Iptables Tutorial 1.2.2 - Oskar Andreasson

LEN=78 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=110 ID=12818 PROTO=UDP SPT=1027 DPT=137 LEN=58

As you can understand, syslog can really help you out when debugging your rulesets. Looking at these logs may help you understand why some port that you wanted to open doesn't work.

Iptables debugging

Iptables can be rough to debug sometimes, since the error messages from iptables itself aren't very user friendly at all times. For this reason, it may be a good idea to take a look at the most common error messages you can get from iptables, and why you may have gotten them.

One of the first error messages to look at is the "Unknown arg" error. This may show up for several reasons. For example, look below.

work3:~# iptables -A INPUT --dport 67 -j ACCEPT

iptables v1.2.9: Unknown arg `--dport'

Try `iptables -h' or 'iptables --help' for more information.

This error is simpler than normal to solve, since we have only used a single argument. Normally, you may have used a long, long command and get this error message. The problem in the above scenario is that we have forgotten to use the --protocol match, and because of that, the --dport match isn't available to us. Adding the --protocol match would also solve the problem in this match. Make absolutely certain that you are not missing any special preconditions that are required to use a specific match.

Another very common error is if you miss a dash (-) somewhere in the command line, like below. The proper solution is to simply add the dash, and the command will work.

work3:~# iptables -A INPUT --protocol tcp -dport 67 -j ACCEPT

Bad argument `67'

Try `iptables -h' or 'iptables --help' for more information.

And finally, there is the simple misspelling, which is rather common as well. This is shown below. The error message, as you will notice, is exactly the same as when you forget to add another prerequisite match to the rule, so it needs to be carefully looked into.

work3:~# iptables -A INPUT --protocol tcp --destination-ports 67 -j ACCEPT

iptables v1.2.9: Unknown arg `--destination-ports'

Try `iptables -h' or 'iptables --help' for more information.

There is also one more possible cause for the "Unknown arg" error shown above. If you can see that the argument is perfectly written, and no possible errors in the prerequisites, there is a possibility that the target/match/table was simply not compiled into the kernel. For example, let's say we forgot to compile the filter table support into the kernel, this would then look something like this:

work3:~# iptables -A INPUT -j ACCEPT

iptables v1.2.9: can't initialize iptables table `filter': Table does not exist

(do you need to insmod?)

Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.

Normally, iptables should be able to automatically modprobe a specific module that isn't already inside the kernel, so this is generally a sign of either not having done a proper depmod after restarting with the new kernel, or you may simply have forgotten about the module(s). If the problematic module would be a match instead, the error message would be a little bit more cryptic and hard to understand. For example, look at this error message.

work3:~# iptables -A INPUT -m state

--state ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

iptables: No chain/target/match by that name

In this case, we forgot to compile the state module, and as you can see the error message isn't very nice and easy to understand. But it does give you a hint at what is wrong. Finally, we have the same error again, but this time, the target is missing. As you understand from looking at the error message, it get's rather complicated since it is the exact same error message for both errors (missing match and/or target).

work3:~# iptables -A INPUT -m state

--state ESTABLISHED -j REJECT

iptables: No chain/target/match by that name

The easiest way to see if we have simply forgotten to depmod, or if the module is actually missing is to look in the directory where the modules should be. This is the /lib/modules/2.6.4/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter directory. All ipt_* files that are written in uppercase letters are targets, while all the ones with lowercase letters are matches. For example, ipt_REJECT.ko is a target, while the ipt_state.ko is a match.

Note In 2.4 kernels and older, the file extension for all kernel modules was .o, which changed to .ko for files in the 2.6 kernels.

Another way of getting help from iptables itself is to simply comment out a whole chain from your script to see if that fixes the problem. This is kind of a last resort problem solver, that may be very effective if you don't even know which chain is causing the problem. By removing the whole chain and simply setting a default policy of ACCEPT, and then testing, if it works better, then this is the chain that is causing the problems. If it doesn't work better, then it is another chain, and you can go on to find the problem elsewhere.

Other debugging tools

There are of course other tools that may be extremely useful when debugging your firewall scripts. This section will briefly touch the most common tools used to find out fast how your firewall looks from all sides of it (inside, outside, etc). The tools I have chosen here are the nmap and nessus tools.

Nmap

Nmap is an excellent tool for looking at the pure firewall perspective, and to find out which ports are open and more low level information. It has support for OS fingerprinting, several different port scanning methods, IPv6 and IPv4 support and network scanning.

The basic form of scanning is done with a very simple commandline syntax. Don't forget to specify which ports to scan through with the -p option, for example -p 1-1024. As an example, take a look below.

[email protected]:~$ nmap -p 1-1024 192.168.0.1

Starting nmap 3.50 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2004-03-18 17:19 CET

Interesting ports on firewall (192.168.0.1):

(The 1021 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)

PORT STATE SERVICE

22/tcp open ssh

25/tcp open smtp

587/tcp open submission

Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 3.877 seconds

It is also able to automatically guess the operating system of the scanned host by doing OS fingerprinting. Fingerprinting requires root privileges though, but it may also be very interesting to use to find out what most people will think of the host. Using OS fingerprinting may look something like the example listing below.

work3:/home/blueflux# nmap -O -p 1-1024 192.168.0.1

Starting nmap 3.50 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2004-03-18 17:38 CET

Interesting ports on firewall (192.168.0.1):

(The 1021 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)

PORT STATE SERVICE

22/tcp open ssh

25/tcp open smtp

587/tcp open submission

Device type: general purpose

Running: Linux 2.4.X|2.5.X

OS details: Linux Kernel 2.4.0 - 2.5.20

Uptime 6.201 days (since Fri Mar 12 12:49:18 2004)

Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 14.303 seconds

OS fingerprinting isn't perfect, as you can see, but it will help narrow it down, both for you, and for the attacker. Hence, it is interesting for you to know as well. The best thing to do, is to give as little material as possible for the attacker to get a proper fingerprint on, and with this information you will know fairly well what the attacker knows about your OS as well.

Nmap also comes with a graphical user interface that can be used, called the nmapfe (Nmap Front End). It is an excellent frontend of the nmap program, and if you know that you will need a little bit more complicated searches, you may wish to use it. For an example screenshot, take a look below.

Of course, the nmap tool has more usages than this, which you can find out more about on the nmap homepage. For more information, take a look at the Nmap resources.

As you may understand, this is an excellent tool to test your host with, and to find out which ports are actually open and which are not. For example, after finishing your setup, use nmap to see if you have actually succeeded in doing what you wanted to do. Do you get the correct responses from the correct ports, and so on.

Nessus

While nmap is more of a low level scanner, showing open ports etcetera, the nessus program is an actual security scanner. Nmap tries to connect to different ports, and to find out at most, what kind of version the different servers are running. Nessus takes this a step further, by finding all open ports, finding out what is running on that specific port, what program and which version is running, and then testing for different security threats to that program, and finally creating a complete report of all the security threats that are available.

As you can understand, this is an extremely useful tool to find out more about your host. The program is built up in a server client way, so it should be fairly easy to find out more about your firewall from the outside by using an external nessus daemon, or internal for that matter. The client is a graphical user interface where you login to the nessus daemon, set your settings, and specify which host you would like to scan for vulnerabilities.

Caution Nessus should be used with some caution however, since it can crash a machine or a service that it is specified to attack. Those attacks that risk crashing a machine are per default turned off luckily.

What's next?

In this chapter we have looked in detail at different techniques you can use to debug your firewall scripts. Debugging of firewall scripts can become rather tedious and longwinded, however it is a necessity. If you use some small simple steps while doing this, it can become very easy in the end as well. We have looked at the following techniques in particular:

• Bash help in debugging

• System tools fit for debugging

• Iptables debugging

• Other tools for debugging

Chapter 13. rc.firewall file

This chapter will deal with an example firewall setup and how the script file could look. We have used one of the basic setups and dug deeper into how it works and what we do in it. This should be used to get a basic idea on how to solve different problems and what you may need to think about before actually putting your scripts to work. It could be used as is with some changes to the variables, but is not suggested since it may not work perfectly together with your network setup. As long as you have a very basic setup however, it will very likely run quite smooth with just a few fixes to it.

Note that there might be more efficient ways of making the rule-set, however, the script has been written for readability so that everyone can understand it without having to know too much BASH scripting before reading this

example rc.firewall

OK, so you have everything set up and are ready to check out an example configuration script. You should at least be if you have come this far. This example rc.firewall.txt (also included in the Example scripts code-base appendix) is fairly large but not a lot of comments in it. Instead of looking for comments, I suggest you read through the script file to get a basic hum about how it looks, and then you return here to get the nitty gritty about the whole script.

explanation of rc.firewall

Configuration options

The first section you should note within the example rc.firewall.txt is the configuration section. This should always be changed since it contains the information that is vital to your actual configuration. For example, your IP address will always change, hence it is available here. The $INET_IP should always be a fully valid IP address, if you got one (if not, then you should probably look closer at the rc.DHCP.firewall.txt, however, read on since this script will introduce a lot of interesting stuff anyways). Also, the $INET_IFACE variable should point to the actual device used for your Internet connection. This could be eth0, eth1, ppp0, tr0, etc just to name a few possible device names.

This script does not contain any special configuration options for DHCP or PPPoE, hence these sections are empty. The same goes for all sections that are empty, they are, however, left there so you can spot the differences between the scripts in a more efficient way. If you need these parts, then you could always create a mix of the different scripts, or (brace yourself) create your own from scratch.

The Local Area Network section contains most of the configuration options for your LAN, which are necessary. For example, you need to specify the IP address of the physical interface connected to the LAN as well as the IP range which the LAN uses and the interface that the box is connected to the LAN through.

Also, as you may see there is a Localhost configuration section. We do provide it, however you will with 99% certainty not change any of the values within this section since you will almost always use the 127.0.0.1 IP address and the interface will almost certainly be named lo. Also, just below the Localhost configuration, you will find a brief section that pertains to the iptables. Mainly, this section only consists of the $IPTABLES variable, which will point the script to the exact location of the iptables application. This may vary a bit, and the default location when compiling the iptables package by hand is /usr/local/sbin/iptables. However, many distributions put the actual application in another location such as /usr/sbin/iptables and so on.

Initial loading of extra modules

First, we see to it that the module dependencies files are up to date by issuing a /sbin/depmod -a command. After this we load the modules that we will require for this script. Always avoid loading modules that you do not need, and if possible try to avoid having modules lying around at all unless you will be using them. This is for security reasons, since it will take some extra effort to make additional rules this way. Now, for example, if you want to have support for the LOG, REJECT and MASQUERADE targets and don't have this compiled statically into your kernel, we load these modules as follows:

/sbin/insmod ipt_LOG

/sbin/insmod ipt_REJECT

/sbin/insmod ipt_MASQUERADE

Caution! In these scripts we forcedly load the modules, which could lead to failures of loading the modules. If a module fails to load, it could depend upon a lot of factors, and it will generate an error message. If some of the more basic modules fail to load, its biggest probable error is that the module, or functionality, is statically compiled into the kernel. For further information on this subject, read the Problems loading modules section in the Common problems and questions appendix.