Zone-Policy example

Native IPv4 and IPv6

We have three networks.

WAN - 172.16.10.0/24, 2001:0DB8:0:9999::0/64
LAN - 192.168.100.0/24, 2001:0DB8:0:AAAA::0/64
DMZ - 192.168.200.0/24, 2001:0DB8:0:BBBB::0/64

This specific example is for a router on a stick, but is very easily adapted for however many NICs you have:

  • Internet - 192.168.200.100 - TCP/80

  • Internet - 192.168.200.100 - TCP/443

  • Internet - 192.168.200.100 - TCP/25

  • Internet - 192.168.200.100 - TCP/53

  • VyOS acts as DHCP, DNS forwarder, NAT, router and firewall.

  • 192.168.200.200/2001:0DB8:0:BBBB::200 is an internal/external DNS, web and mail (SMTP/IMAP) server.

  • 192.168.100.10/2001:0DB8:0:AAAA::10 is the administrator’s console. It can SSH to VyOS.

  • LAN and DMZ hosts have basic outbound access: Web, FTP, SSH.

  • LAN can access DMZ resources.

  • DMZ cannot access LAN resources.

  • Inbound WAN connect to DMZ host.

Network Topology Diagram

The VyOS interface is assigned the .1/:1 address of their respective networks. WAN is on VLAN 10, LAN on VLAN 20, and DMZ on VLAN 30.

It will look something like this:

interfaces {
    ethernet eth0 {
        duplex auto
        hw-id 00:53:ed:6e:2a:92
        smp_affinity auto
        speed auto
        vif 10 {
            address 172.16.10.1/24
            address 2001:db8:0:9999::1/64
        }
        vif 20 {
            address 192.168.100.1/24
            address 2001:db8:0:AAAA::1/64
        }
        vif 30 {
            address 192.168.200.1/24
            address 2001:db8:0:BBBB::1/64
        }
    }
    loopback lo {
    }
}

Zones Basics

Each interface is assigned to a zone. The interface can be physical or virtual such as tunnels (VPN, PPTP, GRE, etc) and are treated exactly the same.

Traffic flows from zone A to zone B. That flow is what I refer to as a zone-pair-direction. eg. A->B and B->A are two zone-pair-destinations.

Ruleset are created per zone-pair-direction.

I name rule sets to indicate which zone-pair-direction they represent. eg. ZoneA-ZoneB or ZoneB-ZoneA. LAN-DMZ, DMZ-LAN.

In VyOS, you have to have unique Ruleset names. In the event of overlap, I add a “-6” to the end of v6 rulesets. eg. LAN-DMZ, LAN-DMZ-6. This allows for each auto-completion and uniqueness.

In this example we have 4 zones. LAN, WAN, DMZ, Local. The local zone is the firewall itself.

If your computer is on the LAN and you need to SSH into your VyOS box, you would need a rule to allow it in the LAN-Local ruleset. If you want to access a webpage from your VyOS box, you need a rule to allow it in the Local-LAN ruleset.

In rules, it is good to keep them named consistently. As the number of rules you have grows, the more consistency you have, the easier your life will be.

Rule 1 - State Established, Related
Rule 2 - State Invalid
Rule 100 - ICMP
Rule 200 - Web
Rule 300 - FTP
Rule 400 - NTP
Rule 500 - SMTP
Rule 600 - DNS
Rule 700 - DHCP
Rule 800 - SSH
Rule 900 - IMAPS

The first two rules are to deal with the idiosyncrasies of VyOS and iptables.

Zones and Rulesets both have a default action statement. When using Zone-Policies, the default action is set by the zone-policy statement and is represented by rule 10000.

It is good practice to log both accepted and denied traffic. It can save you significant headaches when trying to troubleshoot a connectivity issue.

To add logging to the default rule, do:

set firewall name <ruleSet> enable-default-log

By default, iptables does not allow traffic for established sessions to return, so you must explicitly allow this. I do this by adding two rules to every ruleset. 1 allows established and related state packets through and rule 2 drops and logs invalid state packets. We place the established/related rule at the top because the vast majority of traffic on a network is established and the invalid rule to prevent invalid state packets from mistakenly being matched against other rules. Having the most matched rule listed first reduces CPU load in high volume environments. Note: I have filed a bug to have this added as a default action as well.

‘’It is important to note, that you do not want to add logging to the established state rule as you will be logging both the inbound and outbound packets for each session instead of just the initiation of the session. Your logs will be massive in a very short period of time.’’

In VyOS you must have the interfaces created before you can apply it to the zone and the rulesets must be created prior to applying it to a zone-policy.

I create/configure the interfaces first. Build out the rulesets for each zone-pair-direction which includes at least the three state rules. Then I setup the zone-policies.

Zones do not allow for a default action of accept; either drop or reject. It is important to remember this because if you apply an interface to a zone and commit, any active connections will be dropped. Specifically, if you are SSH’d into VyOS and add local or the interface you are connecting through to a zone and do not have rulesets in place to allow SSH and established sessions, you will not be able to connect.

The following are the rules that were created for this example (may not be complete), both in IPv4 and IPv6. If there is no IP specified, then the source/destination address is not explicit.

WAN – DMZ:192.168.200.200 – tcp/80
WAN – DMZ:192.168.200.200 – tcp/443
WAN – DMZ:192.168.200.200 – tcp/25
WAN – DMZ:192.168.200.200 – tcp/53
WAN – DMZ:2001:0DB8:0:BBBB::200 – tcp/80
WAN – DMZ:2001:0DB8:0:BBBB::200 – tcp/443
WAN – DMZ:2001:0DB8:0:BBBB::200 – tcp/25
WAN – DMZ:2001:0DB8:0:BBBB::200 – tcp/53

DMZ - Local - tcp/53
DMZ - Local - tcp/123
DMZ - Local - tcp/67,68

LAN - Local - tcp/53
LAN - Local - tcp/123
LAN - Local - tcp/67,68
LAN:192.168.100.10 - Local - tcp/22
LAN:2001:0DB8:0:AAAA::10 - Local - tcp/22

LAN - WAN - tcp/80
LAN - WAN - tcp/443
LAN - WAN - tcp/22
LAN - WAN - tcp/20,21

DMZ - WAN - tcp/80
DMZ - WAN - tcp/443
DMZ - WAN - tcp/22
DMZ - WAN - tcp/20,21
DMZ - WAN - tcp/53
DMZ - WAN - udp/53

Local - WAN - tcp/80
Local - WAN - tcp/443
Local - WAN - tcp/20,21

Local - DMZ - tcp/25
Local - DMZ - tcp/67,68
Local - DMZ - tcp/53
Local - DMZ - udp/53

Local - LAN - tcp/67,68

LAN - DMZ - tcp/80
LAN - DMZ - tcp/443
LAN - DMZ - tcp/993
LAN:2001:0DB8:0:AAAA::10 - DMZ:2001:0DB8:0:BBBB::200 - tcp/22
LAN:192.168.100.10 - DMZ:192.168.200.200 - tcp/22

Since we have 4 zones, we need to setup the following rulesets.

Lan-wan
Lan-local
Lan-dmz
Wan-lan
Wan-local
Wan-dmz
Local-lan
Local-wan
Local-dmz
Dmz-lan
Dmz-wan
Dmz-local

Even if the two zones will never communicate, it is a good idea to create the zone-pair-direction rulesets and set enable-default-log. This will allow you to log attempts to access the networks. Without it, you will never see the connection attempts.

This is an example of the three base rules.

name wan-lan {
  default-action drop
  enable-default-log
  rule 1 {
    action accept
    state {
      established enable
      related enable
    }
  }
  rule 2 {
    action drop
    log enable
    state {
      invalid enable
    }
  }
}

Here is an example of an IPv6 DMZ-WAN ruleset.

ipv6-name dmz-wan-6 {
  default-action drop
  enable-default-log
  rule 1 {
    action accept
    state {
      established enable
      related enable
    }
  }
  rule 2 {
    action drop
    log enable
    state {
      invalid enable
  }
  rule 100 {
    action accept
    log enable
    protocol ipv6-icmp
  }
  rule 200 {
    action accept
    destination {
      port 80,443
    }
    log enable
    protocol tcp
  }
  rule 300 {
    action accept
    destination {
      port 20,21
    }
    log enable
    protocol tcp
  }
  rule 500 {
    action accept
    destination {
      port 25
    }
    log enable
    protocol tcp
    source {
      address 2001:db8:0:BBBB::200
    }
  }
  rule 600 {
    action accept
    destination {
      port 53
    }
    log enable
    protocol tcp_udp
    source {
      address 2001:db8:0:BBBB::200
    }
  }
  rule 800 {
    action accept
    destination {
    port 22
    }
    log enable
    protocol tcp
  }
}

Once you have all of your rulesets built, then you need to create your zone-policy.

Start by setting the interface and default action for each zone.

set zone-policy zone dmz default-action drop
set zone-policy zone dmz interface eth0.30

In this case, we are setting the v6 ruleset that represents traffic sourced from the LAN, destined for the DMZ. Because the zone-policy firewall syntax is a little awkward, I keep it straight by thinking of it backwards.

set zone-policy zone dmz from lan firewall ipv6-name lan-dmz-6

DMZ-LAN policy is LAN-DMZ. You can get a rhythm to it when you build out a bunch at one time.

In the end, you will end up with something like this config. I took out everything but the Firewall, Interfaces, and zone-policy sections. It is long enough as is.

IPv6 Tunnel

If you are using a IPv6 tunnel from HE.net or someone else, the basis is the same except you have two WAN interfaces. One for v4 and one for v6.

You would have 5 zones instead of just 4 and you would configure your v6 ruleset between your tunnel interface and your LAN/DMZ zones instead of to the WAN.

LAN, WAN, DMZ, local and TUN (tunnel)

v6 pairs would be:

lan-tun
lan-local
lan-dmz
tun-lan
tun-local
tun-dmz
local-lan
local-tun
local-dmz
dmz-lan
dmz-tun
dmz-local

Notice, none go to WAN since WAN wouldn’t have a v6 address on it.

You would have to add a couple of rules on your wan-local ruleset to allow protocol 41 in.

Something like:

rule 400 {
  action accept
  destination {
    address 172.16.10.1
  }
  log enable
  protocol 41
  source {
    address ip.of.tunnel.broker
  }
}