Open source firewall linux

8 Best Open Source Firewall to Protect Your Network

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Data breach statistics show millions of data get stolen or lost every day.

How secure is your network?

Do you use any firewall to protect your network infrastructure?

Earlier, I wrote about a cloud-managed firewall and received feedback to write about a FREE or open-source firewall.

The following free firewall is different than a web application firewall. They are to protect infrastructure instead of code or application.

pfSense

An open-source security solution with a custom kernel based on FreeBSD OS. pfSense is one of the leading network firewalls with a commercial level of features.

pfSense is available as a hardware device, virtual appliance, and downloadable binary (community edition).

What you get in FREE is community edition.

I like their extensive documentation, well explained, and easy to follow. On a high-level, some of the worth mentioning pfSense features are:

• Firewall – IP/port filtering, limiting connections, layer two capable, scrubbing
• State table – by default all rules are stateful, multiple configurations available for state handling,
• Server load balancing – inbuilt LB to distribute the load between multiple backend servers
• NAT (Network address translation) – port forwarding, reflection
• HA (High-availability) – failover to secondary if primary fail
• Multi-WAN (wide area network) – use more than one internet connection.
• VPN (a virtual private network) – support IPsec and OpenVPN
• Reporting – Keep historical resources utilization information
• Monitoring – real-time monitoring
• Dynamic DNS – multiple DNS clients are included
• DHCP & Relay ready

More than some of the commercial firewall features you get in FREE.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Not only that, but you also have an option to install packages with just one click.

• Security – a stunner, snort, tinc, nmap, arpwatch
• Monitoring – iftop, ntopng, softflowd, urlsnarf, darkstat, mailreport
• Networking – netio, nut, Avahi
• Routing – frr, olsrd, routed, OpenBGPD
• Services – iperf, widentd, syslog-ng, bind, acme, imspector, git, dns-server

pfSense looks promising and worth giving a try. Check out Kamatera if looking for pfSense hosting.

IPFire

IPFire is built on top of Netfilter and trusted by thousands of companies worldwide.

IPFire can be used as a firewall, proxy server, or VPN gateway – all depends on how you configure it. It got great customization flexibility.

IDS (intrusion detection system) is inbuilt, so attacks are detected and prevented from day one. And with the help of Guardian (optional add-on), you can implement automatic prevention.

You can get it started with IPFire in less than 30 minutes.

OPNSense

OPNSense is a fork of pfSense and m0n0wall. GUI is available in multiple languages like French, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Russian, etc.

OPNSense got many enterprise levels of security and firewall features like IPSec, VPN, 2FA, QoS, IDPS, Netflow, Proxy, Webfilter, etc.

It is compatible with 32bit or 64bit system architecture and available to download as ISO image and USB installer.

NG Firewall

NG Firewall by untangle is a single platform where you can get everything you need to protect your organization network.

It got the beautiful dashboard, experience the demo here. It works like an app store where you can enable or disable a particular app (module) based on the requirement.

In the FREE version, you get NG Firewall platform, free apps, and 14 days trial of paid features.

Smoothwall

Smoothwall Express is a free solution with a simple web interface to configure, manage the firewall.

Smoothwall express supports LAN, DMZ, Internal, External network firewalling, web proxy for acceleration, traffic stats, etc.

Shutting down or rebooting is possible directly through the web interface.

Note: The following two programs are specific for Linux servers.

ufw (uncomplicated firewall) works with Ubuntu. It provides a command-line interface to manage the Linux kernel packet filtering system (netfilter).

csf (ConfigServer security) is supported and tested on the following OS and virtual servers.

• RHEL/CentOS
• CloudLinux
• Fedora
• OpenSUSE
• Debian
• Ubuntu
• Slackware
• OpenVZ
• KVM
• VirtualBox
• XEN
• VMware
• Virtuozzo
• UML

csf is a stateful firewall, login detection, and security solution for Linux servers.

Endian

Endian Firewall Community (EFW) is a powerful, easy to install and use Linux based security product for home and small networks. It can transform a bare-metal hardware appliance into a powerful and effective unified threat prevention and management solution comprising of a firewall, an antivirus, VPN, and content filtering capabilities in a single box.

The stateful firewall allows you to protect your network from a wide range of attacks and threats in addition to offering a well-protected VPN to secure the environment for your remote employees.

EFW key features include;

• Provides real-time monitoring, logging, and reporting of the network activities, resource usage such as bandwidth, etc.
• Enhancing secure remote access through the Endian community VPN
• Enhanced event management.
• Improved security for network web and email services in addition to an intrusion prevention system (IPS).

Conclusion

I hope above listed free solution for firewall helps you to save money and protect your infrastructure from being hacked.

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10 Useful Open Source Security Firewalls for Linux Systems

Being an Nix admin over 5+ years, I always be responsible for the security management of Linux servers. Firewalls plays an important role in securing Linux systems/networks. It acts like an security guard between internal and external network by controlling and managing incoming and outgoing network traffic based on set of rules. These set of firewall rules only allows legitimate connections and blocks those which are not defined.

10 Open Source Linux Firewalls

There are dozens of open source firewall application available for download in the market. Here in this article, we’ve come up with 10 most popular open source firewalls that might be very useful in selecting one that suits your requirements.

1. Iptables

Iptables/Netfilter is the most popular command line based firewall. It is the first line of defence of a Linux server security. Many system administrators use it for fine-tuning of their servers. It filters the packets in the network stack within the kernel itself. You can find a more detailed overview of Iptables here.

Features of IPtables

1. It lists the contents of the packet filter ruleset.
2. It’s lightning fast because it inspects only the packet headers.
3. You can Add/Remove/Modify rules according to your needs in the packet filter rulesets.
4. Listing/zeroing per-rule counters of the packet filter rulesets.
5. Supports Backup and restoration with files.

2. IPCop Firewall

IPCop is an Open Source Linux firewall distribution, IPCop team is continuously working to provide a stable, more secure, user friendly and highly configurable Firewall management system to their users. IPCop provides a well designed web interface to manage the firewall. It’s very useful and good for Small businesses and Local PCs.

You can configure an Old PC as a secure VPN to provide a secure environment over the internet. It’s also keeps some frequently used information to provide better web browsing experience to its users.

Features of IPCop Firewall

1. Its Color coded Web Interface allows you to Monitor the performance Graphics for CPU, Memory and Disk as well as Network throughput.
2. It views and auto rotate logs.
3. Support Multiple language support.
4. Provides very secure stable and easily implementable upgrade and add on patches.

3. Shorewall

Shorewall or Shoreline Firewall is another very popular Open source firewall specialized for GNU/Linux. It is build upon the Netfilter system built into the Linux kernel that also supports IPV6.

Feature of Shorewall

1. Uses Netfilter’s connection tracking facilities for stateful packet filtering.
2. Supports a wide range of routers/firewall/gateway applications.
3. Centralized firewall Administration.
4. A GUI interface with Webmin control Panel.
5. Multiple ISP support.
6. Supports Masquerading and port forwarding.
7. Supports VPN

4. UFW – Uncomplicated Firewall

UFW is the default firewall tool for Ubuntu servers, it is basically designed to lesser the complexity of the iptables firewall and makes it more user friendly. A Graphical user interface of ufw, GUFW is also available for Ubuntu and Debian users.

Features of UFW

1. Supports IPV6
2. Extended Logging options with On/Off facility
3. Status Monitoring
4. Extensible Framework
5. Can be Integrated with Applications
6. Add/Remove/Modify Rules according to your needs.

5. Vuurmuur

Vuurmuur is another powerful Linux firewall manager built or manage iptables rules for your server or network. At the same time its very user friendly to administrate, no prior iptables working knowledge required to use Vuurmuur.

Features of Vuurmuur

1. Support IPV6
2. Traffic shaping
3. More advanced Monitoring features
4. Real time monitoring connection and bandwidth usage
5. Can be easily configured with NAT.
6. Have Anti-spoofing features.

6. pfSense

pfSense is another Open Source and a very reliable firewall for FreeBSD servers. Its based on the concept of Stateful Packet filtering. It offers wide ranges of feature which is normally available on expensive commercial firewalls only.

Features of pfsense

1. Highly configurable and upgraded from its Web – based interface.
2. Can be deployed as a perimeter firewall, router, DHCP & DNS server.
3. Configured as wireless access point and a VPN endpoint.
4. Traffic shaping and Real Time information about the server.
5. Inbound and Outbound load balancing.

7. IPFire

IPFire is another open source Linux based firewalls for Small Office , Home Office (SOHO) environments. Its designed with modularity and highly flexibility. IPfire community also took care of Security and developed it as a Stateful Packet Inspection(SPI) firewall.

Features of IPFire

1. Can be deployed as a firewall, a proxy server or a VPN gateway.
2. Content filtering
3. Inbuilt Intrusion detection system
4. Supports through Wiki, forums and Chats
5. Support hypervisors like KVM, VmWare and Xen for Virtualization environment.

8. SmoothWall & SmoothWall Express

SmoothWall is an Open Source Linux firewall with a highly configurable Web based interface. Its Web based interface is know as WAM (Web Access manager). A freely distributable version of SmoothWall is know as SmoothWall Express.

Features of SmoothWall

1. Supports LAN, DMZ, and Wireless networks, plus External.
2. Real Time content filtering
3. HTTPS filtering
4. Support proxies
5. Log viewing and firewall activity monitor
6. Traffic stats management on per IP, interface and visit basis
7. Backup and restoration facility like.

9. Endian

Endian firewall is another Stateful packet Inspection concept based firewall which can be deployed as routers, proxy and Gateway VPN with OpenVPN. Its originally developed from IPCop firewall which is also a fork of Smoothwall.

Features of Endian

1. Bidirectional firewall
2. Snort Intrusion prevention
3. Can secure web server with HTTP &FTP proxies, antivirus and URL blacklist.
4. Can secure Mail servers with SMTP and POP3 proxies, Spam Auto-learning, Greylisting.
5. VPN with IPSec
6. Real time Network traffic logging

10. ConfigServer Security Firewall

Last, But not the last Configserver security & firewall. It’s a cross platform and a very versatile Firewall, it’s also based on the concept of Stateful packet inspection (SPI) Firewall. It supports almost all Virtualization environments like Virtuozzo, OpenVZ, VMware, XEN, KVM and Virtualbox.

Features of CSF

1. Its daemon process LFD( Login failure daemon) checks for login failures of sensitive servers like ssh, SMTP, Exim, Imap,Pure & ProFTP, vsftpd, Suhosin and mod_security failures.
2. Can configure email alerts to notify if something goes unusual or detect any kind of intrusion on your server.
3. Can be easily integrated popular web hosting control panels like cPanel, DirectAdmin and Webmin.
4. Notifies excessive resource user and suspicious process via email alerts.
5. Advanced Intrusion detection system.
6. Can protect your linux box with the attacks like Syn flood and ping of death.
7. Checks for exploits
8. Easy to start/restart/stop & lots more

Other than these Firewalls there are many other firewalls like Sphirewall, Checkpoint, ClearOS, Monowall available in the web to secure your Linux box. Please let the world know which is your favourite firewall for your Nix box and leave your valuable suggestions and queries below in the comment box. I’ll come with another interesting article soon, till then stay healthy and connected with Tecmint.com.

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