Secure Your Network with the Uncomplicated Firewall
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Uncomplicated Firewall
Uncomplicated Firewall, also known as ufw, is a convenient and beginner-friendly way to enforce OS-level firewall rules. For those who are hosting servers or any device that is accessible to the world (i.e., by public IP or domain name), it's critical that a firewall is properly implemented and active.
Ufw is available by default in all Ubuntu installations after 8.04 LTS. For other distributions, you can look to install ufw or check if there are alternative firewalls installed already. There are usually alternatives available, such as Fedora's firewall
and the package available on most distributions: iptables
. Ufw is considered a beginner-friendly front-end to iptables.
Gufw is available as a graphical user interface (GUI) application for users who are uncomfortable setting up a firewall through a terminal.
Getting Help
If you need help figuring out commands, remember that you can run the --help
flag to get a list of options.
Set Default State
The proper way to run a firewall is to set a strict default state and slowly open up ports that you want to allow. This helps prevent anything malicious from slipping through the cracks. The following command prevents all incoming traffic (other than the rules we specify later), but you can also set this for outgoing connections, if necessary.
You should also allow outgoing traffic if you want to allow the device to communicate back to you or other parties. For example, media servers like Plex need to be able to send out data related to streaming the media.
Adding Port Rules
Now that we've disabled all incoming traffic by default, we need to open up some ports (or else no traffic would be able to come in). If you need to be able to ssh
into the machine, you'll need to open up port 22.
You can also issue more restrictive rules. The following rule will allow ssh
connections only from machines on the local subnet.
If you need to set a rule that isn't tcp, just append your connection type to the end of the rule.
Enable ufw
Now that the firewall is configured and ready to go, you can enable the firewall.
A restart may be required for the firewall to begin operating.
Checking Status
Now that the firewall is enabled, let's check and see what the rules look like.
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
[ 1] 22 ALLOW IN Anywhere
[ 2] 22 (v6) ALLOW IN Anywhere (v6)
Deleting Rules
If you need to delete a rule, you need to know the number associated with that rule. Let's delete the first rule in the table above. You'll be asked to confirm the deletion as part of this process.
Managing App Rules
Luckily, there's a convenient way for installed applications to create files that ufw can easily implement so that you don't have to search and find which ports your application requires. To see if your device has any applications with pre-installed ufw rules, execute the following command:
The results should look something like this:
Available applications:
OpenSSH
Samba
plexmediaserver
plexmediaserver-all
plexmediaserver-dlna
If you want to get more information on a specific app rule, use the info
command.
You'll get a blurb of info back like this:
Profile: plexmediaserver-dlna
Title: Plex Media Server (DLNA)
Description: The Plex Media Server (additional DLNA capability only)
Ports:
1900/udp
32469/tcp
You can add or delete app rules the same way that you'd add or delete specific port rules.
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Creating App Rules
If you'd like to create you own app rule, you'll need to create a file in the /etc/ufw/applications.d
directory. Within the file you create, you need to make sure the content is properly formatted.
For example, here are the contents my plexmediaserver
file, which creates three distinct app rules for ufw:
[plexmediaserver]
Plex Media Server (Standard)
The Plex Media Server
32400/tcp|3005/tcp|5353/udp|8324/tcp|32410:32414/udp
[plexmediaserver-dlna]
Plex Media Server (DLNA)
The Plex Media Server (additional DLNA capability only)
1900/udp|32469/tcp
[plexmediaserver-all]
Plex Media Server (Standard + DLNA)
The Plex Media Server (with additional DLNA capability)
32400/tcp|3005/tcp|5353/udp|8324/tcp|32410:32414/udp|1900/udp|32469/tcp
So, if I wanted to create a custom app rule called "mycustomrule," I'd create a file and add my content like this:
[mycustomrule]
My Custom Rule
This is a temporary ufw app rule.
88/tcp|9100/udp
Then, I would just enable this rule in ufw.