Using Firewall Builder, Part I

Believe it or not, even after all this work we're not done configuring the firewall object. In Figure 4 you may have noticed that in the hierarchical view of objects on the left-hand side of the window, the firewall Trillian has two interfaces, eth0 and lo. The eth0 subsection was created automatically when I ran the Insert firewall dialog. lo, which represents Trillian's loopback interface, had to be created manually. It's a little odd that its creation doesn't happen automatically. Every firewall, whether a multihomed host or a bastion host, needs rules that allow its loopback interfaces free rein (so local processes aren't interrupted).

To add a loopback interface manually, select your firewall object's icon in the object list, pull down the Insert menu above and select Interface. The Interface option is grayed-out unless you've selected a Host or Firewall object. A new interface icon appears below your firewall object, and the new interface's properties are displayed on the right. Enter the interface's name into Name (for example, lo), and deselect This Interface is External (insecure). The latter option should be checked only for your external interface and DMZ interface objects.

Next, while the new interface's object is still selected, pull down the Insert menu again and select Address. Now an address sub-object appears below your new interface, and its properties are displayed on the right (Figure 6). Enter a name, an IP address of 127.0.0.1 and a netmask of 255.0.0.0 (the latter will be filled in automatically, actually). In some circumstances, systems have more than one loopback interface, in which case the address may vary (127.0.0.2, etc.). Chances are, though, you have only one and its IP is 127.0.0.1. When in doubt, do an ifconfig -a on your firewall.

Figure 6. Adding a Loopback Interface's Address

Once you've defined all your objects, or at least enough to start writing rules, save them by pulling down the File menu and selecting Save. You'll be prompted to provide a filename with a suffix of .xml in your home directory. Some scripts expect objects to be named objects.xml and to be stored in ~, but this is user-configurable. In other words, name your objects file whatever you like and put it wherever you want. Remember what and where these are if you need to tweak fwb_install or another policy installation script.

I'll leave it to you to create additional Host, Network and Firewall objects pertinent to your environment. Also, I've skipped Network Range and Time objects, both of which are easy to understand and use—you can figure these out by playing with them or by referring to the documentation at www.fwbuilder.org. Next month, we'll use all these objects to build some policies. In the meantime, I hope you've learned enough to get started and to start exploring Firewall Builder on your own. Have fun!

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