBLE
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
8. TRANSLATION
9. TERMINATION
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
How to use this License for your documents
0. Preamble
1. TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
2. How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
J.1. Example rc.firewall script
J.2. Example rc.DMZ.firewall script
J.3. Example rc.UTIN.firewall script
J.4. Example rc.DHCP.firewall script
J.5. Example rc.flush-iptables script
J.6. Example rc.test-iptables script
List of Tables
6-1. Destination local host (our own machine)
6-2. Source local host (our own machine)
6-3. Forwarded packets
7-1. User-land states
7-2. Internal states
7-3. Complex protocols support
9-1. Tables
9-2. Commands
9-3. Options
10-1. Generic matches
10-2. TCP matches
10-3. UDP matches
10-4. ICMP matches
10-5. AH match options
10-6. ESP match options
10-7. Conntrack match options
10-8. DSCP match options
10-9. ECN match options
10-10. ECN Field in IP
10-11. Helper match options
10-12. IP range match options
10-13. Length match options
10-14. Limit match options
10-15. MAC match options
10-16. Mark match options
10-17. Multiport match options
10-18. Owner match options
10-19. Packet type match options
10-20. Recent match options
10-21. State matches
10-22. TCPMSS match options
10-23. TOS matches
10-24. TTL matches
11-1. CLASSIFY target options
11-2. DNAT target
11-3. DSCP target options
11-4. ECN target options
11-5. LOG target options
11-6. MARK target options
11-7. MASQUERADE target
11-8. NETMAP target options
11-9. REDIRECT target
11-10. REJECT target
11-11. SAME target options
11-12. SNAT target options
11-13. TCPMSS target options
11-14. TOS target
11-15. TTL target
11-16. ULOG target
C-1. ICMP types
D-1. TCP Options
About the author
The author of the iptables tutorial was born in...
No, jokes aside. At age 8 I got my first computer for christmas present, a Commodore 64 with a C-1541 diskdrive, 8 needle printer and some games etc. It took me several days to even bother. My father managed to put it together and after 2 days he finally learned himself how to load a game and showed how to do it for myself. A life immersed in computers was born this day I guess. I played mostly games at this stage, but did venture into the C-64 basic programming language a couple of times on and off. After some years, I got my hands on an Amiga 500, which was mainly used for games and some school work and fiddling around. Amiga 1200 was next.
Back in 1993-94 My father was clearsighted enough to understand that Amiga was, unfortunately, not the way of the future. PC and i386 computers was. Despite my screams in vain he bought me a PC, 486 50MHz with 16 MB of ram, Compaq computer. This was actually one of the worst computer designs I have ever seen, everything was integrated, including speakers and CRT screen. I guess they where trying to mimic the Apple designs of the day, but failing miserably to do so. It should be noted though, that this was the computer that got me really into computers. I started coding for real, started using the Internet and actually installed Linux on this machine.
I have for a long time been an avid Linux user and administrator. My Linux experience started in 1994 with a slackware installation from borrowed CD's. This first installation was mostly a trial installation. I had no previous experience and it took me quite some time to get modems running et cetera, and I kept running a dual boot system. The second installation, circa 1996, I had no media around so I winded up downloading the whole slackware A, AP, D and N disksets via FTP on a 28k8 modem. Since I realized I would never learn anything from using graphical interfaces, I went back to basics. Nothing but console, no X11 or graphics except for svgalib. In the end, I believe this has helped me a lot. I believe there is nothing to teach you how to use something as to actually forcing yourself to do it, as I did at this time. I had no choice but to learn. I continued running like this for close to 2 years. After this, I finally installed XFree86 from scratch. After an 24 hour compilation, I realized that I had totally misconfigured the compilation and had to restart the compilation from scratch. As a human, you are always bound to do errors. It simply happens and you better get used to it. Also, this kind of build process teaches you to be patient. Let things have its time and don't force it.
In 2000-2001 I was part of a small group of people who ran a newssite mainly focusing on Amiga related news, but also some Linux and general computer news. The site was called BoingWorld, located at www.boingworld.com (no long available unfortunately). The Linux 2.3 kernels where reaching their end of line and the 2.4 kernels where starting to pop up. At this point, I realized there was a half-new concept of firewalling inside of it. Sure I had run into ipfwadm and ipchains before and used it to some extent, but never truly gone heads first into it. I also realized there was embaerassingly little documentation and I felt it might be an interesting idea to write an iptables tutorial for boingworld. Said and done, I wrote the first 5-10 pages of what you are currently reading. Becoming a smashing hit, I continued to add material to the tutorial. The original pages are no longer anywhere to be found in this tutorial/documentation, but the concept lives on.
I have worked several different companies during this time with Linux/network administration, writing documentation and course material, helped several hundred, if not thousand, people emailing questions regarding iptables and netfilter and general networking questions. I have attended two CERTconf's and held three presentations at the same conference, and also the Netfilter workshop 2003. It has been an hectic and sometimes very ungrateful job to maintain and update this work, but in the end I am very happy for it and this is something I am very proud of having done. At the time of writing this in end of 2006, the project has been close to dead for several years, and I regret this. I hope to change this in the coming years, and that a lot of people will find this work to be of future use, possibly adding to the family of documents with other interesting documentation that might be needed.
How to read
This document could either be read as a reference or from start to end. It was originally written as a small introduction to iptables and to some extent netfilter, but this focus has changed over the years. It aims at being an as complete reference as possibly to iptables and netfilter and to at least give a basic and fast primer or repetition to the areas that you might need to understand. It should be noted that this document will not, nor will it be able to, deal with specific bugs inside or outside the scope of iptables and netfilter, nor does it really deal with how to get around bugs like this.
If you find peculiar bugs or behaviors in iptables or any of the subcomponents, you should contact the Netfilter mailing lists and tell them about the problem and they can tell you if this is a real bug or if it has already been fixed. There are security related bugs found in iptables and Netfilter, one or two do slip by once in a while, it's inevitable. These are properly shown on the front page of the Netfilter main page, and that is where you should go to get information on such topics.
The above also implies that the rule-sets available with this tutorial are not written to deal with actual bugs inside Netfilter. The main goal of them is to simply show how to set up rules in a nice simple fashion that deals with all problems we may run into. For example, this tutorial will not cover how we would close down the HTTP port for the simple reason that Apache happens to be vulnerable in version 1.2.12 (This is covered really, though not for that reason).
This document was written to give everyone a good and simple primer at how to get started with iptables, but at the same time it was created to be as complete as possible. It does not contain any targets or matches that are in patch-o-matic for the simple reason that it would require too much effort to keep such a list updated. If you need information about the patch-o-matic updates, you should read the info that comes with it in patch-o-matic as well as the other documentations available on the Netfilter main page.
If you have any suggestions on additions or if you think you find any problems around the area of iptables and netfilter not covered in this document feel free to contact me about this. I will be more than happy to take a look at it and possibly add what might be missing.
Prerequisites
This document requires some previous knowledge about Linux/Unix, shell scripting, as well as how to compile your own kernel, and some simple knowledge about the kernel internals.
I have tried as much as possible to eradicate all prerequisites needed before fully grasping this document, but to some extent it is simply impossible to not need some previous knowledge.
Conventions used in this document
The following conventions are used in this document when it comes to commands, files and other specific information.
-
Long code excerpts and command-outputs are printed like shown below. This includes screendumps and larger examples taken from the console.
[blueflux@work1 neigh]$ ls default eth0 lo [blueflux@work1 neigh]$
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All commands and program names in the tutorial are shown in bold typeface. This includes all the commands that you might type, or part of the command that you type.
-
All system items such as hardware, and also kernel internals or abstract system items such as the loopback interface are all shown in an italic typeface.
-
computer output is formatted in this way in the text. Computer output could be summed up as all the output that the computer will give you on the console.
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filenames and paths in the file-system are shown like /usr/local/bin/iptables.
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. Why this document was written
Well, I found a big empty space in the HOWTO's out there lacking in information about the iptables and Netfilter functions in the new Linux 2.4.x kernels. Among other things, I'm going to try to answer questions that some might have about the new possibilities like state matching. Most of this will be illustrated with an example rc.firewall.txt file that you can use in your /etc/rc.d/ scripts. Yes, this file was originally based upon the masquerading HOWTO for those of you who recognize it.
Also, there's a small script that I wrote just in case you screw up as much as I did during the configuration available as rc.flush-iptables.txt.
1.2. How it was written
I originally wrote this as a very small tutorial for boingworld.com, which was an Amiga/Linux/General newssite that a small group of people, including me, ran a couple of years back. Due to the fantastic amount of readers and comments that I got from it, I continued to write on it. The original version was approximately 10-15 A4 pages in printed version and has since been growing slowly but steadily. A huge amount of people has helped me out, spellchecking, bug corrections, etc. At the time of writing this, the http://iptables-tutorial.frozentux.net/ site has had over 600.000 unique hits alone.
This document was written to guide you through the setup process step by step and hopefully help you to understand some more about the iptables package. I have based most of the stuff here on the example rc.firewall file, since I found that example to be a good way to learn how to use iptables. I decided to just follow the basic chain structure and from there walk through each and one of the chains traversed and explain how the script works. That way the tutorial is a little bit harder to follow, though this way is more logical. Whenever you find something that's hard to understand, just come back to this tutorial.
1.3. Terms used in this document
This document contains a few terms that may need more detailed explanations before you read them. This section will try to cover the most obvious ones and how I have chosen to use them within this document.
Connection - This is generally referred to in this document as a series of packets relating to each other. These packets refer to each other as an established kind of connection. A connection is in another word a series of exchanged packets. In TCP, this mainly means establishing a connection via the 3-way handshake, and then this is considered a connection until the release handshake.
DNAT - Destination Network Address Translation. DNAT refers to the technique of translating the Destination IP address of a packet, or to change it simply put. This is used together with SNAT to allow several hosts to share a single Internet routable IP address, and to still provide Server Services. This is normally done by assigning different ports with an Internet routable IP address, and then tell the Linux router where to send the traffic.
IPSEC - Internet Protocol Security is a protocol used to encrypt IPv4 packets and sending them securely over the Internet. For more information on IPSEC, look in the Other resources and links appendix for other resources on the topic.
Kernel space - This is more or less the opposite of User space. This implies the actions that take place within the kernel, and not outside of the kernel.
Packet - A singular unit sent over a network, containing a header and a data portion. For example, an IP packet or an TCP packet. In Request For Comments (RFC's) a packet isn't so generalized, instead IP packets are called datagrams, while TCP packets are called segments. I have chosen to call pretty much everything packets in this document for simplicity.
QoS - Quality of Service is a way of specifying how a packet should be handled and what kind of service quality it should receive while sending it. For more information on this topic, take a look in the TCP/IP repetition chapter as well as the Other resources and links appendix for external resources on the subject.
Segment - A TCP segment is pretty much the same as an packet, but a formalized word for a TCP packet.
Stream - This term refers to a connection that sends and receives packets that are related to each other in some fashion. Basically, I have used this term for any kind of connection that sends two or more packets in both directions. In TCP this may mean a connection that sends a SYN and then replies with an SYN/ACK, but it may also mean a connection that sends a SYN and then replies with an ICMP Host unreachable. In other words, I use this term very loosely.
SNAT - Source Network Address Translation. This refers to the techniques used to translate one source address to another in a packet. This is used to make it possible for several hosts to share a single Internet routable IP address, since there is currently a shortage of available IP addresses in IPv4 (IPv6 will solve this).
State - This term refers to which state the packet is in, either according to RFC 793 - Transmission Control Protocol or according to userside states used in Netfilter/iptables. Note that the used states internally, and externally, do not follow the RFC 793 specification fully. The main reason is that Netfilter has to make several assumptions about the connections and packets.
User space - With this term I mean everything and anything that takes place outside the kernel. For example, invoking iptables -h takes place outside the kernel, while iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -j ACCEPT takes place (partially) within the kernel, since a new rule is added to the ruleset.
Userland - See User space.
VPN - Virtual Private Network is a technique used to create virtually private networks over non-private networks, such as the Internet. IPSEC is one technique used to create VPN connections. OpenVPN is another.
Chapter 2. TCP/IP repetition
Iptables is an extremely knowledge intensive tool. This means that iptables takes quite a bit of knowledge to be able to use iptables to it's full extent. Among other things, you must have a very good understanding of the TCP/IP protocol.
This chapter aims at explaining the pure "must understands" of TCP/IP before you can go on and work with iptables. Among the things we will go through are the IP,TCP, UDP and ICMP protocols and their headers, and general usages of each of these protocols and how they correlate to each other. Iptables works inside Internet and Transport layers, and because of that, this chapter will focus mainly on those layers as well.
Iptables is also able to work on higher layers, such as the Application layer. However, it was not built for this task, and should not be used for that kind of usage. I will explain more about this in the IP filtering introduction chapter.
2.1. TCP/IP Layers
TCP/IP is, as already stated, multi-layered. This means that we have one functionality running at one depth, and another one at another level, etcetera. The reason that we have all of these layers is actually very simple.
The biggest reason is that the whole architecture is very extensible. We can add new functionality to the application layers, for example, without having to reimplement the whole TCP/IP stack code, or to include a complete TCP/IP stack into the actual application. Just the same way as we don't need to rewrite every single program, every time that we make a new network interface card. Each layer should need to know as little as possible about each other, to keep them separated.
| When we are talking about the programming code of TCP/IP which resides inside the kernel, we are often talking about the TCP/IP stack. The TCP/IP stack simply means all of the sublayers used, from the Network access layer and all the way up to the Application layer. |
There are two basic architectures to follow when talking about layers. One of them is the OSI (Open Systems Interconnect) Reference Model and consists of 7 layers. We will only look at it superficially here since we are more interested in the TCP/IP layers. However, from an historical point, this is interesting to know about, especially if you are working with lots of different types of networks. The layers are as follows in the OSI Reference Model list.
| There is some discussion as to which of these reference models is mostly used, but it seems that the OSI reference model still is the prevalent reference model. This might also depend on where you live, however, in most US and EU countries it seems as you can default to OSI reference model while speaking to technicians and salespeople. However, throughout the rest of this document, we will mainly refer to the TCP/IP reference model, unless otherwise noted. |
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Application layer
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Presentation layer
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Session layer
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Transport layer
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Network layer
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Data Link layer
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Physical layer
A packet that is sent by us, goes from the top and to the bottom of this list, each layer adding its own set of headers to the packet in what we call the encapsulation phase. When the packet finally reaches it's destination the packet goes backwards through the list and the headers are stripped out of the packet, one by one, each header giving the destination host all of the needed information for the packet data to finally reach the application or program that it was destined for.
The second and more interesting layering standard that we are more interested in is the TCP/IP protocol architecture, as shown in the TCP/IP architecture list. There is no universal agreement among people on just how many layers there are in the TCP/IP architecture. However, it is generally considered that there are 3 through 5 layers available, and in most pictures and explanations, there will be 4 layers discussed. We will, for simplicities sake, only consider those four layers that are generally discussed.
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Application layer
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Transport layer
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Internet layer
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Network Access layer
As you can see, the architecture of the TCP/IP protocol set is very much like the OSI Reference Model, but yet not. Just the same as with the OSI Reference Model, we add and subtract headers for each layer that we enter or leave.
For example, lets use one of the most common analogies to modern computer networking, the snail-mail letter. Everything is done in steps, just as is everything in TCP/IP.
You want to send a letter to someone asking how they are, and what they are doing. To do this, you must first create the data, or questions. The actual data would be located inside the Application layer.
After this we would put the data written on a sheet of paper inside an envelope and write on it to whom the letter is destined for within a specific company or household. Perhaps something like the example below:
Attn: John Doe
This is equivalent to the the Transport layer, as it is known in TCP/IP. In the Transport layer, if we were dealing with TCP, this would have been equivalent to some port (e.g., port 25).
At this point we write the address on the envelope of the recipient, such as this:
V. Andersgardsgatan 2
41715 Gothenburg
This would in the analogy be the same as the Internet layer. The internet layer contains information telling us where to reach the recipient, or host, in a TCP/IP network. Just the same way as the recipient on an envelope. This would be the equivalent of the IP address in other words (e.g., IP 192.168.0.4).
The final step is to put the whole letter in a postbox. Doing this would approximately equal to putting a packet into the Network Access Layer. The network access layer contains the functions and routines for accessing the actual physical network that the packet should be transported over.
When the receiver finally receives the letter, he will open the whole letter from the envelope and address etc (decapsulate it). The letter he receives may either require a reply or not. In either case, the letter may be replied upon by the receiver, by reversing the receiver and transmitter addresses on the original letter he received, so that receiver becomes transmitter, and transmitter becomes receiver.
| It is very important to understand that iptables was and is specifically built to work inside the headers of the Internet and the Transport layers. It is possible to do some very basic filtering with iptables in the Application and Network access layers as well, but it was not designed for this, nor is it very suitable for those purposes. For example, if we use a string match and match for a specific string inside the packet, lets say get /index.html. Will that work? Normally, yes. However, if the packet size is very small, it will not. The reason is that iptables is built to work on a per packet basis, which means that if the string is split into several separate packets, iptables will not see that whole string. For this reason, you are much, much better off using a proxy of some sort for filtering in the application layer. We will discuss these problems in more detail later on in the IP filtering introduction. |
As iptables and netfilter mainly operate in the Internet and Transport layers, that is the layers that we will put our main focus in, in the upcoming sections of this chapter. Under the Internet layer, we will almost exclusively see the IP protocol. There are a few additions to this, such as, for example, the GRE protocol, but they are very rare. Also, iptables is (as the name implies) not focused around these protocols very well either. Because of all these factors we will mainly focus around the IP protocol of the Internet layer, and TCP, UDP and ICMP of the Transport layer.
| The ICMP protocol is actually sort of a mix between the two layers. It runs in the Internet layer, but it has the exact same headers as the IP protocol, but also a few extra headers, and then directly inside that encapsulation, the data. We will discuss this in more detail further on, in the ICMP characteristics. |
2.2. IP characteristics
The IP protocol resides in the Internet layer, as we have already said. The IP protocol is the protocol in the TCP/IP stack that is responsible for letting your machine, routers, switches and etcetera, know where a specific packet is going. This protocol is the very heart of the whole TCP/IP stack, and makes up the very foundation of everything in the Internet.
The IP protocol encapsulates the Transport layer packet with information about which Transport layer protocol it came from, what host it is going to, and where it came from, and a little bit of other useful information. All of this is, of course, extremely precisely standardized, down to every single bit. The same applies to every single protocol that we will discuss in this chapter.
The IP protocol has a couple of basic functionalities that it must be able to handle. It must be able to define the datagram, which is the next building block created by the transport layer (this may in other words be TCP, UDP or ICMP for example). The IP protocol also defines the Internet addressing system that we use today. This means that the IP protocol is what defines how to reach between hosts, and this also affects how we are able to route packets, of course. The addresses we are talking about are what we generally call an IP address. Usually when we talk about IP addresses, we talk about dotted quad numbers (e.g., 127.0.0.1). This is mostly to make the IP addresses more readable for the human eye, since the IP address is actually just a 32 bit field of 1's and 0's (127.0.0.1 would hence be read as 01111111000000000000000000000001 within the actual IP header).
The IP protocol has even more magic it must perform up it's sleeve. It must also be able to decapsulate and encapsulate the IP datagram (IP data) and send or receive the datagram from either the Network access layer, or the transport layer. This may seem obvious, but sometimes it is not. On top of all this, it has two big functions it must perform as well, that will be of quite interest for the firewalling and routing community. The IP protocol is responsible for routing packets from one host to another, as well as packets that we may receive from one host destined for another. Most of the time on single network access host, this is a very simple process. You have two different options, either the packet is destined for our locally attached network, or possibly through a default gateway. but once you start working with firewalls or security policies together with multiple network interfaces and different routes, it may cause quite some headache for many network administrators. The last of the responsibilities for the IP protocol is that it must fragment and reassemble any datagram that has previously been fragmented, or that needs to be fragmented to fit in to the packetsize of this specific network hardware topology that we are connected to. If these packet fragments are sufficiently small, they may cause a horribly annoying headache for firewall administrators as well. The problem is, that once they are fragmented to small enough chunks, we will start having problems to read even the headers of the packet, not to mention the actual data.
| As of Linux kernel 2.4 series, and iptables, this should no longer be a problem for most linux firewalls. The connection tracking system used by iptables for state matching and NAT'ing etc must be able to read the packet defragmented. Because of this, conntrack automatically defragments all packets before they reach the netfilter/iptables structure in the kernel. |
The IP protocol is also a connectionless protocol, which in turn means that IP does not "negotiate" a connection. a connection-oriented protocol on the other hand negotiates a "connection" (called a handshake) and then when all data has been sent, tears it down. TCP is an example of this kind of protocol, however, it is implemented on top of the IP protocol. The reason for not being connection-oriented just yet are several, but among others, a handshake is not required at this time yet since there are other protocols that this would add an unnecessarily high overhead to, and that is made up in such a way that if we don't get a reply, we know the packet was lost somewhere in transit anyways, and resend the original request. As you can see, sending the request and then waiting for a specified amount of time for the reply in this case, is much preferred over first sending one packet to say that we want to open a connection, then receive a packet letting us know it was opened, and finally acknowledge that we know that the whole connection is actually open, and then actually send the request, and after that send another packet to tear the connection down and wait for another reply.
IP is also known as an unreliable protocol, or simply put it does not know if a packet was received or not. It simply receives a packet from the transport layer and does its thing, and then passes it on to the network access layer, and then nothing more to it. It may receive a return packet, which traverses from network access layer to the IP protocol which does it's thing again, and then passes it on upwards to the Transport layer. However, it doesn't care if it gets a reply packet, or if the packet was received at the other end. Same thing applies for the unreliability of IP as for the connectionless-ness, since unreliability would require adding an extra reply packet to each packet that is sent. For example, let us consider a DNS lookup. As it is, we send a DNS request for servername.com. If we never receive a reply, we know something went wrong and re-request the lookup, but during normal use we would send out one request, and get one reply back. Adding reliability to this protocol would mean that the request would require two packets (one request, and one confirmation that the packet was received) and then two packets for the reply (one reply, and one reply to acknowledge the reply was received). In other words, we just doubled the amount of packets needed to send, and almost doubled the amount of data needed to be transmitted.
2.3. IP headers
The IP packet contains several different parts in the header as you have understood from the previous introduction to the IP protocol. The whole header is meticuluously divided into different parts, and each part of the header is allocated as small of a piece as possible to do it's work, just to give the protocol as little overhead as possible. You will see the exact configuration of the IP headers in the IP headers image.
| Understand that the explanations of the different headers are very brief and that we will only discuss the absolute basics of them. For each type of header that we discuss, we will also list the proper RFC's that you should read for further understanding and technical explanations of the protocol in question. As a sidenote to this note, RFC stands for Request For Comments, but these days, they have a totally different meaning to the Internet community. They are what defines and standardises the whole Internet, compared to what they were when the researchers started writing RFC's to each other. Back then, they were simply requests for comments and a way of asking other researchers about their opinions. |
The IP protocol is mainly described in RFC 791 - Internet Protocol. However, this RFC is also updated by RFC 1349 - Type of Service in the Internet Protocol Suite, which was obsoleted by RFC 2474 - Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers, and which was updated by RFC 3168 - The Addition of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP and RFC 3260 - New Terminology and Clarifications for Diffserv.
| As you can see, all of these standards can get a little bit hard to follow at times. One tip for finding the different RFC's that are related to each other is to use the search functions available at RFC-editor.org. In the case of IP, consider that the RFC 791 is the basic RFC, and all of the other are simply updates and changes to that standard. We will discuss these more in detail when we get to the specific headers that are changed by these newer RFC's. One thing to remember is, that sometimes, an RFC can be obsoleted (not used at all). Normally this means that the RFC has been so drastically updated and that it is better to simply replace the whole thing. It may also become obsolete for other reasons as well. When an RFC becomes obsoleted, a field is added to the original RFC that points to the new RFC instead. |
Version - bits 0-3. This is a version number of the IP protocol in binary. IPv4 iscalled 0100, while IPv6 is called 0110. This field is generally not used for filtering very much. The version described in RFC 791 is IPv4.
IHL (Internet Header Length) - bits 4-7. This field tells us how long the IP header is in 32 bit words. As you can see, we have split the header up in this way (32 bits per line) in the image as well. Since the Options field is of optional length, we can never be absolutely sure of how long the whole header is, without this field. The minimum length of this of the header is 5 words.
Type of Service, DSCP, ECN - bits 8-15. This is one of the most complex areas of the IP header for the simple reason that it has been updated 3 times. It has always had the same basic usage, but the implementation has changed several times. First the field was called the Type of Service field. Bit [0-2] of the field was called the Precedence field. Bit [3] was Normal/Low delay, Bit [4] was Normal/High throughput, Bit [5] was Normal/High reliability and bit [6-7] was reserved for future usage. This is still used in a lot of places with older hardware, and it still causes some problems for the Internet. Among other things, bit [6-7] are specified to be set to 0. In the ECN updates (RFC , we start using these reserved bits and hence set other values than 0 to these bits. But a lot of old firewalls and routers have built in checks looking if these bits are set to 1, and if the packets do, the packet is discarded. Today, this is clearly a violation of RFC's, but there is not much you can do about it, except to complain.
The second iteration of this field was when the field was changed into the DS field as defined in RFC 2474. DS stands for Differentiated Services. According to this standard bits [0-5] is Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) and the remaining two bits [6-7] are still unused. The DSCP field is pretty much used the same as in how the ToS field was used before, to mark what kind of service this packet should be treated like if the router in question makes any difference between them. One big change is that a device must ignore the unused bits to be fully RFC 2474 compliant, which means we get rid of the previous hassle as explained previously, as long as the device creators follow this RFC.
The third, and almost last, change of the ToS field was when the two, previously, unused bits were used for ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification), as defined in RFC 3168. ECN is used to let the end nodes know about a routers congestion, before it actually starts dropping packets, so that the end nodes will be able to slow down their data transmissions, before the router actually needs to start dropping data. Previously, dropping data was the only way that a router had to tell that it was overloaded, and the end nodes had to do a slow restart for each dropped packet, and then slowly gather up speed again. The two bits are named ECT (ECNCapable Transport) and CE (Congestion Experienced) codepoints.
The final iteration of the whole mess is RFC 3260 which gives some new terminology and clarifications to the usage of the DiffServ system. It doesn't involve too many new updates or changes, except in the terminology. The RFC is also used to clarify some points that were discussed between developers.
Total Length - bits 16 - 31. This field tells us how large the packet is in octets, including headers and everything. The maximum size is 65535 octets, or bytes, for a single packet. The minimum packet size is 576 bytes, not caring if the packet arrives in fragments or not. It is only recommended to send larger packets than this limit if it can be guaranteed that the host can receive it, according to RFC 791. However, these days most networks runs at 1500 byte packet size. This includes almost all ethernet connections, and most Internet connections.
Identification - bits 32 - 46. This field is used in aiding the reassembly of fragmented packets.
Flags - bits 47 - 49. This field contains a few miscellaneous flags pertaining to fragmentation. The first bit is reserved, but still not used, and must be set to 0. The second bit is set to 0 if the packet may be fragmented, and to 1 if it may not be fragmented. The third and last bit can be set to 0 if this was the last fragment, and 1 if there are more fragments of this same packet.
Fragment Offset - bits 50 - 63. The fragment offset field shows where in the datagram that this packet belongs. The fragments are calculated in 64 bits, and the first fragment has offset zero.
Time to live - bits 64 - 72. The TTL field tells us how long the packet may live, or rather how many "hops" it may take over the Internet. Every process that touches the packet must remove one point from the TTL field, and if the TTL reaches zero, the whole packet must be destroyed and discarded. This is basically used as a safety trigger so that a packet may not end up in an uncontrollable loop between one or several hosts. Upon destruction the host should return an ICMP Destination Unreachable message to the sender.
Protocol - bits 73 - 80. In this field the protocol of the next level layer is indicated. For example, this may be TCP, UDP or ICMP among others. All of these numbers are defined by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. All numbers can befound on their homepage Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
Header checksum - bits 81 - 96. This is a checksum of the IP header of the packet.This field is recomputed at every host that changes the header, which means pretty much every host that the packet traverses over, since they most often change the packets TTL field or some other.
Source address - bits 97 - 128. This is the source address field. It is generally written in 4 octets, translated from binary to decimal numbers with dots in between. That is for example, 127.0.0.1. The field lets the receiver know where the packet came from.
Destination address - bits 129 - 160. The destination address field contains the destination address, and what a surprise, it is formatted the same way as the source address.
Options - bits 161 - 192 <> 478. The options field is not optional, as it may sound. Actually, this is one of the more complex fields in the IP header. The options field contains different optional settings within the header, such as Internet timestamps, SACK or record route options. Since these options are all optional, the Options field can have different lengths, and hence the whole IP header. However, since we always calculate the IP header in 32 bit words, we must always end the header on an even number, that is the multiple of 32. The field may contain zero or more options.
The options field starts with a brief 8 bit field that lets us know which options are used in the packet. The options are all listed in the TCP Options table, in the TCP options appendix. For more information about the different options, read the proper RFC's. For an updated listing of the IP options, check at Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
Padding - bits variable. This is a padding field that is used to make the header end at an even 32 bit boundary. The field must always be set to zeroes straight through to the end.
2.4. TCP characteristics
The TCP protocol resides on top of the IP protocol. It is a stateful protocol and has built-in functions to see that the data was received properly by the other end host. The main goals of the TCP protocol is to see that data is reliably received and sent, that the data is transported between the Internet layer and Application layer correctly, and that the packet data reaches the proper program in the application layer, and that the data reaches the program in the right order. All of this is possible through the TCP headers of the packet.
The TCP protocol looks at data as an continuous data stream with a start and a stop signal. The signal that indicates that a new stream is waiting to be opened is called a SYN three-way handshake in TCP, and consists of one packet sent with the SYN bit set. The other end then either answers with SYN/ACK or SYN/RST to let the client know if the connection was accepted or denied, respectively. If the client receives an SYN/ACK packet, it once again replies, this time with an ACK packet. At this point, the whole connection is established and data can be sent. During this initial handshake, all of the specific options that will be used throughout the rest of the TCP connection is also negotiated, such as ECN, SACK, etcetera.
While the datastream is alive, we have further mechanisms to see that the packets are actually received properly by the other end. This is the reliability part of TCP. This is done in a simple way, using a Sequence number in the packet. Every time we send a packet, we give a new value to the Sequence number, and when the other end receives the packet, it sends an ACK packet back to the data sender. The ACK packet acknowledges that the packet was received properly. The sequence number also sees to it that the packet is inserted into the data stream in a good order.
Once the connection is closed, this is done by sending a FIN packet from either end-point. The other end then responds by sending a FIN/ACK packet. The FIN sending end can then no longer send any data, but the other end-point can still finish sending data. Once the second end-point wishes to close the connection totally, it sends a FIN packet back to the originally closing end-point, and the other end-point replies with a FIN/ACK packet. Once this whole procedure is done, the connection is torn down properly.
As you will also later see, the TCP headers contain a checksum as well. The checksum consists of a simple hash of the packet. With this hash, we can with rather high accuracy see if a packet has been corrupted in any way during transit between the hosts.
2.5. TCP headers
The TCP headers must be able to perform all of the tasks above. We have already explained when and where some of the headers are used, but there are still other areas that we haven't touched very deeply at. Below you see an image of the complete set of TCP headers. It is formatted in 32 bit words per row, as you can see.
Source port - bit 0 - 15. This is the source port of the packet. The source port was originally bound directly to a process on the sending system. Today, we use a hash between the IP addresses, and both the destination and source ports to achieve this uniqueness that we can bind to a single application or program.
Destination port - bit 16 - 31. This is the destination port of the TCP packet. Just as with the source port, this was originally bound directly to a process on the receiving system. Today, a hash is used instead, which allows us to have more open connections at the same time. When a packet is received, the destination and source ports are reversed in the reply back to the originally sending host, so that destination port is now source port, and source port is destination port.
Sequence Number - bit 32 - 63. The sequence number field is used to set a number on each TCP packet so that the TCP stream can be properly sequenced (e.g., the packets winds up in the correct order). The Sequence number is then returned in the ACK field to ackonowledge that the packet was properly received.
Acknowledgment Number - bit 64 - 95. This field is used when we acknowledge a specific packet a host has received. For example, we receive a packet with one Sequence number set, and if everything is okey with the packet, we reply with an ACK packet with the Acknowledgment number set to the same as the original Sequence number.
Data Offset - bit 96 - 99. This field indicates how long the TCP header is, and where the Data part of the packet actually starts. It is set with 4 bits, and measures the TCP header in 32 bit words. The header should always end at an even 32 bit boundary, even with different options set. This is possible thanks to the Padding field at the very end of the TCP header.
Reserved - bit 100 - 103. These bits are reserved for future usage. In RFC 793 this also included the CWR and ECE bits. According to RFC 793 bit 100-105 (i.e., this and the CWR and ECE fields) must be set to zero to be fully compliant. Later on, when we started introducing ECN, this caused a lot of troubles because a lot of Internet appliances such as firewalls and routers dropped packets with them set. This is still true as of writing this.
CWR - bit 104. This bit was added in RFC 3268 and is used by ECN. CWR stands for Congestion Window Reduced, and is used by the data sending part to inform the receiving part that the congestion window has been reduced. When the congestion window is reduced, we send less data per timeunit, to be able to cope with the total network load.
ECE - bit 105. This bit was also added with RFC 3268 and is used by ECN. ECE stands for ECN Echo. It is used by the TCP/IP stack on the receiver host to let the sending host know that it has received an CE packet. The same thing applies here, as for the CWR bit, it was originally a part of the reserved field and because of this, some networking appliances will simply drop the packet if these fields contain anything else than zeroes. This is actually still true for a lot of appliances unfortunately.
URG - bit 106. This field tells us if we should use the Urgent Pointer field or not. If set to 0, do not use Urgent Pointer, if set to 1, do use Urgent pointer.
ACK - bit 107. This bit is set to a packet to indicate that this is in reply to another packet that we received, and that contained data. An Acknowledgment packet is always sent to indicate that we have actually received a packet, and that it contained no errors. If this bit is set, the original data sender will check the Acknowledgment Number to see which packet is actually acknowledged, and then dump it from the buffers.
PSH - bit 108. The PUSH flag is used to tell the TCP protocol on any intermediate hosts to send the data on to the actual user, including the TCP implementation on the receiving host. This will push all data through, unregardless of where or how much of the TCP Window that has been pushed through yet.
RST - bit 109. The RESET flag is set to tell the other end to tear down the TCP connection. This is done in a couple of different scenarios, the main reasons being that the connection has crashed for some reason, if the connection does not exist, or if the packet is wrong in some way.
SYN - bit 110. The SYN (or Synchronize sequence numbers) is used during the initial establishment of a connection. It is set in two instances of the connection, the initial packet that opens the connection, and the reply SYN/ACK packet. It should never be used outside of those instances.
FIN - bit 111. The FIN bit indicates that the host that sent the FIN bit has no more data to send. When the other end sees the FIN bit, it will reply with a FIN/ACK. Once this is done, the host that originally sent the FIN bit can no longer send any data. However, the other end can continue to send data until it is finished, and will then send a FIN packet back, and wait for the final FIN/ACK, after which the connection is sent to a CLOSED state.
Window - bit 112 - 127. The Window field is used by the receiving host to tell the sender how much data the receiver permits at the moment. This is done by sending an ACK back, which contains the Sequence number that we want to acknowledge, and the Window field then contains the maximum accepted sequence numbers that the sending host can use before he receives the next ACK packet. The next ACK packetwill update accepted Window which the sender may use.
Checksum - bit 128 - 143. This field contains the checksum of the whole TCP header. It is a one's complement of the one's complement sum of each 16 bit word in the header. If the header does not end on a 16 bit boundary, the additional bits are set to zero. While the checksum is calculated, the checksum field is set to zero. The checksum also covers a 96 bit pseudoheader containing the Destination-, Source-address, protocol, and TCP length. This is for extra security.
Urgent Pointer - bit 144 - 159. This is a pointer that points to the end of the data which is considered urgent. If the connection has important data that should be processed as soon as possible by the receiving end, the sender can set the URG flag and set the Urgent pointer to indicate where the urgent data ends.
Options - bit 160 - **. The Options field is a variable length field and contains optional headers that we may want to use. Basically, this field contains 3 subfields at all times. An initial field tells us the length of the Options field, a second field tells us which options are used, and then we have the actual options. A complete listing of all the TCP Options can be found in TCP options.
Padding - bit **. The padding field pads the TCP header until the whole header ends at a 32-bit boundary. This ensures that the data part of the packet begins on a 32-bit boundary, and no data is lost in the packet. The padding always consists of only zeros.
2.6. UDP characteristics
The User Datagram Protocol (UDP protocol) is a very basic and simple protocol on top of the IP protocol. It was developed to allow for very simple data transmission without any error detection of any kind, and it is stateless. However, it is very well fit for query/response kind of applications, such as for example DNS, et cetera, since we know that unless we get a reply from the DNS server, the query was lost somewhere. Sometimes it may also be worth using the UDP protocol instead of TCP, such as when we want only error/loss detection but don't care about sequencing of the packets. This removes some overhead that comes from the TCP protocol. We may also do the other thing around, make our own protocol on top of UDP that only contains sequencing, but no error or loss detection.
The UDP protocol is specified in RFC 768 - User Datagram Protocol. It is a very short and brief RFC, which fits a simple protocol like this very well.
2.7. UDP headers
The UDP header can be said to contain a very basic and simplified TCP header. It contains destination-, source-ports, header length and a checksum as seen in the image below.
Source port - bit 0-15. This is the source port of the packet, describing where a reply packet should be sent. This can actually be set to zero if it doesn't apply. For example, sometimes we don't require a reply packet, and the packet can then be set to source port zero. In most implementations, it is set to some port number.
Destination port - bit 16-31. The destination port of the packet. This is required for all packets, as opposed to the source port of a packet.
Length - bit 32-47. The length field specifies the length of the whole packet in octets, including header and data portions. The shortest possible packet can be 8 octets long.
Checksum - bit 48-63. The checksum is the same kind of checksum as used in the TCP header, except that it contains a different set of data. In other words, it is a one's complement of the one's complement sum of parts of the IP header, the whole UDP header, the UDP data and padded with zeroes at the end when necessary.
2.8. ICMP characteristics
ICMP messages are used for a basic kind of error reporting between host to host, or host to gateway. Between gateway to gateway, a protocol called Gateway to Gateway protocol (GGP) should normally be used for error reporting. As we have already discussed, the IP protocol is not designed for perfect error handling, but ICMP messages solves some parts of these problems. The big problem from one standpoint is that the headers of the ICMP messages are rather complicated, and differ a little bit from message to message. However, this will not be a big problem from a filtering standpoint most of the time.
The basic form is that the message contains the standard IP header, type, code and a checksum. All ICMP messages contains these fields. The type specifies what kind of error or reply message this packet is, such as for example destination unreachable, echo, echo reply, or redirect message. The code field specifies more information, if necessary. If the packet is of type destination unreachable, there are several possible values on this code field such as network unreachable, host unreachable, or port unreachable. The checksum is simply a checksum for the whole packet.
As you may have noticed, I mentioned the IP header explicitly for the ICMP packet. This was done since the actual IP header is an integral part of the ICMP packet, and the ICMP protocol lives on the same level as the IP protocol in a sense. ICMP does use the IP protocol as if it where a higher level protocol, but at the same time not. ICMP is an integral part of IP, and ICMP must be implemented in every IP implementation.
2.9. ICMP headers
As already explained, the headers differs a little bit from ICMP type to ICMP type. Most of the ICMP types are possible to group by their headers. Because of this, we will discuss the basic header form first, and then look at the specifics for each group of types that should be discussed.
All packets contain some basic values from the IP headers discussed previously in this chapter. The headers have previously been discussed at some length, so this is just a short listing of the headers, with a few notes about them.
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Version - This should always be set to 4.
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Internet Header Length - The length of the header in 32 bit words.
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Type of Service - See above. This should be set to 0, as this is the only legit setting according to RFC 792 - Internet Control Message Protocol.
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Total Length - Total length of the header and data portion of the packet, counted in octets.
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Identification, Flags and Fragment offsets - Ripped from the IP protocol.
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Time To Live - How many hops this packet will survive.
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Protocol - which version of ICMP is being used (should always be 1).
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Header Checksum - See the IP explanation.
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Source Address - The source address from whom the packet was sent. This is not entirely true, since the packet can have another source address, than that which is located on the machine in question. The ICMP types that can have this effect will be noted if so.
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Destination Address - The destination address of the packet.
There are also a couple of new headers that are used by all of the ICMP types. The new headers are as follows, this time with a few more notes about them:
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Type - The type field contains the ICMP type of the packet. This is always different from ICMP type to type. For example ICMP Destination Unreachable packets will have a type 3 set to it. For a complete listing of the different ICMP types, see the ICMP types appendix. This field contains 8 bits total.
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Code - All ICMP types can contain different codes as well. Some types only have a single code, while others have several codes that they can use. For example, the ICMP Destination Unreachable (type 3) can have at least code 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 set. Each code has a different meaning in that context then. For a complete listing of the different codes, see the ICMP types appendix. This field is 8 bits in length, total. We will discuss the different codes a little bit more in detail for each type later on in this section.
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Checksum - The Checksum is a 16 bit field containing a one's complement of the ones complement of the headers starting with the ICMP type and down. While calculating the checksum, the checksum field should be set to zero.
At this point the headers for the different packets start to look different also. We will describe the most common ICMP Types one by one, with a brief discussion of its headers and different codes.
2.9.1. ICMP Echo Request/Reply
I have chosen to speak about both the reply and the request of the ICMP echo packets here since they are so closely related to each other. The first difference is that the echo request is type 8, while echo reply is type 0. When a host receives a type 8, it replies with a type 0.
When the reply is sent, the source and destination addresses switch places as well. After both of those changes has been done, the checksum is recomputed, and the reply is sent. There are only 1 code for both of these types, they are always set to 0.
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Identifier - This is set in the request packet, and echoed back in the reply, to be able to keep different ping requests and replies together.
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Sequence number - The sequence number for each host, generally this starts at 1 and is incremented by 1 for each packet.
The packets also contains a data part. Per default, the data part is generally empty, but it can contain a userspecified amount of random data.
2.9.2. ICMP Destination Unreachable
The first three fields seen in the image are the same as previously described. The Destination Unreachable type has 6 basic codes that can be used, as seen below in the list.
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Code 0 - Network unreachable - Tells you if a specific network is currently unreachable.
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Code 1 - Host unreachable - Tells you if a specific host is currently unreachable.
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Code 2 - Protocol unreachable - This code tells you if a specific protocol (tcp, udp, etc) can not be reached at the moment.
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Code 3 - Port unreachable - If a port (ssh, http, ftp-data, etc) is not reachable, you will get this message.
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Code 4 - Fragmentation needed and DF set - If a packet needs to be fragmented to be delivered, but the Do not fragment bit is set in the packet, the gateway will return this message.
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Code 5 - Source route failed - If a source route failed for some reason, this message is returned.
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Code 6 - Destination network unknown - If there is no route to a specific network, this message is returned.
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Code 7 - Destination host unknown - If there is no route to a specific host, this message is returned.
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Code 8 - Source host isolated (obsolete) - If a host is isolated, this message should be returned. This code is obsoleted today.
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Code 9 - Destination network administratively prohibited - If a network was blocked at a gateway and your packet was unable to reach it because of this, you should get this ICMP code back.
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Code 10 - Destination host administratively prohibited - If you where unable to reach a host because it was administratively prohibited (e.g., routing administration), youwill get this message back.
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Code 11 - Network unreachable for TOS - If a network was unreachable because of a "bad" TOS setting in your packet, this code will be generated as a return packet.
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Code 12 - Host unreachable for TOS - If your packet was unable to reach a host because of the TOS of the packet, this is the message you get back.
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Code 13 - Communication administratively prohibited by filtering - If the packet was prohibited by some kind of filtering (e.g., firewalling), we get a code 13 back.
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Code 14 - Host precedence violation - This is sent by the first hop router to notify a connected host, to notify the host that the used precedence is not permitted for a specific destination/source combination.
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Code 15 - Precedence cutoff in effect - The first hop router may send this message to a host if the datagram it received had a too low precedence level set in it.
On top of this, it also contains a small "data" part, which should be the whole Internet header (IP header) and 64 bits of the original IP datagram. If the next level protocol contains any ports, etc, it is assumed that the ports should be available in the extra 64 bits.
2.9.3. Source Quench
A source quench packet can be sent to tell the originating source of a packet or stream of packets to slow down when continuing to send data. Note that gateway or destination host that the packets traverses can also be quiet and silently discard the packets, instead of sending any source quench packets.
This packet contains no extra header except the data portion, which contains the internet header plus 64 bits of the original data datagram. This is used to match the source quench message to the correct process, which is currently sending data through the gateway or to the destination host.
All source quench packets have their ICMP types set to 4. They have no codes except 0.
| Today, there are a couple of new possible ways of notifying the sending and receiving host that a gateway or destination host is overloaded. One way for example is the ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) system. |
2.9.4. Redirect
The ICMP Redirect type is sent in a single case. Consider this, you have a network (192.168.0.0/24) with several clients and hosts on it, and two gateways. One gateway to a 10.0.0.0/24 network, and a default gateway to the rest of the Internet. Now consider if one of the hosts on the 192.168.0.0/24 network has no route set to 10.0.0.0/24, but it has the default gateway set. It sends a packet to the default gateway, which of course knows about the 10.0.0.0/24 network. The default gateway can deduce that it is faster to send the packet directly to the 10.0.0.0/24 gateway since the packet will enter and leave the gateway on the same interface. The default gateway will hence send out a single ICMP Redirect packet to the host, telling it about the real gateway, and then sending the packet on to the 10.0.0.0/24 gateway. The host will now know about the closest 10.0.0.0/24 gateway, and hopefully use it in the future.
The main header of the Redirect type is the Gateway Internet Address field. This field tells the host about the proper gateway, which should really be used. The packet also contains the IP header of the original packet, and the 64 first bits of data in the original packet, which is used to connect it to the proper process sending the data.
The Redirect type has 4 different codes as well, these are the following.
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Code 0 - Redirect for network - Only used for redirects for a whole network (e.g., the example above).
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Code 1 - Redirect for host - Only used for redirects of a specific host (e.g., a host route).
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Code 2 - Redirect for TOS and network - Only used for redirects of a specific Type of Service and to a whole network. Used as code 0, but also based on the TOS.
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Code 3 - Redirect for TOS and host - Only used for redirects of a specific Type of Service and to a specific host. Used as code 1, but also based on the TOS in other words.
2.9.5. TTL equals 0
The TTL equals 0 ICMP type is also known as Time Exceeded Message and has type 11 set to it, and has 2 ICMP codes available. If the TTL field reaches 0 during transit through a gateway or fragment reassembly on the destination host, the packet must be discarded. To notify the sending host of this problem, we can send a TTL equals 0 ICMP packet. The sender can then raise the TTL of outgoing packets to this destination if necessary.
The packet only contains the extra data portion of the packet. The data field contains the Internet header plus 64 bits of the data of the IP packet, so that the other end may match the packet to the proper process. As previously mentioned, the TTL equals 0 type can have two codes.
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Code 0 - TTL equals 0 during transit - This is sent to the sending host if the original packet TTL reached 0 when it was forwarded by a gateway.
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Code 1 - TTL equals 0 during reassembly - This is sent if the original packet was fragmented, and TTL reached 0 during reassembly of the fragments. This code should only be sent from the destination host.
2.9.6. Parameter problem
The parameter problem ICMP uses type 12 and it has 2 codes that it uses as well. Parameter problem messages are used to tell the sending host that the gateway or receiving host had problems understanding parts of the IP headers such as errors, or that some required options where missing.
The parameter problem type contains one special header, which is a pointer to the field that caused the error in the original packet, if the code is 0 that is. The following codes are available:
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Code 0 - IP header bad (catchall error) - This is a catchall error message as discussed just above. Together with the pointer, this code is used to point to which part of the IP header contained an error.
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Code 1 - Required options missing - If an IP option that is required is missing, this code is used to tell about it.
2.9.7. Timestamp request/reply
The timestamp type is obsolete these days, but we bring it up briefly here. Both the reply and the request has a single code (0). The request is type 13 while the reply is type 14. The timestamp packets contains 3 32-bit timestamps counting the milliseconds since midnight UT (Universal Time).
The first timestamp is the Originate timestamp, which contains the last time the sender touched the packet. The receive timestamp is the time that the echoing host first touched the packet and the transmit timestamp is the last timestamp set just previous to sending the packet.
Each timestamp message also contains the same identifiers and sequence numbers as the ICMP echo packets.
2.9.8. Information request/reply
The information request and reply types are obsolete since there are protocols on top of the IP protocol that can now take care of this when necessary (DHCP, etc). The information request generates a reply from any answering host on the network that we are attached to.
The host that wishes to receive information creates a packet with the source address set to the network we are attached to (for example, 192.168.0.0), and the destination network set to 0. The reply will contain information about our numbers (netmask and ip address).
The information request is run through ICMP type 15 while the reply is sent via type 16.
2.10. TCP/IP destination driven routing
TCP/IP has grown in complexity quite a lot when it comes to the routing part. In the beginning, most people thought it would be enough with destination driven routing. The last few years, this has become more and more complex however. Today, Linux can route on basically every single field or bit in the IP header, and even based on TCP, UDP or ICMP headers as well. This is called policy based routing, or advanced routing.
This is simply a brief discussion on how the destination driven routing is performed. When we send a packet from a sending host, the packet is created. After this, the computer looks at the packet destination address and compares it to the routing table that it has. If the destination address is local, the packet is sent directly to that address via its hardware MAC address. If the packet is on the other side of a gateway, the packet is sent to the MAC address of the gateway. The gateway will then look at the IP headers and see the destination address of the packet. The destination address is looked up in the routing table again, and the packet is sent to the next gateway, et cetera, until the packet finally reaches the local network of the destination.
As you can see, this routing is very basic and simple. With the advanced routing and policy based routing, this gets quite a bit more complex. We can route packets differently based on their source address for example, or their TOS value, et cetera.
2.11. What's next?
This chapter has brought you up to date to fully understand the subsequent chapters. The following has been gone through thoroughly:
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TCP/IP structure
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IP protocol functionality and headers.
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TCP protocol functionality and headers.
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UDP protocol functionality and headers.
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ICMP protocol functionality and headers.
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TCP/IP destination driven routing.
All of this will come in very handy later on when you start to work with the actual firewall rulesets. All of this information are pieces that fit together, and will lead to a better firewall design.
Chapter 3. IP filtering introduction
This chapter will discuss the theoretical details about an IP filter, what it is, how it works and basic things such as where to place firewalls, policies, etcetera.
Questions for this chapter may be, where to actually put the firewall? In most cases, this is a simple question, but in large corporate environments it may get trickier. What should the policies be? Who should have access where? What is actually an IP filter? All of these questions should be fairly well answered later on in this chapter.
3.1. What is an IP filter
It is important to fully understand what an IP filter is. Iptables is an IP filter, and if you don't fully understand this, you will get serious problems when designing your firewalls in the future.
An IP filter operates mainly in layer 2, of the TCP/IP reference stack. Iptables however has the ability to also work in layer 3, which actually most IP filters of today have. But per definition an IP filter works in the second layer.
If the IP filter implementation is strictly following the definition, it would in other words only be able to filter packets based on their IP headers (Source and Destionation address, TOS/DSCP/ECN, TTL, Protocol, etcetera. Things that are actually in the IP header. However, since the Iptables implementation is not perfectly strict around this definition, it is also able to filter packets based on other headers that lie deeper into the packet (TCP, UDP, etc), and shallower (MAC source address).
There is one thing however, that iptables is very strict about in these days. It does not "follow" streams or puzzle data together. This would simply be too timeconsuming. The implications of this will be discussed a little bit more just further on. It does keep track of packets and see if they are of the same stream (via sequence numbers, port numbers, etc.) almost exactly the same way as the real TCP/IP stack. This is called connection tracking, and thanks to this we can do things such as Destination and Source Network Address Translation (generally called DNAT and SNAT), as well as state matching of packets.
As I implied above, iptables can not connect data from different packets to each other, and hence you can never be fully certain that you will see the complete data at all times. I am specifically mentioning this since there are constantly at least a couple of questions about this on the different mailing lists pertaining to netfilter and iptables and how to do things that are generally considered a really bad idea. For example, every time there is a new windows based virus, there are a couple of different persons asking how to drop all streams containing a specific string. The bad idea about this is that it is so easily circumvented. For example if we match for something like this:
cmd.exe
Now, what happens if the virus/exploit writer is smart enough to make the packet size so small that cmd winds up in one packet, and .exe winds up in the next packet? Or what if the packet has to travel through a network that has this small a packet size on its own? Yes, since these string matching functions is unable to work across packet boundaries, the packet will get through anyway.
Some of you may now be asking yourself, why don't we simply make it possible for the string matches, etcetera to read across packet boundaries? It is actually fairly simple. It would be too costly on processor time. Connection tracking is already taking way to much processor time to be totally comforting. To add another extra layer of complexity to connection tracking, such as this, would probably kill more firewalls than anyone of us could expect. Not to think of how much memory would be used for this simple task on each machine.
There is also a second reason for this functionality not being developed. There is a technology called proxies. Proxies were developed to handle traffic in the higher layers, and are hence much better at fullfilling these requirements. Proxies were originally developed to handle downloads and often used pages and to help you get the most out of slow Internet connections. For example, Squid is a webproxy. A person who wants to download a page sends the request, the proxy either grabs the request or receives the request and opens the connection to the web browser, and then connects to the webserver and downloads the file, and when it has downloaded the file or page, it sends it to the client. Now, if a second browser wants to read the same page again, the file or page is already downloaded to the proxy, and can be sent directly, and saves bandwidth for us.
As you may understand, proxies also have quite a lot of functionality to go in and look at the actual content of the files that it downloads. Because of this, they are much better at looking inside the whole streams, files, pages etc.
3.2. IP filtering terms and expressions
To fully understand the upcoming chapters there are a few general terms and expressions that one must understand, including a lot of details regarding the TCP/IP chapter. This is a listing of the most common terms used in IP filtering.
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Drop/Deny - When a packet is dropped or denied, it is simply deleted, and no further actions are taken. No reply to tell the host it was dropped, nor is the receiving host of the packet notified in any way. The packet simply disappears.
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Reject - This is basically the same as a drop or deny target or policy, except that we also send a reply to the host sending the packet that was dropped. The reply may be specified, or automatically calculated to some value. (To this date, there is unfortunately no iptables functionality to also send a packet notifying the receiving host of the rejected packet what happened (ie, doing the reverse of the Reject target). This would be very good in certain circumstances, since the receiving host has no ability to stop Denial of Service attacks from happening.)
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State - A specific state of a packet in comparison to a whole stream of packets. For example, if the packet is the first that the firewall sees or knows about, it is considered new (the SYN packet in a TCP connection), or if it is part of an already established connection that the firewall knows about, it is considered to be established. States are known through the connection tracking system, which keeps track of all the sessions.
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Chain - A chain contains a ruleset of rules that are applied on packets that traverses the chain. Each chain has a specific purpose (e.g., which table it is connected to, which specifies what this chain is able to do), as well as a specific application area (e.g., only forwarded packets, or only packets destined for this host). In iptables, there are several different chains, which will be discussed in depth in later chapters.
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Table - Each table has a specific purpose, and in iptables there are 3 tables. The nat, mangle and filter tables. For example, the filter table is specifically designed to filter packets, while the nat table is specifically designed to NAT (Network Address Translation) packets.
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Match - This word can have two different meanings when it comes to IP filtering. The first meaning would be a single match that tells a rule that this header must contain this and this information. For example, the --source match tells us that the source address must be a specific network range or host address. The second meaning is if a whole rule is a match. If the packet matches the whole rule, the jump or target instructions will be carried out (e.g., the packet will be dropped.)
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Target - There is generally a target set for each rule in a ruleset. If the rule has matched fully, the target specification tells us what to do with the packet. For example, if we should drop or accept it, or NAT it, etc. There is also something called a jump specification, for more information see the jump description in this list. As a last note, there might not be a target or jump for each rule, but there may be.
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Rule - A rule is a set of a match or several matches together with a single target in most implementations of IP filters, including the iptables implementation. There are some implementations which let you use several targets/actions per rule.
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Ruleset - A ruleset is the complete set of rules that are put into a whole IP filter implementation. In the case of iptables, this includes all of the rules set in the filter, nat and mangle tables, and in all of the subsequent chains. Most of the time, they are written down in a configuration file of some sort.
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Jump - The jump instruction is closely related to a target. A jump instruction is written exactly the same as a target in iptables, with the exception that instead of writing a target name, you write the name of another chain. If the rule matches, the packet will hence be sent to this second chain and be processed as usual in that chain.
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Connection tracking - A firewall which implements connection tracking is able to track connections/streams simply put. The ability to do so is often done at the impact of lots of processor and memory usage. This is unfortunately true in iptables as well, but much work has been done to work on this. However, the good side is that the firewall will be much more secure with connection tracking properly used by the implementer of the firewall policies.
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Accept - To accept a packet and to let it through the firewall rules. This is the opposite of the drop or deny targets, as well as the reject target.
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Policy - There are two kinds of policies that we speak about most of the time when implementing a firewall. First we have the chain policies, which tells the firewall implementation the default behaviour to take on a packet if there was no rule that matched it. This is the main usage of the word that we will use in this book. The second type of policy is the security policy that we may have written documentation on, for example for the whole company or for this specific network segment. Security policies are very good documents to have thought through properly and to study properly before starting to actually implement the firewall.
3.3. How to plan an IP filter
One of the first steps to think about when planning the firewall is their placement. This should be a fairly simple step since mostly your networks should be fairly well segmented anyway. One of the first places that comes to mind is the gateway between your local network(s) and the Internet. This is a place where there should be fairly tight security. Also, in larger networks it may be a good idea to separate different divisions from each other via firewalls. For example, why should the development team have access to the human resources network, or why not protect the economic department from other networks? Simply put, you don't want an angry employee with the pink slip tampering with the salary databases.
Simply put, the above means that you should plan your networks as well as possible, and plan them to be segregated. Especially if the network is medium- to big-sized (100 workstations or more, based on different aspects of the network). In between these smaller networks, try to put firewalls that will only allow the kind of traffic that you would like.
It may also be a good idea to create a De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) in your network in case you have servers that are reached from the Internet. A DMZ is a small physical network with servers, which is closed down to the extreme. This lessens the risk of anyone actually getting in to the machines in the DMZ, and it lessens the risk of anyone actually getting in and downloading any trojans etc. from the outside. The reason that they are called de-militarized zones is that they must be reachable from both the inside and the outside, and hence they are a kind of grey zone (DMZ simply put).
There are a couple of ways to set up the policies and default behaviours in a firewall, and this section will discuss the actual theory that you should think about before actually starting to implement your firewall, and helping you to think through your decisions to the fullest extent.
Before we start, you should understand that most firewalls have default behaviours. For example, if no rule in a specific chain matches, it can be either dropped or accepted per default. Unfortunately, there is only one policy per chain, but this is often easy to get around if we want to have different policies per network interface etc.
There are two basic policies that we normally use. Either we drop everything except that which we specify, or we accept everything except that which we specifically drop. Most of the time, we are mostly interested in the drop policy, and then accepting everything that we want to allow specifically. This means that the firewall is more secure per default, but it may also mean that you will have much more work in front of you to simply get the firewall to operate properly.
Your first decision to make is to simply figure out which type of firewall you should use. How big are the security concerns? What kind of applications must be able to get through the firewall? Certain applications are horrible to firewalls for the simple reason that they negotiate ports to use for data streams inside a control session. This makes it extremely hard for the firewall to know which ports to open up. The most common applications works with iptables, but the more rare ones do not work to this day, unfortunately.
| There are also some applications that work partially, such as ICQ. Normal ICQ usage works perfectly, but not the chat or file sending functions, since they require specific code to handle the protocol. Since the ICQ protocols are not standardized (they are proprietary and may be changed at any time) most IP filters have chosen to either keep the ICQ protocol handlers out, or as patches that can be applied to the firewalls. Iptables have chosen to keep them as separate patches. |
It may also be a good idea to apply layered security measures, which we have actually already discussed partially so far. What we mean with this, is that you should use as many security measures as possible at the same time, and don't rely on any one single security concept. Having this as a basic concept for your security will increase security tenfold at least. For an example, let's look at this.
As you can see, in this example I have in this example chosen to place a Cisco PIX firewall at the perimeter of all three network connections. It may NAT the internal LAN, as well as the DMZ if necessary. It will also block all outgoing traffic except http return traffic as well as ftp and ssh traffic. It will allow incoming http traffic from both the LAN and the Internet, and ftp and ssh traffic from the LAN. On top of this, we note that each webserver is based on Linux, hence we throw iptables and netfilter on each of the machines as well and add the same basic policies on these.
On top of this, we may add Snort on each of the machines. Snort is an excellent open source "network intrusion detection system" (NIDS) which looks for signatures in the packets that it sees, and if it sees a signature of some kind of attack or breakin it can either e-mail the administrator and notify him about it, or even make active responses to the attack such as blocking the IP from which the attack originated. It should be noted that active responses should not be used lightly since snort has a bad behaviour of reporting lots of false positives (e.g., reporting an attack which is not really an attack).
It could also be a good idea to throw in an proxy in front of the webservers to catch some of the bad packets as well, which could also be a possibility to throw in for all of the locally generated webconnections. With a webproxy you can narrow down on traffic used by webtraffic from your employees, as well as restrict their webusage to some extent. As for a webproxy to your own webservers, you can use it to block some of the most obvious connections to get through. A good proxy that may be worth using is the Squid.
Another precaution that one can take is to install Tripwire. This is an excellent last line of defense kind of application. What it does is to make checksums of all the files specified in a configuration file, and then it is run from cron once in a while to see that all of the specified files are the same as before, or have not changed in an illegit way. This program will in other words be able to find out if anyone has actually been able to get through and tampered with the system. A suggestion is to run this on all of the webservers.
One last thing to note is that it is always a good thing to follow standards, as we know. As you have already seen with the ICQ example, if you don't use standardized systems, things can go terribly wrong. For your own environments, this can be ignored to some extent, but if you are running a broadband service or modempool, it gets all the more important. People who connect through you must always be able to rely on your standardization, and you can't expect everyone to run the specific operating system of your choice. Some people want to run Windows, some want to run Linux or even VMS and so on. If you base your security on proprietary systems, you are in for some trouble.
A good example of this is certain broadband services that have popped up in Sweden who base lots of security on Microsoft network logon. This may sound like a great idea to begin with, but once we start considering other operating systems and so on, this is no longer such a good idea. How will someone running Linux get online? Or VAX/VMS? Or HP/UX? With Linux it can be done of course, if it wasn't for the fact that the network administrator refuses anyone to use the broadband service if they are running linux by simply blocking them in such case. However, this book is not a theological discussion of what is best, so let's leave it as an example of why it is a bad idea to use non-standards.
3.4. Whats next?
This chapter has gone through several of the basic IP filtering and security measures that you can take to secure your networks, workstations and servers. The following subjects have been brought up:
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IP filtering usage
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IP filtering policies
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Network planning
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Firewall planning
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Layered security techniques
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Network segmentation
In the next chapter we will take a quick look at what Network Address Translation (NAT) is, and after that we will start looking closer at Iptables and it's functionality and actually start getting hands on with the beast.
Chapter 4. Network Address Translation Introduction
NAT is one of the biggest attractions of Linux and Iptables to this day it seems. Instead of using fairly expensive third party solutions such as Cisco PIX etc, a lot of smaller companies and personal users have chosen to go with these solutions instead. One of the main reasons is that it is cheap, and secure. It requires an old computer, a fairly new Linux distribution which you can download for free from the Internet, a spare network card or two and cabling.
This chapter will describe a little bit of the basic theory about NAT, what it can be used for, how it works and what you should think about before starting to work on these subjects.
4.1. What NAT is used for and basic terms and expressions
Basically, NAT allows a host or several hosts to share the same IP address in a way. For example, let's say we have a local network consisting of 5-10 clients. We set their default gateways to point through the NAT server. Normally the packet would simply be forwarded by the gateway machine, but in the case of an NAT server it is a little bit different.
NAT servers translates the source and destination addresses of packets as we already said to different addresses. The NAT server receives the packet, rewrites the source and/or destination address and then recalculates the checksum of the packet. One of the most common usages of NAT is the SNAT (Source Network Address Translation) function. Basically, this is used in the above example if we can't afford or see any real idea in having a real public IP for each and every one of the clients. In that case, we use one of the private IP ranges for our local network (for example, 192.168.1.0/24), and then we turn on SNAT for our local network. SNAT will then turn all 192.168.1.0 addresses into it's own public IP (for example, 217.115.95.34). This way, there will be 5-10 clients or many many more using the same shared IP address.
There is also something called DNAT, which can be extremely helpful when it comes to setting up servers etc. First of all, you can help the greater good when it comes to saving IP space, second, you can get an more or less totally impenetrable firewall in between your server and the real server in an easy fashion, or simply share an IP for several servers that are separated into several physically different servers. For example, we may run a small company server farm containing a webserver and ftp server on the same machine, while there is a physically separated machine containing a couple of different chat services that the employees working from home or on the road can use to keep in touch with the employees that are on-site. We may then run all of these services on the same IP from the outside via DNAT.
The above example is also based on separate port NAT'ing, or often called PNAT. We don't refer to this very often throughout this book, since it is covered by the DNAT and SNAT functionality in netfilter.
In Linux, there are actually two separate types of NAT that can be used, either Fast-NAT or Netfilter-NAT. Fast-NAT is implemented inside the IP routing code of the Linux kernel, while Netfilter-NAT is also implemented in the Linux kernel, but inside the netfilter code. Since this book won't touch the IP routing code too closely, we will pretty much leave it here, except for a few notes. Fast-NAT is generally called by this name since it is much faster than the netfilter NAT code. It doesn't keep track of connections, and this is both its main pro and con. Connection tracking takes a lot of processor power, and hence it is slower, which is one of the main reasons that the Fast-NAT is faster than Netfilter-NAT. As we also said, the bad thing about Fast-NAT doesn't track connections, which means it will not be able to do SNAT very well for whole networks, neither will it be able to NAT complex protocols such as FTP, IRC and other protocols that Netfilter-NAT is able to handle very well. It is possible, but it will take much, much more work than would be expected from the Netfilter implementation.
There is also a final word that is basically a synonym to SNAT, which is the Masquerade word. In Netfilter, masquerade is pretty much the same as SNAT with the exception that masquerading will automatically set the new source IP to the default IP address of the outgoing network interface.
4.2. Caveats using NAT
As we have already explained to some extent, there are quite a lot of minor caveats with using NAT. The main problem is certain protocols and applications which may not work at all. Hopefully, these applications are not too common in the networks that you administer, and in such case, it should cause no huge problems.
The second and smaller problem is applications and protocols which will only work partially. These protocols are more common than the ones that will not work at all, which is quite unfortunate, but there isn't very much we can do about it as it seems. If complex protocols continue to be built, this is a problem we will have to continue living with. Especially if the protocols aren't standardized.
The third, and largest problem, in my point of view, is the fact that the user who sits behind a NAT server to get out on the internet will not be able to run his own server. It could be done, of course, but it takes a lot more time and work to set this up. In companies, this is probably preferred over having tons of servers run by different employees that are reachable from the Internet, without any supervision. However, when it comes to home users, this should be avoided to the very last. You should never as an Internet service provider NAT your customers from a private IP range to a public IP. It will cause you more trouble than it is worth having to deal with, and there will always be one or another client which will want this or that protocol to work flawlessly. When it doesn't, you will be called down upon.
As one last note on the caveats of NAT, it should be mentioned that NAT is actually just a hack more or less. NAT was a solution that was worked out while the IANA and other organisations noted that the Internet grew exponentially, and that the IP addresses would soon be in shortage. NAT was and is a short term solution to the problem of the IPv4 (Yes, IP which we have talked about before is a short version of IPv4 which stands for Internet Protocol version 4). The long term solution to the IPv4 address shortage is the IPv6 protocol, which also solves a ton of other problems. IPv6 has 128 bits assigned to their addresses, while IPv4 only have 32 bits used for IP addresses. This is an incredible increase in address space. It may seem like ridiculous to have enough IP addresses to set one IP address for every atom in our planet, but on the other hand, noone expected the IPv4 address range to be too small either.
4.3. Example NAT machine in theory
This is a small theoretical scenario where we want a NAT server between 2 different networks and an Internet connection. What we want to do is to connect 2 networks to each other, and both networks should have access to each other and the Internet. We will discuss the hardware questions you should take into consideration, as well as other theory you should think about before actually starting to implement the NAT machine.
4.3.1. What is needed to build a NAT machine
Before we discuss anything further, we should start by looking at what kind of hardware is needed to build a Linux machine doing NAT. For most smaller networks, this should be no problem, but if you are starting to look at larger networks, it can actually become one. The biggest problem with NAT is that it eats resources quite fast. For a small private network with possibly 1-10 users, a 486 with 32 MB of ram will do more than enough. However, if you are starting to get up around 100 or more users, you should start considering what kind of hardware you should look at. Of course, it is also a good idea to consider bandwidth usage, and how many connections will be open at the same time. Generally, spare computers will do very well however, and this is one of the big pros of using a Linux based firewall. You can use old scrap hardware that you have left over, and hence the firewall will be very cheap in comparison to other firewalls.
You will also need to consider network cards. How many separate networks will connect to your NAT/filter machine? Most of the time it is simply enough to connect one network to an Internet connection. If you connect to the Internet via ethernet, you should generally have 2 ethernet cards, etcetera. It can be a good idea to choose 10/100 mbit/s network cards of relatively good brands for this for scalability, but most any kinds of cards will do as long as they have drivers in the Linux kernel. A note on this matter: avoid using or getting network cards that don't have drivers actually in the Linux kernel distribution. I have on several occasions found network cards/brands that have separately distributed drivers on discs to work dismally. They are generally not very well maintained, and if you get them to work on your kernel of choice to begin with, the chance that they will actually work on the next major Linux kernel upgrade is very small. This will most of the time mean that you will have to get a little bit more costly network cards, but in the end it is worth it.
As a note, if you are going to build your firewall on really old hardware, it is suggested that you at least try to use PCI buses or better as far as possible. First of all, the network cards will hopefully be possible to use in the future when you upgrade. Also, ISA buses are extremely slow and heavy on the CPU usage. This means that putting a lot of load onto ISA network cards can next to kill your machine.
Finally, one thing more to consider is how much memory you put into the NAT/firewall machine. It is a good idea to put in at least more than 64 MB of memory if possible, even if it is possible run it on 32 MB of memory. NAT isn't extremely huge on memory consumption, but it may be wise to add as much as possible just in case you will get more traffic than expected.
As you can see, there is quite a lot to think about when it comes to hardware. But, to be completely honest, in most cases you don't need to think about these points at all, unless you are building a NAT machine for a large network. Most home users need not think about this, but may more or less use whatever hardware they have handy. There are no complete comparisons and tests on this topic, but you should fare rather well with just a little bit of common sense.
4.3.2. Placement of NAT machines
This should look fairly simple, however, it may be harder than you originally thought in large networks. In general, the NAT machine should be placed on the perimeter of the network, just like any filtering machine out there. This, most of the time, means that the NAT and filtering machines are the same machine, of course. Also worth a thought, if you have very large networks, it may be worth splitting the network into smaller networks and assign a NAT/filtering machine for each of these networks. Since NAT takes quite a lot of processing power, this will definitely help keep round trip time (RTT, the time it takes for a packet to reach a destination and the return packet to get back) down.
In our example network as we described above, with two networks and an Internet connection we should, in other words, look at how large the two networks are. If we can consider them to be small and depending on what requirements the clients have, a couple of hundred clients should be no problem on a decent NAT machine. Otherwise, we could have split up the load over several machines by setting public IP's on smaller NAT machines, each handling their own smaller segment of the network and then let the traffic congregate over a specific routing only machine. This of course takes into consideration that you must have enough public IP's for all of your NAT machines, and that they are routed through your routing machine.
4.3.3. How to place proxies
Proxies are a general problem when it comes to NAT in most cases unfortunately, especially transparent proxies. Normal proxies should not cause too much trouble, but creating a transparent proxy is a dog to get to work, especially on larger networks. The first problem is that proxies take quite a lot of processing power, just the same as NAT does. To put both of these on the same machine is not advisable if you are going to handle large network traffic. The second problem is that if you NAT the source IP as well as the destination IP, the proxy will not be able to know what hosts to contact. E.g., which server is the client trying to contact? Since all that information is lost during the NAT translation since the packets can't contain that information as well if they are NAT'ed, it's a problem. Locally, this has been solved by adding the information in the internal data structures that are created for the packets, and hence proxies such as squid can get the information.
As you can see, the problem is that you don't have much of a choice if you are going to run a transparent proxy. There are, of course, possibilities, but they are not advisable really. One possibility is to create a proxy outside the firewall and create a routing entry that routes all web traffic through that machine, and then locally on the proxy machine NAT the packets to the proper ports for the proxy. This way, the information is preserved all the way to the proxy machine and is still available on it.
The second possibility is to simply create a proxy outside the firewall, and then block all webtraffic except the traffic going to the proxy. This way, you will force all users to actually use the proxy. It's a crude way of doing it, but it will hopefully work.
4.3.4. The final stage of our NAT machine
As a final step, we should bring all of this information together, and see how we would solve the NAT machine then. Let's take a look at a picture of the networks and how it looks. We have decided to put a proxy just outside the NAT/filtering machine as described above, but inside counting from the router. This area could be counted upon as an DMZ in a sense, with the NAT/filter machine being a router between the DMZ and the two company networks. You can see the exact layout we are discussing in the image below.
All the normal traffic from the NAT'ed networks will be sent through the DMZ directly to the router, which will send the traffic on out to the internet. Except, yes, you guessed it, webtraffic which is instead marked inside the netfilter part of the NAT machine, and then routed based on the mark and to the proxy machine. Let's take a look at what I am talking about. Say a http packet is seen by the NAT machine. The mangle table can then be used to mark the packet with a netfilter mark (also known as nfmark). Even later when we should route the packets to our router, we will be able to check for the nfmark within the routing tables, and based on this mark, we can choose to route the http packets to the proxy server. The proxy server will then do it's work on the packets. We will touch these subjects to some extent later on in the book, even though much of the routing based part is happening inside the advanced routing topics.
The NAT machine has a real IP available over the internet, as well as the router and any other machines that may be available on the Internet. All of the machines inside the NAT'ed networks will be using private IP's, hence saving both a lot of cash, and the Internet address space.
4.4. What's next?
We have in this chapter in detail explained NAT and the theory around it. In special we have discussed a couple of different angles to use, and some of the normal problems that may arise from using NAT together with proxies. The following areas
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NAT usage
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NAT components
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NAT history
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Terms and words used about NAT
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Hardware discussions regarding NAT
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Problems with NAT
All of this will always be of use when you are working with netfilter and iptables. NAT is very widely used in today's networks, even though it is only an intermediary solution for a very unfortunate and unexpected problem. NAT will of course be discussed more in depth later on when we start looking at the Linux netfilter and iptables implementations in more depth.
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.
5.1. Where to get iptables
The iptables user-space package can be downloaded from the http://www.netfilter.org/. 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.
5.2. Kernel setup
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 rc.firewall.txt 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 rc.firewall.txt. 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 rc.firewall.txt 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 rc.firewall.txt 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.
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MIRROR - This allows packets to be bounced back to the sender of the packet. For example, if we set up a MIRROR target on destination port HTTP on our INPUT chain and someone tries to access this port, we would bounce his packets back to him and finally he would probably see his own homepage.
 | The MIRROR target is not to be used lightly. It was originally built as a test and example module, and will most probably be very dangerous to the person setting it up (resulting in serious DDoS if among other things). |
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT - This module allows network address translation, or NAT, in its different forms. This option gives us access to the nat table in iptables. This option is required if we want to do port forwarding, masquerading, etc. Note that this option is not required for firewalling and masquerading of a LAN, but you should have it present unless you are able to provide unique IP addresses for all hosts. Hence, this option is required for the example rc.firewall.txt script to work properly, and most definitely on your network if you do not have the ability to add unique IP addresses as specified above.
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MASQUERADE - This module adds the MASQUERADE target. For instance if we don't know what IP we have to the Internet this would be the preferred way of getting the IP instead of using DNAT or SNAT. In other words, if we use DHCP, PPP, SLIP or some other connection that assigns us an IP, we need to use this target instead of SNAT. Masquerading gives a slightly higher load on the computer than NAT, but will work without us knowing the IP address in advance.
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_REDIRECT - This target is useful together with application proxies, for example. Instead of letting a packet pass right through, we remap them to go to our local box instead. In other words, we have the possibility to make a transparent proxy this way.
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_LOG - This adds the LOG target and its functionality to iptables. We can use this module to log certain packets to syslogd and hence see what is happening to the packet. This is invaluable for security audits, forensics or debugging a script you are writing.
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_TCPMSS - This option can be used to counter Internet Service Providers and servers who block ICMP Fragmentation Needed packets. This can result in web-pages not getting through, small mails getting through while larger mails don't, ssh works but scp dies after handshake, etc. We can then use the TCPMSS target to overcome this by clamping our MSS (Maximum Segment Size) to the PMTU (Path Maximum Transmit Unit). This way, we'll be able to handle what the authors of Netfilter themselves call "criminally brain-dead ISPs or servers" in the kernel configuration help.
CONFIG_IP_NF_COMPAT_IPCHAINS - Adds a compatibility mode with the obsolescent ipchains. Do not look to this as any real long term solution for solving migration from Linux 2.2 kernels to 2.4 kernels, since it may well be gone with kernel 2.6.
CONFIG_IP_NF_COMPAT_IPFWADM - Compatibility mode with obsolescent ipfwadm. Definitely don't look to this as a real long term solution.
As you can see, there is a heap of options. I have briefly explained here what kind of extra behaviors you can expect from each module. These are only the options available in a vanilla Linux 2.4.9 kernel. If you would like to take a look at more options, I suggest you look at the patch-o-matic (POM) functions in Netfilter user-land which will add heaps of other options in the kernel. POM fixes are additions that are supposed to be added in the kernel in the future but have not quite reached the kernel yet. These functions should be added in the future, but have not quite made it in yet. This may be for various reasons - such as the patch not being stable yet, to Linus Torvalds being unable to keep up, or not wanting to let the patch in to the mainstream kernel yet since it is still experimental.
You will need the following options compiled into your kernel, or as modules, for the rc.firewall.txt script to work. If you need help with the options that the other scripts need, look at the example firewall scripts section.
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CONFIG_PACKET
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CONFIG_NETFILTER
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CONFIG_IP_NF_CONNTRACK
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CONFIG_IP_NF_FTP
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CONFIG_IP_NF_IRC
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CONFIG_IP_NF_IPTABLES
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CONFIG_IP_NF_FILTER
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CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT
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CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_STATE
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CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_LOG
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CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_LIMIT
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CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MASQUERADE
At the very least the above will be required for the rc.firewall.txt script. In the other example scripts I will explain what requirements they have in their respective sections. For now, let's try to stay focused on the main script which you should be studying now.
5.3. User-land setup
First of all, let's look at how we compile the iptables package. It's important to realize that for the most part configuration and compilation of iptables goes hand in hand with the kernel configuration and compilation. Certain distributions come with the iptables package preinstalled, one of these is Red Hat. However, in Red Hat it is disabled per default. We will check closer on how to enable it and take a look at other distributions further on in this chapter.
5.3.1. Compiling the user-land applications
First of all unpack the iptables package. Here, we have used the iptables 1.2.6a package and a vanilla 2.4 kernel. Unpack as usual, using bzip2 -cd iptables-1.2.6a.tar.bz2 | tar -xvf - (this can also be accomplished with the tar -xjvf iptables-1.2.6a.tar.bz2, which should do pretty much the same as the first command. However, this may not work with older versions of tar). The package should now be unpacked properly into a directory named iptables-1.2.6a. For more information read the iptables-1.2.6a/INSTALL file which contains pretty good information on compiling and getting the program to run.
After this, there you have the option of configuring and installing extra modules and options etcetera for the kernel.The step described here will only check and install standard patches that are pending for inclusion to the kernel, there are some even more experimental patches further along, which may only be available when you carry out other steps.
| Some of these patches are highly experimental and may not be such a good idea to install them. However, there are heaps of extremely interesting matches and targets in this installation step so don't be afraid of at least looking at them. To carry out this step we do something like this from the root of the iptables package: |
make pending-patches KERNEL_DIR=/usr/src/linux/
The variable KERNEL_DIR should point to the actual place that your kernel source is located at. Normally this should be /usr/src/linux/ but this may vary, and most probably you will know yourself where the kernel source is available.
The above command only asks about certain patches that are just about to enter the kernel anyway. There might be more patches and additions that the developers of Netfilter are about to add to the kernel, but is a bit further away from actually getting there. One way to install these is by doing the following:
make most-of-pom KERNEL_DIR=/usr/src/linux/
The above command would ask about installing parts of what in Netfilter world is called patch-o-matic, but still skip the most extreme patches that might cause havoc in your kernel. Note that we say ask, because that's what these commands actually do. They ask you before anything is changed in the kernel source. To be able to install all of the patch-o-matic stuff you will need to run the following command:
make patch-o-matic KERNEL_DIR=/usr/src/linux/
Don't forget to read the help for each patch thoroughly before doing anything. Some patches will destroy other patches while others may destroy your kernel if used together with some patches from patch-o-matic etc.
| You may totally ignore the above steps if you don't want to patch your kernel, it is in other words not necessary to do the above. However, there are some really interesting things in the patch-o-matic that you may want to look at so there's nothing bad in just running the commands and see what they contain. |
After this you are finished doing the patch-o-matic parts of installation, you may now compile a new kernel making use of the new patches that you have added to the source. Don't forget to configure the kernel again since the new patches probably are not added to the configured options. You may wait with the kernel compilation until after the compilation of the user-land program iptables if you feel like it, though.
Continue by compiling the iptables user-land application. To compile iptables you issue a simple command that looks like this:
make KERNEL_DIR=/usr/src/linux/
The user-land application should now compile properly. If not, you are on your own, or you could subscribe to the Netfilter mailing list, where you have the chance of asking for help with your problems. There are a few things that might go wrong with the installation of iptables, so don't panic if it won't work. Try to think logically about it and find out what's wrong, or get someone to help you.
If everything has worked smoothly, you're ready to install the binaries by now. To do this, you would issue the following command to install them:
make install KERNEL_DIR=/usr/src/linux/
Hopefully everything should work in the program now. To use any of the changes in the iptables user-land applications you should now recompile and reinstall your kernel and modules, if you hadn't done so before. For more information about installing the user-land applications from source, check the INSTALL file in the source which contains excellent information on the subject of installation.
5.3.2. Installation on Red Hat 7.1
Red Hat 7.1 comes preinstalled with a 2.4.x kernel that has Netfilter and iptables compiled in. It also contains all the basic user-land programs and configuration files that are needed to run it. However, the Red Hat people have disabled the whole thing by using the backward compatible ipchains module. Annoying to say the least, and a lot of people keep asking different mailing lists why iptables doesn't work. So, let's take a brief look at how to turn the ipchains module off and how to install iptables instead.
| The default Red Hat 7.1 installation today comes with a hopelessly old version of the user-space applications, so you might want to compile a new version of the applications as well as install a new and custom compiled kernel before fully exploiting iptables. |
First of all you will need to turn off the ipchains modules so it won't start in the future. To do this, you will need to change some filenames in the /etc/rc.d/ directory-structure. The following command should do it:
chkconfig --level 0123456 ipchains off
By doing this we move all the soft links that points to the /etc/rc.d/init.d/ipchains script to K92ipchains. The first letter which per default would be S, tells the initscripts to start the script. By changing this to K we tell it to Kill the service instead, or to not run it if it was not previously started. Now the service won't be started in the future.
However, to stop the service from actually running right now we need to run another command. This is the service command which can be used to work on currently running services. We would then issue the following command to stop the ipchains service:
service ipchains stop
Finally, to start the iptables service. First of all, we need to know which run-levels we want it to run in. Normally this would be in run-level 2, 3 and 5. These run-levels are used for the following things:
-
2. Multiuser without NFS or the same as 3 if there is no networking.
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3. Full multiuser mode, i.e. the normal run-level to run in.
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5. X11. This is used if you automatically boot into Xwindows.
To make iptables run in these run-levels we would do the following commands:
chkconfig --level 235 iptables on
The above commands would in other words make the iptables service run in run-level 2, 3 and 5. If you'd like the iptables service to run in some other run-level you would have to issue the same command in those. However, none of the other run-levels should be used, so you should not really need to activate it for those run-levels. Level 1 is for single user mode, i.e, when you need to fix a screwed up box. Level 4 should be unused, and level 6 is for shutting the computer down.
To activate the iptables service, we just run the following command:
service iptables start
There are no rules in the iptables script. To add rules to an Red Hat 7.1 box, there is two common ways. Firstly, you could edit the /etc/rc.d/init.d/iptables script. This would have the undesired effect of deleting all the rules if you updated the iptables package by RPM. The other way would be to load the rule-set and then save it with the iptables-save command and then have it loaded automatically by the rc.d scripts.
First we will describe the how to set up iptables by cutting and pasting to the iptables init.d script. To add rules that are to be run when the computer starts the service, you add them under the start) section, or in the start() function. Note, if you add the rules under the start) section don't forget to stop the start() function in the start) section from running. Also, don't forget to edit a the stop) section either which tells the script what to do when the computer is going down for example, or when we are entering a run-level that doesn't require iptables. Also, don't forget to check out the restart section and condrestart. Note that all this work will probably be trashed if you have, for example, Red Hat Network automatically update your packages. It may also be trashed by updating from the iptables RPM package.
The second way of doing the set up would require the following: First of all, make and write a rule-set in a shell script file, or directly with iptables, that will meet your requirements, and don't forget to experiment a bit. When you find a set up that works without problems, or as you can see without bugs, use the iptables-save command. You could either use it normally, i.e. iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables, which would save the rule-set to the file /etc/sysconfig/iptables. This file is automatically used by the iptables rc.d script to restore the rule-set in the future. The other way is to save the script by doing service iptables save, which would save the script automatically to /etc/sysconfig/iptables. The next time you reboot the computer, the iptables rc.d script will use the command iptables-restore to restore the rule-set from the save-file /etc/sysconfig/iptables. Do not intermix these two methods, since they may heavily damage each other and render your firewall configuration useless.
When all of these steps are finished, you can deinstall the currently installed ipchains and iptables packages. This because we don't want the system to mix up the new iptables user-land application with the old preinstalled iptables applications. This step is only necessary if you are going to install iptables from the source package. It's not unusual for the new and the old package to get mixed up, since the rpm based installation installs the package in non-standard places and won't get overwritten by the installation for the new iptables package. To carry out the deinstallation, do as follows:
rpm -e iptables
And why keep ipchains lying around if you won't be using it any more? Removing it is done the same way as with the old iptables binaries, etc:
rpm -e ipchains
After all this has been completed, you will have finished with the update of the iptables package from source, having followed the source installation instructions. None of the old binaries, libraries or include files etc should be lying around any more.
Chapter 6. Traversing of tables and chains
In this chapter we'll discuss how packets traverse the different chains, and in which order. We will also discuss the order in which the tables are traversed. We'll see how valuable this is later on, when we write our own specific rules. We will also look at the points which certain other components, that also are kernel dependent, enter into the picture. Which is to say the different routing decisions and so on. This is especially necessary if we want to write iptables rules that could change routing patterns/rules for packets; i.e. why and how the packets get routed, good examples of this are DNAT and SNAT. Not to be forgotten are, of course, the TOS bits.
6.1. General
When a packet first enters the firewall, it hits the hardware and then gets passed on to the proper device driver in the kernel. Then the packet starts to go through a series of steps in the kernel, before it is either sent to the correct application (locally), or forwarded to another host - or whatever happens to it.
First, let us have a look at a packet that is destined for our own local host. It would pass through the following steps before actually being delivered to our application that receives it:
Table 6-1. Destination local host (our own machine)
| Step | Table | Chain | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | On the wire (e.g., Internet) | ||
| 2 | Comes in on the interface (e.g., eth0) | ||
| 3 | mangle | PREROUTING | This chain is normally used for mangling packets, i.e., changing TOS and so on. This is also where the connection tracking takes place, which we discuss in the The state machine chapter. |
| 4 | nat | PREROUTING | This chain is used for DNAT mainly. Avoid filtering in this chain since it will be bypassed in certain cases. |
| 5 | Routing decision, i.e., is the packet destined for our local host or to be forwarded and where. | ||
| 6 | mangle | INPUT | At this point, the mangle INPUT chain is hit. We use this chain to mangle packets, after they have been routed, but before they are actually sent to the process on the machine. |
| 7 | filter | INPUT | This is where we do filtering for all incoming traffic destined for our local host. Note that all incoming packets destined for this host pass through this chain, no matter what interface or in which direction they came from. |
| 8 | Local process/application (i.e., server/client program) |
Note that this time the packet was passed through the INPUT chain instead of the FORWARD chain. Quite logical. Most probably the only thing that's really logical about the traversing of tables and chains in your eyes in the beginning, but if you continue to think about it, you'll find it will get clearer in time.
Now we look at the outgoing packets from our own local host and what steps they go through.
Table 6-2. Source local host (our own machine)
| Step | Table | Chain | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Local process/application (i.e., server/client program) | ||
| 2 | Routing decision. What source address to use, what outgoing interface to use, and other necessary information that needs to be gathered. | ||
| 3 | mangle | OUTPUT | This is where we mangle packets, it is suggested that you do not filter in this chain since it can have side effects. This is also where the locally generated connection tracking takes place, which we discuss in the The state machine chapter. |
| 4 | nat | OUTPUT | This chain can be used to NAT outgoing packets from the firewall itself. |
| 5 | Routing decision, since the previous mangle and nat changes may have changed how the packet should be routed. | ||
| 6 | filter | OUTPUT | This is where we filter packets going out from the local host. |
| 7 | mangle | POSTROUTING | The POSTROUTING chain in the mangle table is mainly used when we want to do mangling on packets before they leave our host, but after the actual routing decisions. This chain will be hit by both packets just traversing the firewall, as well as packets created by the firewall itself. |
| 8 | nat | POSTROUTING | This is where we do SNAT as described earlier. It is suggested that you don't do filtering here since it can have side effects, and certain packets might slip through even though you set a default policy of DROP. |
| 9 | Goes out on some interface (e.g., eth0) | ||
| 10 | On the wire (e.g., Internet) |
In this example, we're assuming that the packet is destined for another host on another network. The packet goes through the different steps in the following fashion:
Table 6-3. Forwarded packets
| Step | Table | Chain | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | On the wire (i.e., Internet) | ||
| 2 | Comes in on the interface (i.e., eth0) | ||
| 3 | mangle | PREROUTING | This chain is normally used for mangling packets, i.e., changing TOS and so on. This is also where the non-locally generated connection tracking takes place, which we discuss in the The state machine chapter. |
| 4 | nat | PREROUTING | This chain is used for DNAT mainly. SNAT is done further on. Avoid filtering in this chain since it will be bypassed in certain cases. |
| 5 | Routing decision, i.e., is the packet destined for our local host or to be forwarded and where. | ||
| 6 | mangle | FORWARD | The packet is then sent on to the FORWARD chain of the mangle table. This can be used for very specific needs, where we want to mangle the packets after the initial routing decision, but before the last routing decision made just before the packet is sent out. |
| 7 | filter | FORWARD | The packet gets routed onto the FORWARD chain. Only forwarded packets go through here, and here we do all the filtering. Note that all traffic that's forwarded goes through here (not only in one direction), so you need to think about it when writing your rule-set. |
| 8 | mangle | POSTROUTING | This chain is used for specific types of packet mangling that we wish to take place after all kinds of routing decisions have been done, but still on this machine. |
| 9 | nat | POSTROUTING | This chain should first and foremost be used for SNAT. Avoid doing filtering here, since certain packets might pass this chain without ever hitting it. This is also where Masquerading is done. |
| 10 | Goes out on the outgoing interface (i.e., eth1). | ||
| 11 | Out on the wire again (i.e., LAN). |
As you can see, there are quite a lot of steps to pass through. The packet can be stopped at any of the iptables chains, or anywhere else if it is malformed; however, we are mainly interested in the iptables aspect of this lot. Do note that there are no specific chains or tables for different interfaces or anything like that. FORWARD is always passed by all packets that are forwarded over this firewall/router.
| Do not use the INPUT chain to filter on in the previous scenario! INPUT is meant solely for packets to our local host that do not get routed to any other destination. |
We have now seen how the different chains are traversed in three separate scenarios. If we were to figure out a good map of all this, it would look something like this:
To clarify this image, consider this. If we get a packet into the first routing decision that is not destined for the local machine itself, it will be routed through the FORWARD chain. If the packet is, on the other hand, destined for an IP address that the local machine is listening to, we would send the packet through the INPUT chain and to the local machine.
Also worth a note, is the fact that packets may be destined for the local machine, but the destination address may be changed within the PREROUTING chain by doing NAT. Since this takes place before the first routing decision, the packet will be looked upon after this change. Because of this, the routing may be changed before the routing decision is done. Do note, that all packets will be going through one or the other path in this image. If you DNAT a packet back to the same network that it came from, it will still travel through the rest of the chains until it is back out on the network.
| If you feel that you want more information, you could use the rc.test-iptables.txt script. This test script should give you the necessary rules to test how the tables and chains are traversed. |
6.2. mangle table
This table should as we've already noted mainly be used for mangling packets. In other words, you may freely use the mangle targets within this table, to change TOS (Type Of Service) fields and the like.
| You are strongly advised not to use this table for any filtering; nor will any DNAT, SNAT or Masquerading work in this table. |
The following targets are only valid in the mangle table. They can not be used outside the mangle table.
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TOS
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TTL
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MARK
The TOS target is used to set and/or change the Type of Service field in the packet. This could be used for setting up policies on the network regarding how a packet should be routed and so on. Note that this has not been perfected and is not really implemented on the Internet and most of the routers don't care about the value in this field, and sometimes, they act faulty on what they get. Don't set this in other words for packets going to the Internet unless you want to make routing decisions on it, with iproute2.
The TTL target is used to change the TTL (Time To Live) field of the packet. We could tell packets to only have a specific TTL and so on. One good reason for this could be that we don't want to give ourself away to nosy Internet Service Providers. Some Internet Service Providers do not like users running multiple computers on one single connection, and there are some Internet Service Providers known to look for a single host generating different TTL values, and take this as one of many signs of multiple computers connected to a single connection.
The MARK target is used to set special mark values to the packet. These marks could then be recognized by the iproute2 programs to do different routing on the packet depending on what mark they have, or if they don't have any. We could also do bandwidth limiting and Class Based Queuing based on these marks.
6.3. nat table
This table should only be used for NAT (Network Address Translation) on different packets. In other words, it should only be used to translate the packet's source field or destination field. Note that, as we have said before, only the first packet in a stream will hit this table. After this, the rest of the packets will automatically have the same action taken on them as the first packet. The actual targets that do these kind of things are:
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DNAT
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SNAT
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MASQUERADE
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REDIRECT
The DNAT target is mainly used in cases where you have a public IP and want to redirect accesses to the firewall to some other host (on a DMZ for example). In other words, we change the destination address of the packet and reroute it to the host.
SNAT is mainly used for changing the source address of packets. For the most part you'll hide your local networks or DMZ, etc. A very good example would be that of a firewall of which we know outside IP address, but need to substitute our local network's IP numbers with that of our firewall. With this target the firewall will automatically SNAT and De-SNAT the packets, hence making it possible to make connections from the LAN to the Internet. If your network uses 192.168.0.0/netmask for example, the packets would never get back from the Internet, because IANA has regulated these networks (among others) as private and only for use in isolated LANs.
The MASQUERADE target is used in exactly the same way as SNAT, but the MASQUERADE target takes a little bit more overhead to compute. The reason for this, is that each time that the MASQUERADE target gets hit by a packet, it automatically checks for the IP address to use, instead of doing as the SNAT target does - just using the single configured IP address. The MASQUERADE target makes it possible to work properly with Dynamic DHCP IP addresses that your ISP might provide for your PPP, PPPoE or SLIP connections to the Internet.
6.4. Filter table
The filter table is mainly used for filtering packets. We can match packets and filter them in whatever way we want. This is the place that we actually take action against packets and look at what they contain and DROP or /ACCEPT them, depending on their content. Of course we may also do prior filtering; however, this particular table is the place for which filtering was designed. Almost all targets are usable in this table. We will be more prolific about the filter table here; however you now know that this table is the right place to do your main filtering.
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