What do you run; Opnsense, pfsense, Smoothwall, maybe a WAF like wazuh?
Today was update/audit firewall day. I’m running a standalone instance of pFsense on a Protectli Vault FW4B - 4 Port - Intel Quad Core - 8GB RAM - 120GB mSATA SSD with unbound, pfBlockerNG, Suricata, ntopng, and heavily filtered. I did bump the swap to 8 GB as I’ve previously noticed a few ‘out of swap’ errors under load.
Before I signed off, I ran it through a couple porn sites to see if my adblocking strategy was working. Not one intrusive ad. Sweet!
Show me what you got.
Opnsense on dedicated device, several built in filters + several github backed filters for unbounddns.
Haven’t tested it heavily, but the times I am on an outside network not using VPN into my network, or using TOR, etc, i am inundated with ads… So i guess successful internally.
outside network not using VPN … i am inundated with ads…
I swear I do not know how the regular Joe Schmoe internet user deals with all that clutter. Sometimes I am called by a friend to look at their computer for some issue they are having. It is mind bogglingly frustrating for me.
nftables. Deny all, start adding stuff until þings work.
My firewalls are simple, b/c I run a private VPN and just shut off all traffic except over WG. I’ve got one exposed VPS reverse proxying services from oþer VPSes over WG.
But: nftables, and only nftables. I’m a big believer in understanding how stuff works, and þe rulesets created by firewalld and ilk are convoluted - complexity adds risk.
Rock on!
Haha, I thought that said “until pings work”
Also an accurate reading.
Opnsense on protectlii. Nothing but love.
Protectli
I love my Protectli. I tried Opnsense. Seemed to be a well put together piece of open source software by people really who care. There’s nothing wrong with it. Does what it says on the tin. I guess I just liked the flow of pFsense. They both acomplish the same thing. I am aware of the pro’s and the cons of each. pFsense just appealed to me more.
My firewall varies from installation-to-installation. Right now, I’m using YaST Firewall on my main machine, iptables on my old ThinkPad, and my other machines are currently between operating systems. In the past, I have also dabbled in ufw, pf, and awall.
In addition to that, I generally use NextDNS (though I also get excellent results with Mullvad DNS).
My policy is simple: reject all incoming connections, except for Torrent and Syncthing.
NextDNS
I hear a lot of good things about NextDNS.
My policy is simple:
Do you call your network Virgin, because that’s pretty tight.
OpenBSD pf
Edit: just home/hobby now, I’m not in tech anymore.
OpenBSD pf
I’d never heard of it so I went and checked it out. It seems to have a lot of pFsense/Opnsense features just managed from the cli. Cool.
It’s the ‘pf’ in pfSense.
pf is developed as part of the OpenBSD project and is the built in packet filter/firewall.
Also this. On some unremarkable HP office PC that’s probably about a decade old. No ad filtering or anything as it interferes with others in the house. I’ve thought about trying a second unbound service with adblocking for me, but haven’t gotten around to it.
I run a secondary wifi network with “Ads” in its name, whose vlan doesn’t get forced into pihole DNS. It mostly prevents me from having to hear complaints from others in the house, and they barely ever use it.
I quite like this idea, thanks! If I did this I could adblock all the rest of my network, which might help with blocking ads on things like smart TV’s. I could also DMZ that wireless network. I would consider their devices untrusted (not malicious, just not careful), and they wouldn’t notice the difference.
I run IPFire on a PC Engines apu4d4 (https://pcengines.ch/apu4d4.htm). I use dynDNS, WireGuard and set up a DMZ with it. I also have a WiFi card installed und use hostAPD to run that.
I think they stopped producing them because the AMD SOC they used is EOL. I was a big fan of their open platform.
Pfsense with pfblocker in a VM. Works wonders. Pipe fail2ban to pfblocker for extra goodness.
deleted by creator
Pipe fail2ban to pfblocker for extra goodness.
The thought has crossed my mind on several occasions. If you don’t mind me asking and take up your time, how do you integrate f2b with pFsense? I’m running f2b on several VPS I have, and it just downright works. So, my thought was, what would f2b do to enhance pFsense’s capabilities, and how would you make that all homogenate?
Been a while since I set it up but as I recall it’s a 5-minute from job that runs a command that just dumps the pf block list fail2ban manages into a text file in my public_html directory. Then I just add a feed in pfblocker with the address of the text file and it loads from that feed.
I’ll see if I can dig up some info. I started searching, then got busy. So I put the few I had time to find in a selfhosted Readeck instance. I use it for ‘read it later’ kind of bookmarks.
Thanks for the share.
Opnsense with unbound DNS here. Running on an old PC that got converted to dedicated firewall (with added NIC card for ports). Nothing crazy, just enough to control what communicates out of my network.
I run iptables on Debian, on a cheap aliexpress minipc with dual NICs. Been using more or less the same config for about five years. It’s simple, boring, and works great.
It’s simple, boring, and works great.
One cannot quibble with long term success. Admitidly tho, I am a sucker for a good UI. One of the first things I do when researching a piece of opensource software is to do an image search to see what it looks like. LOL
Same. Immeasurably disappointed whenever the repo for a GUI program does not include any screenshots.
I’ve been using Ufw but airvpn’s kill switch seems to override it, should i be using something else?
We’re behind our firewalls of course 😋 I’m using a random no root android firewall but I’m probably just going to root it and use something good
Opnsense on a thin client, riser with a quad port Intel NIC.
I think I have the same protectli as you and it is awesome. Need it for my 2.5gb uplink. I use openwrt on it… Didn’t really like opnsense. I am more used to linux than bsd.
I host lots of services and get bombarded by scrapers, scanners, and skids both at home and on my VPSs.
I use ipset for the usual blocklists which I download regularly. I also have tarpits on 22/tcp (endlessh). I pipe the IPs from the endlessh logs into fail2ban which feeds the ipsets. I have ipset blocks and fail2ban on my home firewall and all VPSs and coordinate over mqtt. So
any fail2ban trigger > mqtt > every ipset block. Touch my 22/tcp anywhere and you get banned instantly everywhere. The program I use for this is called vallumd and it runs on openwrt.I also put maltrail everywhere but I’m not totally sure how to interpret and respond to the results. Probably will implement a pipe from maltrail to my mqtt > blocklist setup.
I don’t do any network-level adblocking… Might be a future project.
Nothing fancy, old ubiquiti gateway with a dedicated pihole server for my DNS.
Same. What’s the deal with having elaborate firewall stuff for a normal family home anyway?
If the built in stuff isn’t good enough then 99.9% of households would be compromised a long time ago already.
The last stats I remember reading cited some 1.5 million home networks are compromised on a daily basis. Some people, such as myself, run more complex services on their local servers that are perhaps tied into remotes such as VPS. You’ll see a lot of selfhosters with rather elaborate firewall defenses set up. I self host a lot of services I use that the ‘normal family home’ would outsource to public entities. I have a rack in the closet and several VPS, so I need something more than just Windows Firewall, or similar, that I can dial in to my unique environment.
Also, because I can.
Valid! I also tinker with selfhosting using Docker containers, didn’t think of firewalls the same way. Thank you.
No worries mate. What do you host?
Nothing spectacular.
Git, Paperless, UniFi Controller, Pihole, Mattermost chat, Immich, Home Assistant, Frigate, Syncthing, Hoarder. Just stuff for myself, my home, and my friends. And 🏴☠️
And you?
The usual. Might be a few I’ve missed:
- Homarr
- Code-server
- Netdata
- Searxng
- Change-detection
- Readeck
- Checkcle
- Duckdns
- Obsidian
- Dozzle
- Loki-promtail-1
- Loki-loki-1
- Root-influxdb2-1
- Cadvisor-redis
- Dbeaver
- Pairdrop
- Speedtest-tracker
- Btop-plus-plus
- Portainer
- Grocy
- Loki-grafana-1
- Cup
- Web-check
- Omni-tools
- Cadvisor-prometheus
- Watchtower-fork
- Barcode-buddy
- Ittools
- Nessus
- Dockerbot
- Fusion
- Bytestash
- Uptime-kuma
- Karakeep-web
- Karakeep-chrome
- Karakeep-meili
- Cadvisor
- Gitlab
- RocketChat
- Anonaddy
- Etherpad
- Archivebox
- FreshRSS
- FileStash
- piHole
- LAMP Stack
- UnRaid
- Proxmox
OpenWRT on a Linksys router, with adguard home for DNS blocking.
I used to run OPNSense on some older x86 hardware, but wanted to move to something simpler and less power hungry.
