Shorewall and Bridged Firewalls without using physdev match support

Tom Eastep

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.

2008/03/28

Table of Contents

Background
Requirements
Application
Configuring the Bridge
Configuring Shorewall
Limitations

Caution

This article applies to Shorewall 3.3.3 and later. If you are running a version of Shorewall earlier than Shorewall 3.3.3 then please see the documentation for that release.

Background

Systems where Shorewall runs normally function as routers. In the context of the Open System Interconnect (OSI) reference model, a router operates at layer 3, Shorewall may also be deployed on a GNU Linux System that acts as a bridge. Bridges are layer 2 devices in the OSI model (think of a bridge as an ethernet switch).

Some differences between routers and bridges are:

Routers determine packet destination based on the destination IP address, while bridges route traffic based on the destination MAC address in the ethernet frame.
As a consequence of the first difference, routers can be connected to more than one IP network while a bridge may be part of only a single network.
In most configurations, routers don't forward broadcast packets while a bridges do.
Note
Section 4 of RFC 1812 describes the conditions under which a router may or must forward broadcasts.

The technique described in this article differs from that in Shorewall and Bridged Firewalls in that it defines zones in terms of ip addresses (networks, hosts, and/or ranges) accessed through the bridge device rather than in terms of ports on the bridge. While using ports is more convenient, it requires a fully-functional physdev match capability in your kernel and iptables. Beginning with Linux kernel version 2.6.20, the physdev match capability was reduced in function to the point where in can no longer be used for Shorewall zone definition. To work around this functional step backward, the technique described below can be used.

To summarize the changes required required to move from a Shorewall and Bridged Firewalls configuration to this new type:

Set BRIDGING=No in shorewall.conf
Modify your /etc/shorewall/hosts file to use IP addresses rather than bridge ports to define your zones.

Requirements

Note that if you need a bridge but do not need to restrict the traffic through the bridge then any version of Shorewall will work. See the Simple Bridge documentation for details.

In order to use Shorewall as a bridging firewall:

Your kernel must contain bridge support (CONFIG_BRIDGE=m or CONFIG_BRIDGE=y).
Your kernel must contain bridge/netfilter integration (CONFIG_BRIDGE_NETFILTER=y).
You must have the bridge utilities (bridge-utils) package installed.

Application

The following diagram shows a typical application of a bridge/firewall. There is already an existing router in place whose internal interface supports a network, and you want to insert a firewall between the router, and the systems in the local network. In the example shown, the network uses RFC 1918 addresses but that is not a requirement; the bridge would work exactly the same if public IP addresses were used (remember that the bridge doesn't deal with IP addresses).

There are a several key differences in this setup and a normal Shorewall configuration:

The Shorewall system (the Bridge/Firewall) has only a single IP address even though it has two ethernet interfaces! The IP address is configured on the bridge itself, rather than on either of the network cards.
The systems connected to the LAN are configured with the router's IP address (192.168.1.254 in the above diagram) as their default gateway.
traceroute doesn't detect the Bridge/Firewall as an intermediate router.
If the router runs a DHCP server, the hosts connected to the LAN can use that server without having dhcrelay running on the Bridge/Firewall.

Warning

Inserting a bridge/firewall between a router and a set of local hosts only works if those local hosts form a single IP network. In the above diagram, all of the hosts in the loc zone are in the 192.168.1.0/24 network. If the router is routing between several local networks through the same physical interface (there are multiple IP networks sharing the same LAN), then inserting a bridge/firewall between the router and the local LAN won't work.

There are other possibilities here -- there could be a hub or switch between the router and the Bridge/Firewall and there could be other systems connected to that switch. All of the systems on the local side of the router would still be configured with IP addresses in 192.168.1.0/24 as shown below.

Configuring the Bridge

Configuring the bridge itself is quite simple and uses the brctl utility from the bridge-utils package. Bridge configuration information may be found at http://bridge.sf.net.

Unfortunately, many Linux distributions don't have good bridge configuration tools, and the network configuration GUIs don't detect the presence of bridge devices. Here is an excerpt from a Debian /etc/network/interfaces file for a two-port bridge with a static IP address:

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
        address 192.168.1.253
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        network 192.168.1.0
        broadcast 192.168.1.255
        pre-up /sbin/ip link set eth0 up
        pre-up /sbin/ip link set eth1 up
        pre-up /usr/sbin/brctl addbr br0
        pre-up /usr/sbin/brctl addif br0 eth0
        pre-up /usr/sbin/brctl addif br0 eth1

While it is not a requirement to give the bridge an IP address, doing so allows the bridge/firewall to access other systems and allows the bridge/firewall to be managed remotely. The bridge must also have an IP address for REJECT rules and policies to work correctly — otherwise REJECT behaves the same as DROP. It is also a requirement for bridges to have an IP address if they are part of a bridge/router.

Important

Get your bridge configuration working first, including bridge startup at boot, before you configure and start Shorewall.

The bridge may have its IP address assigned via DHCP. Here's an example of an /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-br0 file from a SUSE™ system:

BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
REMOTE_IPADDR=''
STARTMODE='onboot'
UNIQUE='3hqH.MjuOqWfSZ+C'
WIRELESS='no'
MTU=''

Here's an /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0 file for a Mandriva™ system:

DEVICE=br0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes

On both the SUSE™ and Mandriva systems, a separate script is required to configure the bridge itself.

Here are scripts that I used on a SUSE™ 9.1 system.

/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-br0

BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
REMOTE_IPADDR=''
STARTMODE='onboot'
UNIQUE='3hqH.MjuOqWfSZ+C'
WIRELESS='no'
MTU=''

/etc/init.d/bridge

#!/bin/sh

################################################################################
#   Script to create a bridge
#
#     (c) 2004 - Tom Eastep ([email protected])
#
#   Modify the following variables to match your configuration
#
#### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:       bridge
# Required-Start: coldplug
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:  2 3 5
# Default-Stop:   0 1 6
# Description:    starts and stops a bridge
### END INIT INFO
#
# chkconfig: 2345 05 89
# description: GRE/IP Tunnel
#
################################################################################


PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin

INTERFACES="eth1 eth0"
BRIDGE="br0"
MODULES="tulip"

do_stop() {
    echo "Stopping Bridge $BRIDGE"
    brctl delbr $BRIDGE
    for interface in $INTERFACES; do
        ip link set $interface down
    done
}

do_start() {

      echo "Starting Bridge $BRIDGE"
      for module in $MODULES; do
          modprobe $module
      done

      sleep 5

      for interface in $INTERFACES; do
          ip link set $interface up
      done

      brctl addbr $BRIDGE

      for interface in $INTERFACES; do
          brctl addif $BRIDGE $interface
      done
}

case "$1" in
  start)
      do_start
    ;;
  stop)
      do_stop
    ;;
  restart)
      do_stop
      sleep 1
      do_start
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
    exit 1
esac
exit 0

Axel Westerhold has contributed this example of configuring a bridge with a static IP address on a Fedora System (Core 1 and Core 2 Test 1). Note that these files also configure the bridge itself, so there is no need for a separate bridge config script.

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0:
DEVICE=br0
TYPE=Bridge
IPADDR=192.168.50.14
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:
DEVICE=eth0
TYPE=ETHER
BRIDGE=br0
ONBOOT=yes
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1:
DEVICE=eth1
TYPE=ETHER
BRIDGE=br0
ONBOOT=yes

Florin Grad at Mandriva™ provides this script for configuring a bridge:

#!/bin/sh
# chkconfig: 2345 05 89
# description: Layer 2 Bridge
#

[ -f /etc/sysconfig/bridge ] && . /etc/sysconfig/bridge

PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin

do_stop() {
    echo "Stopping Bridge"
    for i in $INTERFACES $BRIDGE_INTERFACE ; do
    	ip link set $i down
    done
    brctl delbr $BRIDGE_INTERFACE
}

do_start() {

   echo "Starting Bridge"
   for i in $INTERFACES ; do
        ip link set $i up
   done
   brctl addbr br0
   for i in $INTERFACES ; do
        ip link set $i up
        brctl addif br0 $i 
   done
   ifup $BRIDGE_INTERFACE 
}

case "$1" in
  start)
      do_start
    ;;
  stop)
      do_stop
    ;;
  restart)
      do_stop
      sleep 1
      do_start
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
    exit 1
esac
exit 0

The /etc/sysconfig/bridge file:

BRIDGE_INTERFACE=br0          #The name of your Bridge
INTERFACES="eth0 eth1"        #The physical interfaces to be bridged

Andrzej Szelachowski contributed the following.

Here is how I configured bridge in Slackware:

1) I had to compile bridge-utils (It's not in the standard distribution)
2) I've created rc.bridge in /etc/rc.d:

#########################
#! /bin/sh

ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0
ifconfig eth1 0.0.0.0
#ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 #this line should be uncommented if you don't use rc.inet1

brctl addbr most

brctl addif most eth0
brctl addif most eth1

ifconfig most 192.168.1.31 netmask 255.255.255.0 up 
#route add default gw 192.168.1.1 metric 1 #this line should be uncommented if
                                           #you don't use rc.inet1
#########################

3) I made rc.brige executable and added the following line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local

/etc/rc.d/rc.bridge

Joshua Schmidlkofer writes:

Bridge Setup for Gentoo

#install bridge-utils
emerge bridge-utils

## create a link for net.br0
cd /etc/init.d
ln -s net.eth0 net.br0

# Remove net.eth*, add net.br0 and bridge.
rc-update del net.eth0
rc-update del net.eth1
rc-update add net.br0 default
rc-update add bridge boot



/etc/conf.d/bridge:

  #bridge contains the name of each bridge you want created.
  bridge="br0"

  # bridge_<bridge>_devices contains the devices to use at bridge startup.
  bridge_br0_devices="eth0 eth1"

/etc/conf.d/net

   iface_br0="10.0.0.1     broadcast 10.0.0.255 netmask 255.255.255.0"
   #for dhcp:
   #iface_br0="dhcp"
   #comment this out if you use dhcp.
   gateway="eth0/10.0.0.1"

Users who successfully configure bridges on other distributions, with static or dynamic IP addresses, are encouraged to send me their configuration so I can post it here.

Configuring Shorewall

To use this form of bridge support, you must turn off the BRIDGING option in /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf. Also, be sure that IMPLICIT_CONTINUE is turned off:

BRIDGING=No
IMPLICIT_CONTINUE=Yes

In the scenario pictured above (where the hosts 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.11 are on the 'net' side of the bridge), there would probably be two zones defined -- one for the internet, and one for the local LAN; so in /etc/shorewall/zones:

#ZONE   TYPE            OPTIONS
fw      firewall
net     ipv4
loc:net ipv4
#LAST LINE - ADD YOUR ENTRIES ABOVE THIS ONE - DO NOT REMOVE

Note that the loc zone is defined to be a sub-zone of the net zone.

A conventional two-zone policy file is appropriate here — /etc/shorewall/policy:

#SOURCE     DEST        POLICY        LOG       LIMIT:BURST
loc         net         ACCEPT
net         all         DROP          info
all         all         REJECT        info
#LAST LINE - ADD YOUR ENTRIES ABOVE THIS ONE - DO NOT REMOVE

Only the bridge device itself is configured with an IP address, so only that device is defined to Shorewall in /etc/shorewall/interfaces:

#ZONE    INTERFACE      BROADCAST       OPTIONS
net      br0             192.168.1.255
#LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THIS ONE -- DO NOT REMOVE

The loc zone is defined using the /etc/shorewall/hosts file. Assuming that the router is connected to eth0 and the switch to eth1:

#ZONE           HOST(S)                         OPTIONS
loc             br0:192.168.1.0/24!192.168.1.10/31,192.168.1.254
#LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THIS LINE -- DO NOT REMOVE

Note

192.168.1.10/31 consists of the two local systems outside the firewall; namely, 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.11. Those systems must be excluded from the loc zone as must the router (192.168.1.254).

When Shorewall is stopped, you want to allow only local traffic through the bridge — /etc/shorewall/routestopped:

#INTERFACE      HOST(S)         OPTIONS
br0             192.168.1.0/24  routeback
#LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THIS ONE -- DO NOT REMOVE

The /etc/shorewall/rules file from the two-interface sample is a good place to start for defining a set of firewall rules.

Limitations

Bridging doesn't work with some wireless cards — see http://bridge.sf.net.