diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls/chapter.sgml index 3442759459..40017a94e3 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls/chapter.sgml @@ -1,3127 +1,3127 @@ Joseph J. Barbish Contributed by Brad Davis Converted to SGML and updated by Firewalls firewall security firewalls Introduction Firewalls make it possible to filter incoming and outgoing traffic that flows through your system. A firewall can use one or more sets of rules to inspect the network packets as they come in or go out of your network connections and either allows the traffic through or blocks it. The rules of a firewall can inspect one or more characteristics of the packets, including but not limited to the protocol type, the source or destination host address, and the source or destination port. Firewalls can greatly enhance the security of a host or a network. They can be used to do one or more of the following things: To protect and insulate the applications, services and machines of your internal network from unwanted traffic coming in from the public Internet. To limit or disable access from hosts of the internal network to services of the public Internet. To support network address translation (NAT), which allows your internal network to use private IP addresses and share a single connection to the public Internet (either with a single IP address or by a shared pool of automatically assigned public addresses). After reading this chapter, you will know: How to properly define packet filtering rules. The differences between the firewalls built into &os;. How to use and configure the OpenBSD PF firewall. How to use and configure IPFILTER. How to use and configure IPFW. Before reading this chapter, you should: Understand basic &os; and Internet concepts. Firewall Concepts firewall rulesets There are two basic ways to create firewall rulesets: inclusive or exclusive. An exclusive firewall allows all traffic through except for the traffic matching the ruleset. An inclusive firewall does the reverse. It only allows traffic matching the rules through and blocks everything else. Inclusive firewalls are generally safer than exclusive firewalls because they significantly reduce the risk of allowing unwanted traffic to pass through the firewall. Security can be tightened further using a stateful firewall. With a stateful firewall the firewall keeps track of which connections are opened through the firewall and will only allow traffic through which either matches an existing connection or opens a new one. The disadvantage of a stateful firewall is that it can be vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks if a lot of new connections are opened very fast. With most firewalls it is possible to use a combination of stateful and non-stateful behavior to make an optimal firewall for the site. Firewall Software Applications &os; has three different firewall software products built into the base system. They are IPFILTER (also known as IPF), IPFIREWALL (also known as IPFW) and PF (OpenBSD's PacketFilter). IPFIREWALL has the built in DUMMYNET traffic shaper facilities for controlling bandwidth usage. IPFILTER does not have a built in traffic shaper facility for controlling bandwidth usage, but the ALTQ port application can be used to accomplish the same function. The DUMMYNET feature and ALTQ is generally useful only to large ISPs or commercial users. IPF, IPFW and PF use rules to control the access of packets to and from your system, although they go about it different ways and have different rule syntaxes. The IPFW sample rule set (found in /etc/rc.firewall) delivered in the basic install is outdated, complicated and does not use stateful rules on the interface facing the public Internet. It exclusively uses legacy stateless rules which only have the ability to open or close the service ports. The IPFW example stateful rules sets presented here supercede the /etc/rc.firewall file distributed with the system. Stateful rules have technically advanced interrogation abilities capable of defending against the flood of different methods currently employed by attackers. All of these firewall software solutions IPF, IPFW and PF still maintain their legacy heritage of their original rule processing order and reliance on non-stateful rules. These outdated concepts are not covered here, only the new, modern stateful rule construct and rule processing order is presented. You should read about both of them and make your own decision on which one best fits your needs. The author prefers IPFILTER because its stateful rules are much less complicated to use in a NAT environment and it has a built in ftp proxy that simplifies the rules to allow secure outbound FTP usage. It is also more appropriate to the knowledge level of the inexperienced firewall user. Since all firewalls are based on interrogating the values of selected packet control fields, the creator of the firewall rules must have an understanding of how TCP/IP works, what the different values in the packet control fields are and how these values are used in a normal session conversation. For a good explanation go to: . The Packet Filter (PF) Firewall firewall PF As of July 2003 the OpenBSD firewall software application known as PF was ported to &os; and was made available in the &os; Ports Collection; the first release that contained PF as an integrated part of the base system was &os; 5.3 in November 2004. PF is a complete, fully featured firewall that contains ALTQ for bandwidth usage management in a way similar to what DUMMYNET provides in IPFW. The OpenBSD project does an outstanding job of maintaining the PF users' guide that it will not be made part of this handbook firewall section as that would just be duplicated effort. The availability of PF for the various &os; releases and versions is summarized below: &os; Version PF Availability Pre-4.X versions PF is not available for any release of &os; older than the 4.X branch. All versions of the 4.X branch PF is available as part of KAME. 5.X releases before 5.3-RELEASE The security/pf port can be used to install PF on these versions of &os;. These releases were targeted to developers and people who wanted a preview of early 5.X versions. Upgrading to 5.3-RELEASE or newer versions of &os; is strongly recommended. 5.3-RELEASE and later versions PF is part of the base system. Do not use the security/pf port on these versions of &os;. It will not work. Use the &man.pf.4; support of the base system instead. More info can be found at the PF for &os; web site: . The OpenBSD PF user's guide is here: . PF in &os; 5.X is at the level of OpenBSD version 3.5. The port from the &os; Ports Collection is at the level of OpenBSD version 3.4. Keep that in mind when browsing the user's guide. Enabling PF PF is included in the basic &os; install for versions newer than 5.3 as a separate run time loadable module. The system will dynamically load the PF kernel loadable module when the rc.conf statement pf_enable="YES" is used. The loadable module was created with &man.pflog.4; logging enabled. Kernel options kernel options device pf kernel options device pflog kernel options device pfsync It is not a mandatory requirement that you enable PF by compiling the following options into the &os; kernel. It is only presented here as background information. Compiling PF into the kernel causes the loadable module to never be used. Sample kernel config PF option statements are in the /usr/src/sys/conf/NOTES kernel source and are reproduced here: device pf device pflog device pfsync device pf enables support for the Packet Filter firewall. device pflog enables the optional &man.pflog.4; pseudo network device which can be used to log traffic to a &man.bpf.4; descriptor. The &man.pflogd.8; daemon can be used to store the logging information to disk. device pfsync enables the optional &man.pfsync.4; pseudo network device that is used to monitor state changes. As this is not part of the loadable module one has to build a custom kernel to use it. These settings will take effect only after you have built and installed a kernel with them set. Available rc.conf Options You need the following statements in /etc/rc.conf to activate PF at boot time: pf_enable="YES" # Enable PF (load module if required) pf_rules="/etc/pf.conf" # rules definition file for pf pf_flags="" # additional flags for pfctl startup pflog_enable="YES" # start pflogd(8) pflog_logfile="/var/log/pflog" # where pflogd should store the logfile pflog_flags="" # additional flags for pflogd startup If you have a LAN behind this firewall and have to forward packets for the computers in the LAN or want to do NAT, you have to enable the following option as well: gateway_enable="YES" # Enable as Lan gateway The IPFILTER (IPF) Firewall firewall IPFILTER The author of IPFILTER is Darren Reed. IPFILTER is not operating system dependent: it is an open source application and has been ported to &os;, NetBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS, HP/UX, and Solaris operating systems. IPFILTER is actively being supported and maintained, with updated versions being released regularly. IPFILTER is based on a kernel-side firewall and NAT mechanism that can be controlled and monitored by userland interface programs. The firewall rules can be set or deleted with the &man.ipf.8; utility. The NAT rules can be set or deleted with the &man.ipnat.1; utility. The &man.ipfstat.8; utility can print run-time statistics for the kernel parts of IPFILTER. The &man.ipmon.8; program can log IPFILTER actions to the system log files. IPF was originally written using a rule processing logic of the last matching rule wins and used only stateless type of rules. Over time IPF has been enhanced to include a quick option and a stateful keep state option which drastically modernized the rules processing logic. IPF's official documentation covers the legacy rule coding parameters and the legacy rule file processing logic. The modernized functions are only included as additional options, completely understating their benefits in producing a far superior secure firewall. The instructions contained in this section are based on using rules that contain the quick option and the stateful keep state option. This is the basic framework for coding an inclusive firewall rule set. An inclusive firewall only allows packets matching the rules to pass through. This way you can control what services can originate behind the firewall destined for the public Internet and also control the services which can originate from the public Internet accessing your private network. Everything else is blocked and logged by default design. Inclusive firewalls are much, much more secure than exclusive firewall rule sets and is the only rule set type covered herein. For detailed explanation of the legacy rules processing method see: and . The IPF FAQ is at . Enabling IPF IPFILTER enabling IPF is included in the basic &os; install as a separate run time loadable module. The system will dynamically load the IPF kernel loadable module when the rc.conf statement ipfilter_enable="YES" is used. The loadable module was created with logging enabled and the default pass all options. You do not need to compile IPF into the &os; kernel just to change the default to block all, you can do that by just coding a block all rule at the end of your rule set. Kernel options kernel options IPFILTER kernel options IPFILTER_LOG kernel options IPFILTER_DEFAULT_BLOCK IPFILTER kernel options It is not a mandatory requirement that you enable IPF by compiling the following options into the &os; kernel. It is only presented here as background information. Compiling IPF into the kernel causes the loadable module to never be used. Sample kernel config IPF option statements are in the /usr/src/sys/conf/NOTES kernel source (/usr/src/sys/arch/conf/LINT for &os; 4.X) and are reproduced here: options IPFILTER options IPFILTER_LOG options IPFILTER_DEFAULT_BLOCK options IPFILTER enables support for the IPFILTER firewall. options IPFILTER_LOG enables the option to have IPF log traffic by writing to the ipl packet logging pseudo—device for every rule that has the log keyword. options IPFILTER_DEFAULT_BLOCK changes the default behavior so any packet not matching a firewall pass rule gets blocked. These settings will take effect only after you have built and installed a kernel with them set. Available rc.conf Options You need the following statements in /etc/rc.conf to activate IPF at boot time: ipfilter_enable="YES" # Start ipf firewall ipfilter_rules="/etc/ipf.rules" # loads rules definition text file ipmon_enable="YES" # Start IP monitor log ipmon_flags="-Ds" # D = start as daemon # s = log to syslog # v = log tcp window, ack, seq # n = map IP & port to names If you have a LAN behind this firewall that uses the reserved private IP address ranges, then you need to add the following to enable NAT functionality: gateway_enable="YES" # Enable as Lan gateway ipnat_enable="YES" # Start ipnat function ipnat_rules="/etc/ipnat.rules" # rules definition file for ipnat IPF ipf The ipf command is used to load your rules file. Normally you create a file containing your custom rules and use this command to replace in mass the currently running firewall internal rules: &prompt.root; ipf -Fa -f /etc/ipf.rules means flush all internal rules tables. means this is the file to read for the rules to load. This gives you the ability to make changes to your custom rules file, run the above IPF command, and thus update the running firewall with a fresh copy of all the rules without having to reboot the system. This method is very convenient for testing new rules as the procedure can be executed as many times as needed. See the &man.ipf.8; manual page for details on the other flags available with this command. The &man.ipf.8; command expects the rules file to be a standard text file. It will not accept a rules file written as a script with symbolic substitution. There is a way to build IPF rules that utilizes the power of script symbolic substitution. For more information, see . IPFSTAT ipfstat IPFILTER statistics The default behavior of &man.ipfstat.8; is to retrieve and display the totals of the accumulated statistics gathered as a result of applying the user coded rules against packets going in and out of the firewall since it was last started, or since the last time the accumulators were reset to zero by the ipf -Z command. See the &man.ipfstat.8; manual page for details. The default &man.ipfstat.8; command output will look something like this: input packets: blocked 99286 passed 1255609 nomatch 14686 counted 0 output packets: blocked 4200 passed 1284345 nomatch 14687 counted 0 input packets logged: blocked 99286 passed 0 output packets logged: blocked 0 passed 0 packets logged: input 0 output 0 log failures: input 3898 output 0 fragment state(in): kept 0 lost 0 fragment state(out): kept 0 lost 0 packet state(in): kept 169364 lost 0 packet state(out): kept 431395 lost 0 ICMP replies: 0 TCP RSTs sent: 0 Result cache hits(in): 1215208 (out): 1098963 IN Pullups succeeded: 2 failed: 0 OUT Pullups succeeded: 0 failed: 0 Fastroute successes: 0 failures: 0 TCP cksum fails(in): 0 (out): 0 Packet log flags set: (0) When supplied with either for inbound or for outbound, it will retrieve and display the appropriate list of filter rules currently installed and in use by the kernel. ipfstat -in displays the inbound internal rules table with rule number. ipfstat -on displays the outbound internal rules table with the rule number. The output will look something like this: @1 pass out on xl0 from any to any @2 block out on dc0 from any to any @3 pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp/udp from any to any keep state ipfstat -ih displays the inbound internal rules table, prefixing each rule with a count of how many times the rule was matched. ipfstat -oh displays the outbound internal rules table, prefixing each rule with a count of how many times the rule was matched. The output will look something like this: 2451423 pass out on xl0 from any to any 354727 block out on dc0 from any to any 430918 pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp/udp from any to any keep state One of the most important functions of the ipfstat command is the flag which displays the state table in a way similar to the way &man.top.1; shows the &os; running process table. When your firewall is under attack this function gives you the ability to identify, drill down to, and see the attacking packets. The optional sub-flags give the ability to select the destination or source IP, port, or protocol that you want to monitor in real time. See the &man.ipfstat.8; manual page for details. IPMON ipmon IPFILTER logging In order for ipmon to work properly, the kernel option IPFILTER_LOG must be turned on. This command has two different modes that it can be used in. Native mode is the default mode when you type the command on the command line without the flag. Daemon mode is for when you want to have a continuous system log file available so that you can review logging of past events. This is how &os; and IPFILTER are configured to work together. &os; has a built in facility to automatically rotate system logs. That is why outputting the log information to syslogd is better than the default of outputting to a regular file. In the default rc.conf file you see the ipmon_flags statement uses the flags: ipmon_flags="-Ds" # D = start as daemon # s = log to syslog # v = log tcp window, ack, seq # n = map IP & port to names The benefits of logging are obvious. It provides the ability to review, after the fact, information such as which packets had been dropped, what addresses they came from and where they were going. These all give you a significant edge in tracking down attackers. Even with the logging facility enabled, IPF will not generate any rule logging on its own. The firewall administrator decides what rules in the rule set he wants to log and adds the log keyword to those rules. Normally only deny rules are logged. It is very customary to include a default deny everything rule with the log keyword included as your last rule in the rule set. This way you get to see all the packets that did not match any of the rules in the rule set. IPMON Logging Syslogd uses its own special method for segregation of log data. It uses special groupings called facility and level. IPMON in mode uses local0 as the facility name. All IPMON logged data goes to local0. The following levels can be used to further segregate the logged data if desired: LOG_INFO - packets logged using the "log" keyword as the action rather than pass or block. LOG_NOTICE - packets logged which are also passed LOG_WARNING - packets logged which are also blocked LOG_ERR - packets which have been logged and which can be considered short To setup IPFILTER to log all data to /var/log/ipfilter.log, you will need to create the file. The following command will do that: &prompt.root; touch /var/log/ipfilter.log The syslog function is controlled by definition statements in the /etc/syslog.conf file. The syslog.conf file offers considerable flexibility in how syslog will deal with system messages issued by software applications like IPF. Add the following statement to /etc/syslog.conf: local0.* /var/log/ipfilter.log The local0.* means to write all the logged messages to the coded file location. To activate the changes to /etc/syslog.conf you can reboot or bump the syslog task into re-reading /etc/syslog.conf by running /etc/rc.d/syslogd reload (killall -HUP syslogd in &os; 4.X). Do not forget to change /etc/newsyslog.conf to rotate the new log you just created above. The Format of Logged Messages Messages generated by ipmon consist of data fields separated by white space. Fields common to all messages are: The date of packet receipt. The time of packet receipt. This is in the form HH:MM:SS.F, for hours, minutes, seconds, and fractions of a second (which can be several digits long). The name of the interface the packet was processed on, e.g. dc0. The group and rule number of the rule, e.g. @0:17. These can be viewed with ipfstat -in. The action: p for passed, b for blocked, S for a short packet, n did not match any rules, L for a log rule. The order of precedence in showing flags is: S, p, b, n, L. A capital P or B means that the packet has been logged due to a global logging setting, not a particular rule. The addresses. This is actually three fields: the source address and port (separated by a comma), the -> symbol, and the destination address and port. 209.53.17.22,80 -> 198.73.220.17,1722. PR followed by the protocol name or number, e.g. PR tcp. len followed by the header length and total length of the packet, e.g. len 20 40. If the packet is a TCP packet, there will be an additional field starting with a hyphen followed by letters corresponding to any flags that were set. See the &man.ipmon.8; manual page for a list of letters and their flags. If the packet is an ICMP packet, there will be two fields at the end, the first always being ICMP, and the next being the ICMP message and sub-message type, separated by a slash, e.g. ICMP 3/3 for a port unreachable message. Building the Rule Script with Symbolic Substitution Some experienced IPF users create a file containing the rules and code them in a manner compatible with running them as a script with symbolic substitution. The major benefit of doing this is that you only have to change the value associated with the symbolic name and when the script is run all the rules containing the symbolic name will have the value substituted in the rules. Being a script, you can use symbolic substitution to code frequently used values and substitute them in multiple rules. You will see this in the following example. The script syntax used here is compatible with the sh, csh, and tcsh shells. Symbolic substitution fields are prefixed with a dollar sign: $. Symbolic fields do not have the $ prefix. The value to populate the symbolic field must be enclosed with double quotes ("). Start your rule file with something like this: ############# Start of IPF rules script ######################## oif="dc0" # name of the outbound interface odns="192.0.2.11" # ISP's DNS server IP address myip="192.0.2.7" # my static IP address from ISP ks="keep state" fks="flags S keep state" # You can choose between building /etc/ipf.rules file # from this script or running this script "as is". # # Uncomment only one line and comment out another. # # 1) This can be used for building /etc/ipf.rules: #cat > /etc/ipf.rules << EOF # # 2) This can be used to run script "as is": /sbin/ipf -Fa -f - << EOF # Allow out access to my ISP's Domain name server. pass out quick on $oif proto tcp from any to $odns port = 53 $fks pass out quick on $oif proto udp from any to $odns port = 53 $ks # Allow out non-secure standard www function pass out quick on $oif proto tcp from $myip to any port = 80 $fks # Allow out secure www function https over TLS SSL pass out quick on $oif proto tcp from $myip to any port = 443 $fks EOF ################## End of IPF rules script ######################## That is all there is to it. The rules are not important in this example; how the symbolic substitution fields are populated and used are. If the above example was in a file named /etc/ipf.rules.script, you could reload these rules by entering the following command: &prompt.root; sh /etc/ipf.rules.script There is one problem with using a rules file with embedded symbolics: IPF does not understand symbolic substitution, and cannot read such scripts directly. This script can be used in one of two ways: Uncomment the line that begins with cat, and comment out the line that begins with /sbin/ipf. Place ipfilter_enable="YES" into /etc/rc.conf as usual, and run script once after each modification to create or update /etc/ipf.rules. Disable IPFILTER in system startup scripts by adding ipfilter_enable="NO" (this is default value) into /etc/rc.conf file. Add a script like the following to your /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ startup directory. The script should have an obvious name like ipf.loadrules.sh. The .sh extension is mandatory. #!/bin/sh sh /etc/ipf.rules.script The permissions on this script file must be read, write, execute for owner root. &prompt.root; chmod 700 /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ipf.loadrules.sh Now, when your system boots, your IPF rules will be loaded. IPF Rule Sets A rule set is a group of ipf rules coded to pass or block packets based on the values contained in the packet. The bi-directional exchange of packets between hosts comprises a session conversation. The firewall rule set processes the packet two times, once on its arrival from the public Internet host and again as it leaves for its return trip back to the public Internet host. Each TCP/IP service (i.e. telnet, www, mail, etc.) is predefined by its protocol, source and destination IP address, or the source and destination port number. This is the basic selection criteria used to create rules which will pass or block services. IPFILTER rule processing order IPF was originally written using a rules processing logic of the last matching rule wins and used only stateless rules. Over time IPF has been enhanced to include a quick option and a stateful keep state option which drastically modernized the rule processing logic. The instructions contained in this section are based on using rules that contain the quick option and the stateful keep state option. This is the basic framework for coding an inclusive firewall rule set. An inclusive firewall only allows services matching the rules through. This way you can control what services can originate behind the firewall destined for the public Internet and also control the services which can originate from the public Internet accessing your private network. Everything else is blocked and logged by default design. Inclusive firewalls are much, much securer than exclusive firewall rule sets and is the only rule set type covered herein. When working with the firewall rules, be very careful. Some configurations will lock you out of the server. To be on the safe side, you may wish to consider performing the initial firewall configuration from the local console rather than doing it remotely e.g. via ssh. Rule Syntax IPFILTER rule syntax The rule syntax presented here has been simplified to only address the modern stateful rule context and first matching rule wins logic. For the complete legacy rule syntax description see the &man.ipf.8; manual page. A # character is used to mark the start of a comment and may appear at the end of a rule line or on its own line. Blank lines are ignored. Rules contain keywords. These keywords have to be coded in a specific order from left to right on the line. Keywords are identified in bold type. Some keywords have sub-options which may be keywords themselves and also include more sub-options. Each of the headings in the below syntax has a bold section header which expands on the content. ACTION IN-OUT OPTIONS SELECTION STATEFUL PROTO SRC_ADDR,DST_ADDR OBJECT PORT_NUM TCP_FLAG STATEFUL ACTION = block | pass IN-OUT = in | out OPTIONS = log | quick | on interface-name SELECTION = proto value | source/destination IP | port = number | flags flag-value PROTO = tcp/udp | udp | tcp | icmp SRC_ADD,DST_ADDR = all | from object to object OBJECT = IP address | any PORT_NUM = port number TCP_FLAG = S STATEFUL = keep state ACTION The action indicates what to do with the packet if it matches the rest of the filter rule. Each rule must have a action. The following actions are recognized: block indicates that the packet should be dropped if the selection parameters match the packet. pass indicates that the packet should exit the firewall if the selection parameters match the packet. IN-OUT A mandatory requirement is that each filter rule explicitly state which side of the I/O it is to be used on. The next keyword must be either in or out and one or the other has to be coded or the rule will not pass syntax checks. in means this rule is being applied against an inbound packet which has just been received on the interface facing the public Internet. out means this rule is being applied against an outbound packet destined for the interface facing the public Internet. OPTIONS These options must be used in the order shown here. log indicates that the packet header will be written to the ipl log (as described in the LOGGING section below) if the selection parameters match the packet. quick indicates that if the selection parameters match the packet, this rule will be the last rule checked, allowing a "short-circuit" path to avoid processing any following rules for this packet. This option is a mandatory requirement for the modernized rules processing logic. on indicates the interface name to be incorporated into the selection parameters. Interface names are as displayed by &man.ifconfig.8;. Using this option, the rule will only match if the packet is going through that interface in the specified direction (in/out). This option is a mandatory requirement for the modernized rules processing logic. When a packet is logged, the headers of the packet are written to the IPL packet logging pseudo-device. Immediately following the log keyword, the following qualifiers may be used (in this order): body indicates that the first 128 bytes of the packet contents will be logged after the headers. first If the log keyword is being used in conjunction with a keep state option, it is recommended that this option is also applied so that only the triggering packet is logged and not every packet which thereafter matches the keep state information. SELECTION The keywords described in this section are used to describe attributes of the packet to be interrogated when determining whether rules match or not. There is a keyword subject, and it has sub-option keywords, one of which has to be selected. The following general-purpose attributes are provided for matching, and must be used in this order: PROTO proto is the subject keyword and must be coded along with one of its corresponding keyword sub-option values. The value allows a specific protocol to be matched against. This option is a mandatory requirement for the modernized rules processing logic. tcp/udp | udp | tcp | icmp or any protocol names found in /etc/protocols are recognized and may be used. The special protocol keyword tcp/udp may be used to match either a TCP or a UDP packet, and has been added as a convenience to save duplication of otherwise identical rules. SRC_ADDR/DST_ADDR The all keyword is essentially a synonym for from any to any with no other match parameters. from src to dst: the from and to keywords are used to match against IP addresses. Rules must specify BOTH source and destination parameters. any is a special keyword that matches any IP address. Examples of use: from any to any or from 0.0.0.0/0 to any or from any to 0.0.0.0/0 or from 0.0.0.0 to any or from any to 0.0.0.0. IP addresses may be specified as a dotted IP address numeric form/mask-length, or as single dotted IP address numeric form. There is no way to match ranges of IP addresses which do not express themselves easily as mask-length. See this web page for help on writing mask-length: . PORT If a port match is included, for either or both of source and destination, then it is only applied to TCP and UDP packets. When composing port comparisons, either the service name from /etc/services or an integer port number may be used. When the port appears as part of the from object, it matches the source port number; when it appears as part of the to object, it matches the destination port number. The use of the port option with the to object is a mandatory requirement for the modernized rules processing logic. Example of use: from any to any port = 80 Port comparisons may be done in a number of forms, with a number of comparison operators, or port ranges may be specified. port "=" | "!=" | "<" | ">" | "<=" | ">=" | "eq" | "ne" | "lt" | "gt" | "le" | "ge". To specify port ranges, port "<>" | "><" Following the source and destination matching parameters, the following two parameters are mandatory requirements for the modernized rules processing logic. <acronym>TCP</acronym>_FLAG Flags are only effective for TCP filtering. The letters represents one of the possible flags that can be interrogated in the TCP packet header. The modernized rules processing logic uses the flags S parameter to identify the tcp session start request. STATEFUL keep state indicates that on a pass rule, any packets that match the rules selection parameters should activate the stateful filtering facility. This option is a mandatory requirement for the modernized rules processing logic. Stateful Filtering IPFILTER stateful filtering Stateful filtering treats traffic as a bi-directional exchange of packets comprising a session conversation. When activated, keep-state dynamically generates internal rules for each anticipated packet being exchanged during the bi-directional session conversation. It has the interrogation abilities to determine if the session conversation between the originating sender and the destination are following the valid procedure of bi-directional packet exchange. Any packets that do not properly fit the session conversation template are automatically rejected as impostors. Keep state will also allow ICMP packets related to a TCP or UDP session through. So if you get ICMP type 3 code 4 in response to some web surfing allowed out by a keep state rule, they will be automatically allowed in. Any packet that IPF can be certain is part of an active session, even if it is a different protocol, will be let in. What happens is: Packets destined to go out the interface connected to the public Internet are first checked against the dynamic state table, if the packet matches the next expected packet comprising in a active session conversation, then it exits the firewall and the state of the session conversation flow is updated in the dynamic state table, the remaining packets get checked against the outbound rule set. Packets coming in to the interface connected to the public Internet are first checked against the dynamic state table, if the packet matches the next expected packet comprising a active session conversation, then it exits the firewall and the state of the session conversation flow is updated in the dynamic state table, the remaining packets get checked against the inbound rule set. When the conversation completes it is removed from the dynamic state table. Stateful filtering allows you to focus on blocking/passing new sessions. If the new session is passed, all its subsequent packets will be allowed through automatically and any impostors automatically rejected. If a new session is blocked, none of its subsequent packets will be allowed through. Stateful filtering has technically advanced interrogation abilities capable of defending against the flood of different attack methods currently employed by attackers. Inclusive Rule Set Example The following rule set is an example of how to code a very secure inclusive type of firewall. An inclusive firewall only allows services matching pass rules through and blocks all other by default. All firewalls have at the minimum two interfaces which have to have rules to allow the firewall to function. All &unix; flavored systems including &os; are designed to use interface lo0 and IP address 127.0.0.1 for internal communication within the operating system. The firewall rules must contain rules to allow free unmolested movement of these special internally used packets. The interface which faces the public Internet is the one where you place your rules to authorize and control access out to the public Internet and access requests arriving from the public Internet. This can be your user PPP tun0 interface or your NIC that is connected to your DSL or cable modem. In cases where one or more NICs are cabled to private LANs behind the firewall, those interfaces must have a rule coded to allow free unmolested movement of packets originating from those LAN interfaces. The rules should be first organized into three major sections: all the free unmolested interfaces, the public interface outbound, and the public interface inbound. The rules in each of the public interface sections should have the most frequently matched rules placed before less commonly matched rules, with the last rule in the section blocking and logging all packets on that interface and direction. The Outbound section in the following rule set only contains 'pass' rules which contain selection values that uniquely identify the service that is authorized for public Internet access. All the rules have the 'quick', 'on', 'proto', 'port', and 'keep state' option coded. The 'proto tcp' rules have the 'flag' option included to identify the session start request as the triggering packet to activate the stateful facility. The Inbound section has all the blocking of undesirable packets first, for two different reasons. The first is that these things being blocked may be part of an otherwise valid packet which may be allowed in by the later authorized service rules. The second reason is that by having a rule that explicitly blocks selected packets that I receive on an infrequent basis and that I do not want to see in the log, they will not be caught by the last rule in the section which blocks and logs all packets which have fallen through the rules. The last rule in the section which blocks and logs all packets is how you create the legal evidence needed to prosecute the people who are attacking your system. Another thing you should take note of, is there is no response returned for any of the undesirable stuff, their packets just get dropped and vanish. This way the attacker has no knowledge if his packets have reached your system. The less the attackers can learn about your system the more secure it is. The inbound 'nmap OS fingerprint' attempts rule I log the first occurrence because this is something a attacker would do. Any time you see log messages on a rule with 'log first'. You should do an ipfstat -hio command to see the number of times the rule has been matched so you know if you are being flooded, i.e. under attack. When you log packets with port numbers you do not recognize, look it up in /etc/services or go to and do a port number lookup to find what the purpose of that port number is. Check out this link for port numbers used by Trojans . The following rule set is a complete very secure 'inclusive' type of firewall rule set that I have used on my system. You can not go wrong using this rule set for your own. Just comment out any pass rules for services that you do not want to authorize. If you see messages in your log that you want to stop seeing just add a block rule in the inbound section. You have to change the dc0 interface name in every rule to the interface name of the Nic card that connects your system to the public Internet. For user PPP it would be tun0. Add the following statements to /etc/ipf.rules: ################################################################# # No restrictions on Inside LAN Interface for private network # Not needed unless you have LAN ################################################################# #pass out quick on xl0 all #pass in quick on xl0 all ################################################################# # No restrictions on Loopback Interface ################################################################# pass in quick on lo0 all pass out quick on lo0 all ################################################################# # Interface facing Public Internet (Outbound Section) # Interrogate session start requests originating from behind the # firewall on the private network # or from this gateway server destine for the public Internet. ################################################################# # Allow out access to my ISP's Domain name server. # xxx must be the IP address of your ISP's DNS. # Dup these lines if your ISP has more than one DNS server # Get the IP addresses from /etc/resolv.conf file pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to xxx port = 53 flags S keep state pass out quick on dc0 proto udp from any to xxx port = 53 keep state # Allow out access to my ISP's DHCP server for cable or DSL networks. # This rule is not needed for 'user ppp' type connection to the # public Internet, so you can delete this whole group. # Use the following rule and check log for IP address. # Then put IP address in commented out rule & delete first rule pass out log quick on dc0 proto udp from any to any port = 67 keep state #pass out quick on dc0 proto udp from any to z.z.z.z port = 67 keep state # Allow out non-secure standard www function pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 80 flags S keep state # Allow out secure www function https over TLS SSL pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 443 flags S keep state # Allow out send & get email function pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 110 flags S keep state pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 25 flags S keep state # Allow out Time pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 37 flags S keep state # Allow out nntp news pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 119 flags S keep state # Allow out gateway & LAN users non-secure FTP ( both passive & active modes) # This function uses the IPNAT built in FTP proxy function coded in # the nat rules file to make this single rule function correctly. # If you want to use the pkg_add command to install application packages # on your gateway system you need this rule. pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 21 flags S keep state # Allow out secure FTP, Telnet, and SCP # This function is using SSH (secure shell) pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 22 flags S keep state # Allow out non-secure Telnet pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 23 flags S keep state # Allow out FBSD CVSUP function pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 5999 flags S keep state # Allow out ping to public Internet pass out quick on dc0 proto icmp from any to any icmp-type 8 keep state # Allow out whois for LAN PC to public Internet pass out quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 43 flags S keep state # Block and log only the first occurrence of everything # else that's trying to get out. # This rule enforces the block all by default logic. block out log first quick on dc0 all ################################################################# # Interface facing Public Internet (Inbound Section) # Interrogate packets originating from the public Internet # destine for this gateway server or the private network. ################################################################# # Block all inbound traffic from non-routable or reserved address spaces block in quick on dc0 from 192.168.0.0/16 to any #RFC 1918 private IP block in quick on dc0 from 172.16.0.0/12 to any #RFC 1918 private IP block in quick on dc0 from 10.0.0.0/8 to any #RFC 1918 private IP block in quick on dc0 from 127.0.0.0/8 to any #loopback block in quick on dc0 from 0.0.0.0/8 to any #loopback block in quick on dc0 from 169.254.0.0/16 to any #DHCP auto-config block in quick on dc0 from 192.0.2.0/24 to any #reserved for docs block in quick on dc0 from 204.152.64.0/23 to any #Sun cluster interconnect block in quick on dc0 from 224.0.0.0/3 to any #Class D & E multicast ##### Block a bunch of different nasty things. ############ -# That I don't want to see in the log +# That I do not want to see in the log # Block frags block in quick on dc0 all with frags # Block short tcp packets block in quick on dc0 proto tcp all with short # block source routed packets block in quick on dc0 all with opt lsrr block in quick on dc0 all with opt ssrr # Block nmap OS fingerprint attempts # Log first occurrence of these so I can get their IP address block in log first quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any flags FUP # Block anything with special options block in quick on dc0 all with ipopts # Block public pings block in quick on dc0 proto icmp all icmp-type 8 # Block ident block in quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 113 # Block all Netbios service. 137=name, 138=datagram, 139=session # Netbios is MS/Windows sharing services. # Block MS/Windows hosts2 name server requests 81 block in log first quick on dc0 proto tcp/udp from any to any port = 137 block in log first quick on dc0 proto tcp/udp from any to any port = 138 block in log first quick on dc0 proto tcp/udp from any to any port = 139 block in log first quick on dc0 proto tcp/udp from any to any port = 81 # Allow traffic in from ISP's DHCP server. This rule must contain # the IP address of your ISP's DHCP server as it's the only # authorized source to send this packet type. Only necessary for # cable or DSL configurations. This rule is not needed for # 'user ppp' type connection to the public Internet. # This is the same IP address you captured and # used in the outbound section. pass in quick on dc0 proto udp from z.z.z.z to any port = 68 keep state # Allow in standard www function because I have apache server pass in quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 80 flags S keep state # Allow in non-secure Telnet session from public Internet # labeled non-secure because ID/PW passed over public Internet as clear text. # Delete this sample group if you do not have telnet server enabled. #pass in quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 23 flags S keep state # Allow in secure FTP, Telnet, and SCP from public Internet # This function is using SSH (secure shell) pass in quick on dc0 proto tcp from any to any port = 22 flags S keep state # Block and log only first occurrence of all remaining traffic # coming into the firewall. The logging of only the first # occurrence stops a .denial of service. attack targeted # at filling up your log file space. # This rule enforces the block all by default logic. block in log first quick on dc0 all ################### End of rules file ##################################### <acronym>NAT</acronym> NAT IP masquerading NAT network address translation NAT NAT stands for Network Address Translation. To those familiar with Linux, this concept is called IP Masquerading; NAT and IP Masquerading are the same thing. One of the many things the IPF NAT function enables is the ability to have a private Local Area Network (LAN) behind the firewall sharing a single ISP assigned IP address on the public Internet. You may ask why would someone want to do this. ISPs normally assign a dynamic IP address to their non-commercial users. Dynamic means that the IP address can be different each time you dial in and log on to your ISP, or for cable and DSL modem users when you power off and then power on your modems you can get assigned a different IP address. This IP address is how you are known to the public Internet. Now lets say you have five PCs at home and each one needs Internet access. You would have to pay your ISP for an individual Internet account for each PC and have five phone lines. With NAT you only need a single account with your ISP, then cable your other four PCs to a switch and the switch to the NIC in your &os; system which is going to service your LAN as a gateway. NAT will automatically translate the private LAN IP address for each separate PC on the LAN to the single public IP address as it exits the firewall bound for the public Internet. It also does the reverse translation for returning packets. NAT is most often accomplished without the approval, or knowledge, of your ISP and in most cases is grounds for your ISP terminating your account if found out. Commercial users pay a lot more for their Internet connection and usually get assigned a block of static IP address which never change. The ISP also expects and consents to their Commercial customers using NAT for their internal private LANs. There is a special range of IP addresses reserved for NATed private LAN IP address. According to RFC 1918, you can use the following IP ranges for private nets which will never be routed directly to the public Internet: Start IP 10.0.0.0 - Ending IP 10.255.255.255 Start IP 172.16.0.0 - Ending IP 172.31.255.255 Start IP 192.168.0.0 - Ending IP 192.168.255.255 IP<acronym>NAT</acronym> NAT and IPFILTER ipnat NAT rules are loaded by using the ipnat command. Typically the NAT rules are stored in /etc/ipnat.rules. See &man.ipnat.1; for details. When changing the NAT rules after NAT has been started, make your changes to the file containing the NAT rules, then run ipnat command with the flags to delete the internal in use NAT rules and flush the contents of the translation table of all active entries. To reload the NAT rules issue a command like this: &prompt.root; ipnat -CF -f /etc/ipnat.rules To display some statistics about your NAT, use this command: &prompt.root; ipnat -s To list the NAT table's current mappings, use this command: &prompt.root; ipnat -l To turn verbose mode on, and display information relating to rule processing and active rules/table entries: &prompt.root; ipnat -v IP<acronym>NAT</acronym> Rules NAT rules are very flexible and can accomplish many different things to fit the needs of commercial and home users. The rule syntax presented here has been simplified to what is most commonly used in a non-commercial environment. For a complete rule syntax description see the &man.ipnat.5; manual page. The syntax for a NAT rule looks something like this: map IF LAN_IP_RANGE -> PUBLIC_ADDRESS The keyword map starts the rule. Replace IF with the external interface. The LAN_IP_RANGE is what your internal clients use for IP Addressing, usually this is something like 192.168.1.0/24. The PUBLIC_ADDRESS can either be the external IP address or the special keyword 0/32, which means to use the IP address assigned to IF. How <acronym>NAT</acronym> works A packet arrives at the firewall from the LAN with a public destination. It passes through the outbound filter rules, NAT gets his turn at the packet and applies its rules top down, first matching rule wins. NAT tests each of its rules against the packets interface name and source IP address. When a packets interface name matches a NAT rule then the [source IP address, i.e. private Lan IP address] of the packet is checked to see if it falls within the IP address range specified to the left of the arrow symbol on the NAT rule. On a match the packet has its source IP address rewritten with the public IP address obtained by the 0/32 keyword. NAT posts a entry in its internal NAT table so when the packet returns from the public Internet it can be mapped back to its original private IP address and then passed to the filter rules for processing. Enabling IP<acronym>NAT</acronym> To enable IPNAT add these statements to /etc/rc.conf. To enable your machine to route traffic between interfaces: gateway_enable="YES" To start IPNAT automatically each time: ipnat_enable="YES" To specify where to load the IPNAT rules from: ipnat_rules="/etc/ipnat.rules" <acronym>NAT</acronym> for a very large LAN For networks that have large numbers of PC's on the LAN or networks with more than a single LAN, the process of funneling all those private IP addresses into a single public IP address becomes a resource problem that may cause problems with the same port numbers being used many times across many NATed LAN PC's, causing collisions. There are two ways to relieve this resource problem. Assigning Ports to Use A normal NAT rule would look like: map dc0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 0/32 In the above rule the packet's source port is unchanged as the packet passes through IPNAT. By adding the portmap keyword you can tell IPNAT to only use source ports in a range. For example the following rule will tell IPNAT to modify the source port to be within that range: map dc0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 0/32 portmap tcp/udp 20000:60000 Additionally we can make things even easier by using the auto keyword to tell IPNAT to determine by itself which ports are available to use: map dc0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 0/32 portmap tcp/udp auto Using a pool of public addresses In very large LANs there comes a point where there are just too many LAN addresses to fit into a single public address. By changing the following rule: map dc0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 204.134.75.1 Currently this rule maps all connections through 204.134.75.1. This can be changed to specify a range: map dc0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 204.134.75.1-10 Or a subnet using CIDR notation such as: map dc0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 204.134.75.0/24 Port Redirection A very common practice is to have a web server, email server, database server and DNS server each segregated to a different PC on the LAN. In this case the traffic from these servers still have to be NATed, but there has to be some way to direct the inbound traffic to the correct LAN PCs. IPNAT has the redirection facilities of NAT to solve this problem. Lets say you have your web server on LAN address 10.0.10.25 and your single public IP address is 20.20.20.5 you would code the rule like this: map dc0 20.20.20.5/32 port 80 -> 10.0.10.25 port 80 or: map dc0 0/32 port 80 -> 10.0.10.25 port 80 or for a LAN DNS Server on LAN address of 10.0.10.33 that needs to receive public DNS requests: map dc0 20.20.20.5/32 port 53 -> 10.0.10.33 port 53 udp FTP and <acronym>NAT</acronym> FTP is a dinosaur left over from the time before the Internet as it is known today, when research universities were leased lined together and FTP was used to share files among research Scientists. This was a time when data security was not a consideration. Over the years the FTP protocol became buried into the backbone of the emerging Internet and its username and password being sent in clear text was never changed to address new security concerns. FTP has two flavors, it can run in active mode or passive mode. The difference is in how the data channel is acquired. Passive mode is more secure as the data channel is acquired be the ordinal ftp session requester. For a real good explanation of FTP and the different modes see . IP<acronym>NAT</acronym> Rules IPNAT has a special built in FTP proxy option which can be specified on the NAT map rule. It can monitor all outbound packet traffic for FTP active or passive start session requests and dynamically create temporary filter rules containing only the port number really in use for the data channel. This eliminates the security risk FTP normally exposes the firewall to from having large ranges of high order port numbers open. This rule will handle all the traffic for the internal LAN: map dc0 10.0.10.0/29 -> 0/32 proxy port 21 ftp/tcp This rule handles the FTP traffic from the gateway: map dc0 0.0.0.0/0 -> 0/32 proxy port 21 ftp/tcp This rule handles all non-FTP traffic from the internal LAN: map dc0 10.0.10.0/29 -> 0/32 The FTP map rule goes before our regular map rule. All packets are tested against the first rule from the top. Matches on interface name, then private LAN source IP address, and then is it a FTP packet. If all that matches then the special FTP proxy creates temp filter rules to let the FTP session packets pass in and out, in addition to also NATing the FTP packets. All LAN packets that are not FTP do not match the first rule and fall through to the third rule and are tested, matching on interface and source IP, then are NATed. IP<acronym>NAT</acronym> FTP Filter Rules Only one filter rule is needed for FTP if the NAT FTP proxy is used. Without the FTP Proxy you will need the following three rules: # Allow out LAN PC client FTP to public Internet # Active and passive modes pass out quick on rl0 proto tcp from any to any port = 21 flags S keep state # Allow out passive mode data channel high order port numbers pass out quick on rl0 proto tcp from any to any port > 1024 flags S keep state # Active mode let data channel in from FTP server pass in quick on rl0 proto tcp from any to any port = 20 flags S keep state FTP <acronym>NAT</acronym> Proxy Bug As of &os; 4.9 which includes IPFILTER version 3.4.31 the FTP proxy works as documented during the FTP session until the session is told to close. When the close happens packets returning from the remote FTP server are blocked and logged coming in on port 21. The NAT FTP/proxy appears to remove its temp rules prematurely, before receiving the response from the remote FTP server acknowledging the close. A problem report was posted to the IPF mailing list. The solution is to add a filter rule to get rid of these unwanted log messages or do nothing and ignore FTP inbound error messages in your log. Most people do not use outbound FTP too often. block in quick on rl0 proto tcp from any to any port = 21 IPFW firewall IPFW The IPFIREWALL (IPFW) is a &os; sponsored firewall software application authored and maintained by &os; volunteer staff members. It uses the legacy stateless rules and a legacy rule coding technique to achieve what is referred to as Simple Stateful logic. The IPFW stateless rule syntax is empowered with technically sophisticated selection capabilities which far surpasses the knowledge level of the customary firewall installer. IPFW is targeted at the professional user or the advanced technical computer hobbyist who have advanced packet selection requirements. A high degree of detailed knowledge into how different protocols use and create their unique packet header information is necessary before the power of the IPFW rules can be unleashed. Providing that level of explanation is out of the scope of this section of the handbook. IPFW is composed of seven components, the primary component is the kernel firewall filter rule processor and its integrated packet accounting facility, the logging facility, the 'divert' rule which triggers the NAT facility, and the advanced special purpose facilities, the dummynet traffic shaper facilities, the 'fwd rule' forward facility, the bridge facility, and the ipstealth facility. Enabling IPFW IPFW enabling IPFW is included in the basic &os; install as a separate run time loadable module. The system will dynamically load the kernel module when the rc.conf statement firewall_enable="YES" is used. You do not need to compile IPFW into the &os; kernel unless you want NAT function enabled. After rebooting your system with firewall_enable="YES" in rc.conf the following white highlighted message is displayed on the screen as part of the boot process: IP packet filtering initialized, divert disabled, rule-based forwarding enabled, default to deny, logging disabled You can disregard this message as it is out dated and no longer is the true status of the IPFW loadable module. The loadable module really does have logging ability compiled in. To set the verbose logging limit, There is a knob you can set in /etc/sysctl.conf by adding this statement, logging will be enabled on future reboots. net.inet.ip.fw.verbose_limit=5 Kernel Options kernel options IPFIREWALL kernel options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE kernel options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT IPFW kernel options It is not a mandatory requirement that you enable IPFW by compiling the following options into the &os; kernel unless you need NAT function. It is presented here as background information. options IPFIREWALL This option enables IPFW as part of the kernel options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE Enables logging of packets that pass through IPFW and have the 'log' keyword specified in the rule set. options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT=5 This specifies the default number of packets from a particular rule is to be logged. Without this option, each repeated occurrences of the same packet will be logged, and eventually consuming all the free disk space resulting in services being denied do to lack of resources. The number 5 is the number of consecutive times to log evidence of this unique occurrence. kernel options IPFIREWALL_DEFAULT_TO_ACCEPT options IPFIREWALL_DEFAULT_TO_ACCEPT This option will allow everything to pass through the firewall by default, which is a good idea when you are first setting up your firewall. options IPV6FIREWALL options IPV6FIREWALL_VERBOSE options IPV6FIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT options IPV6FIREWALL_DEFAULT_TO_ACCEPT These options are exactly the same as the IPv4 options but they are for IPv6. If you do not use IPv6 you might want to use IPV6FIREWALL without any rules to block all IPv6 kernel options IPDIVERT options IPDIVERT This enables the use of NAT functionality. If you do not include IPFIREWALL_DEFAULT_TO_ACCEPT or set your rules to allow incoming packets you will block all packets going to and from this machine. <filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename> Options If you do not have IPFW compiled into your kernel you will need to load it with the following statement in your /etc/rc.conf: firewall_enable="YES" Set the script to run to activate your rules: firewall_script="/etc/ipfw.rules" Enable logging: firewall_logging="YES" The IPFW Command ipfw The ipfw command is the normal vehicle for making manual single rule additions or deletions to the firewall active internal rules while it is running. The problem with using this method is once your system is shutdown or halted all the rules you added or changed or deleted are lost. Writing all your rules in a file and using that file to load the rules at boot time, or to replace in mass the currently running firewall rules with changes you made to the files content is the recommended method used here. The ipfw command is still a very useful to display the running firewall rules to the console screen. The IPFW accounting facility dynamically creates a counter for each rule that counts each packet that matches the rule. During the process of testing a rule, listing the rule with its counter is the only way of determining if the rule is functioning. To list all the rules in sequence: &prompt.root; ipfw list To list all the rules with a time stamp of when the last time the rule was matched: &prompt.root; ipfw -t list To list the accounting information, packet count for matched rules along with the rules themselves. The first column is the rule number, followed by the number of outgoing matched packets, followed by the number of incoming matched packets, and then the rule itself. &prompt.root; ipfw -a list List the dynamic rules in addition to the static rules: &prompt.root; ipfw -d list Also show the expired dynamic rules: &prompt.root; ipfw -d -e list Zero the counters: &prompt.root; ipfw zero Zero the counters for just rule NUM : &prompt.root; ipfw zero NUM IPFW Rule Sets A rule set is a group of ipfw rules coded to allow or deny packets based on the values contained in the packet. The bi-directional exchange of packets between hosts comprises a session conversation. The firewall rule set processes the packet twice: once on its arrival from the public Internet host and again as it leaves for its return trip back to the public Internet host. Each tcp/ip service (i.e. telnet, www, mail, etc.) is predefined by its protocol, and port number. This is the basic selection criteria used to create rules which will allow or deny services. IPFW rule processing order When a packet enters the firewall it is compared against the first rule in the rule set and progress one rule at a time moving from top to bottom of the set in ascending rule number sequence order. When the packet matches a rule selection parameters, the rules action field value is executed and the search of the rule set terminates for that packet. This is referred to as the first match wins search method. If the packet does not match any of the rules, it gets caught by the mandatory ipfw default rule, number 65535 which denies all packets and discards them without any reply back to the originating destination. The instructions contained here are based on using rules that contain the stateful 'keep state', 'limit', 'in'/'out', and via options. This is the basic framework for coding an inclusive type firewall rule set. An inclusive firewall only allows services matching the rules through. This way you can control what services can originate behind the firewall destine for the public Internet and also control the services which can originate from the public Internet accessing your private network. Everything else is denied by default design. Inclusive firewalls are much, much more secure than exclusive firewall rule sets and is the only rule set type covered here in. When working with the firewall rules be careful, you can end up locking your self out. Rule Syntax IPFW rule syntax The rule syntax presented here has been simplified to what is necessary to create a standard inclusive type firewall rule set. For a complete rule syntax description see the &man.ipfw.8; manual page. Rules contain keywords: these keywords have to be coded in a specific order from left to right on the line. Keywords are identified in bold type. Some keywords have sub-options which may be keywords them selves and also include more sub-options. # is used to mark the start of a comment and may appear at the end of a rule line or on its own lines. Blank lines are ignored. CMD RULE# ACTION LOGGING SELECTION STATEFUL CMD Each rule has to be prefixed with 'add' to add the rule to the internal table. RULE# Each rule has to have a rule number to go with it. ACTION A rule can be associated with one of the following actions, which will be executed when the packet matches the selection criterion of the rule. allow | accept | pass | permit These all mean the same thing which is to allow packets that match the rule to exit the firewall rule processing. The search terminates at this rule. check-state Checks the packet against the dynamic rules table. If a match is found, execute the action associated with the rule which generated this dynamic rule, otherwise move to the next rule. The check-state rule does not have selection criterion. If no check-state rule is present in the rule set, the dynamic rules table is checked at the first keep-state or limit rule. deny | drop Both words mean the same thing which is to discard packets that match this rule. The search terminates. Logging log or logamount When a packet matches a rule with the log keyword, a message will be logged to syslogd with a facility name of SECURITY. The logging only occurs if the number of packets logged so far for that particular rule does not exceed the logamount parameter. If no logamount is specified, the limit is taken from the sysctl variable net.inet.ip.fw.verbose_limit. In both cases, a value of zero removes the logging limit. Once the limit is reached, logging can be re-enabled by clearing the logging counter or the packet counter for that rule, see the ipfw reset log command. Note: logging is done after all other packet matching conditions have been successfully verified, and before performing the final action (accept, deny) on the packet. It is up to you to decide which rules you want to enable logging on. Selection The keywords described in this section are used to describe attributes of the packet to be interrogated when determining whether rules match the packet or not. The following general-purpose attributes are provided for matching, and must be used in this order: udp | tcp | icmp or any protocol names found in /etc/protocols are recognized and may be used. The value specified is protocol to be matched against. This is a mandatory requirement. from src to dst The from and to keywords are used to match against IP addresses. Rules must specify BOTH source and destination parameters. any is a special keyword that matches any IP address. me is a special keyword that matches any IP address configured on an interface in your &os; system to represent the PC the firewall is running on (i.e. this box) as in 'from me to any' or 'from any to me' or 'from 0.0.0.0/0 to any' or 'from any to 0.0.0.0/0' or 'from 0.0.0.0 to any' or 'from any to 0.0.0.0' or 'from me to 0.0.0.0'. IP addresses are specified as a dotted IP address numeric form/mask-length, or as single dotted IP address numeric form. This is a mandatory requirement. See this link for help on writing mask-lengths. port number For protocols which support port numbers (such as TCP and UDP). It is mandatory that you code the port number of the service you want to match on. Service names (from /etc/services) may be used instead of numeric port values. in | out Matches incoming or outgoing packets, respectively. The in and out are keywords and it is mandatory that you code one or the other as part of your rule matching criterion. via IF Matches packets going through the interface specified by exact name. The via keyword causes the interface to always be checked as part of the match process. setup This is a mandatory keyword that identifies the session start request for TCP packets. keep-state This is a mandatory> keyword. Upon a match, the firewall will create a dynamic rule, whose default behavior is to match bidirectional traffic between source and destination IP/port using the same protocol. limit {src-addr | src-port | dst-addr | dst-port} The firewall will only allow N connections with the same set of parameters as specified in the rule. One or more of source and destination addresses and ports can be specified. The 'limit' and 'keep-state' can not be used on same rule. Limit provides the same stateful function as 'keep-state' plus its own functions. Stateful Rule Option IPFW stateful filtering Stateful filtering treats traffic as a bi-directional exchange of packets comprising a session conversation. It has the interrogation abilities to determine if the session conversation between the originating sender and the destination are following the valid procedure of bi-directional packet exchange. Any packets that do not properly fit the session conversation template are automatically rejected as impostors. 'check-state' is used to identify where in the IPFW rules set the packet is to be tested against the dynamic rules facility. On a match the packet exits the firewall to continue on its way and a new rule is dynamic created for the next anticipated packet being exchanged during this bi-directional session conversation. On a no match the packet advances to the next rule in the rule set for testing. The dynamic rules facility is vulnerable to resource depletion from a SYN-flood attack which would open a huge number of dynamic rules. To counter this attack, &os; version 4.5 added another new option named limit. This option is used to limit the number of simultaneous session conversations by interrogating the rules source or destinations fields as directed by the limit option and using the packet's IP address found there, in a search of the open dynamic rules counting the number of times this rule and IP address combination occurred, if this count is greater that the value specified on the limit option, the packet is discarded. Logging Firewall Messages IPFW logging The benefits of logging are obvious: it provides the ability to review after the fact the rules you activated logging on which provides information like, what packets had been dropped, what addresses they came from, where they were going, giving you a significant edge in tracking down attackers. Even with the logging facility enabled, IPFW will not generate any rule logging on it's own. The firewall administrator decides what rules in the rule set he wants to log and adds the log verb to those rules. Normally only deny rules are logged, like the deny rule for incoming ICMP pings. It is very customary to duplicate the ipfw default deny everything rule with the log verb included as your last rule in the rule set. This way you get to see all the packets that did not match any of the rules in the rule set. Logging is a two edged sword, if you are not careful, you can lose yourself in the over abundance of log data and fill your disk up with growing log files. DoS attacks that fill up disk drives is one of the oldest attacks around. These log message are not only written to syslogd, but also are displayed on the root console screen and soon become very annoying. The IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT=5 kernel option limits the number of consecutive messages sent to the system logger syslogd, concerning the packet matching of a given rule. When this option is enabled in the kernel, the number of consecutive messages concerning a particular rule is capped at the number specified. There is nothing to be gained from 200 log messages saying the same identical thing. For instance, five consecutive messages concerning a particular rule would be logged to syslogd, the remainder identical consecutive messages would be counted and posted to the syslogd with a phrase like this: last message repeated 45 times All logged packets messages are written by default to /var/log/security file, which is defined in the /etc/syslog.conf file. Building a Rule Script Most experienced IPFW users create a file containing the rules and code them in a manner compatible with running them as a script. The major benefit of doing this is the firewall rules can be refreshed in mass without the need of rebooting the system to activate the new rules. This method is very convenient in testing new rules as the procedure can be executed as many times as needed. Being a script, you can use symbolic substitution to code frequent used values and substitution them in multiple rules. You will see this in the following example. The script syntax used here is compatible with the 'sh', 'csh', 'tcsh' shells. Symbolic substitution fields are prefixed with a dollar sign $. Symbolic fields do not have the $ prefix. The value to populate the Symbolic field must be enclosed to "double quotes". Start your rules file like this: ############### start of example ipfw rules script ############# # ipfw -q -f flush # Delete all rules # Set defaults oif="tun0" # out interface odns="192.0.2.11" # ISP's DNS server IP address cmd="ipfw -q add " # build rule prefix ks="keep-state" # just too lazy to key this each time $cmd 00500 check-state $cmd 00502 deny all from any to any frag $cmd 00501 deny tcp from any to any established $cmd 00600 allow tcp from any to any 80 out via $oif setup $ks $cmd 00610 allow tcp from any to $odns 53 out via $oif setup $ks $cmd 00611 allow udp from any to $odns 53 out via $oif $ks ################### End of example ipfw rules script ############ That is all there is to it. The rules are not important in this example, how the Symbolic substitution field are populated and used are. If the above example was in /etc/ipfw.rules file, you could reload these rules by entering on the command line. &prompt.root; sh /etc/ipfw.rules The /etc/ipfw.rules file could be located anywhere you want and the file could be named any thing you would like. The same thing could also be accomplished by running these commands by hand: &prompt.root; ipfw -q -f flush &prompt.root; ipfw -q add check-state &prompt.root; ipfw -q add deny all from any to any frag &prompt.root; ipfw -q add deny tcp from any to any established &prompt.root; ipfw -q add allow tcp from any to any 80 out via tun0 setup keep-state &prompt.root; ipfw -q add allow tcp from any to 192.0.2.11 53 out via tun0 setup keep-state &prompt.root; ipfw -q add 00611 allow udp from any to 192.0.2.11 53 out via tun0 keep-state Stateful Ruleset The following non-NATed rule set is a example of how to code a very secure 'inclusive' type of firewall. An inclusive firewall only allows services matching pass rules through and blocks all other by default. All firewalls have at the minimum two interfaces which have to have rules to allow the firewall to function. All &unix; flavored operating systems, &os; included, are designed to use interface lo0 and IP address 127.0.0.1 for internal communication with in the operating system. The firewall rules must contain rules to allow free unmolested movement of these special internally used packets. The interface which faces the public Internet, is the one which you code your rules to authorize and control access out to the public Internet and access requests arriving from the public Internet. This can be your ppp tun0 interface or your NIC that is connected to your DSL or cable modem. In cases where one or more than one NIC are connected to a private LANs behind the firewall, those interfaces must have rules coded to allow free unmolested movement of packets originating from those LAN interfaces. The rules should be first organized into three major sections, all the free unmolested interfaces, public interface outbound, and the public interface inbound. The order of the rules in each of the public interface sections should be in order of the most used rules being placed before less often used rules with the last rule in the section being a block log all packets on that interface and direction. The Outbound section in the following rule set only contains 'allow' rules which contain selection values that uniquely identify the service that is authorized for public Internet access. All the rules have the, proto, port, in/out, via and keep state option coded. The 'proto tcp' rules have the 'setup' option included to identify the start session request as the trigger packet to be posted to the keep state stateful table. The Inbound section has all the blocking of undesirable packets first for two different reasons. First is these things being blocked may be part of an otherwise valid packet which may be allowed in by the later authorized service rules. Second reason is that by having a rule that explicitly blocks selected packets that I receive on an infrequent bases and do not want to see in the log, this keeps them from being caught by the last rule in the section which blocks and logs all packets which have fallen through the rules. The last rule in the section which blocks and logs all packets is how you create the legal evidence needed to prosecute the people who are attacking your system. Another thing you should take note of, is there is no response returned for any of the undesirable stuff, their packets just get dropped and vanish. This way the attackers has no knowledge if his packets have reached your system. The less the attackers can learn about your system the more secure it is. When you log packets with port numbers you do not recognize, look the numbers up in /etc/services/ or go to and do a port number lookup to find what the purpose of that port number is. Check out this link for port numbers used by Trojans: . An Example Inclusive Ruleset The following non-NATed rule set is a complete inclusive type ruleset. You can not go wrong using this rule set for you own. Just comment out any pass rules for services you do not want. If you see messages in your log that you want to stop seeing just add a deny rule in the inbound section. You have to change the 'dc0' interface name in every rule to the interface name of the NIC that connects your system to the public Internet. For user ppp it would be 'tun0'. You will see a pattern in the usage of these rules. All statements that are a request to start a session to the public Internet use keep-state. All the authorized services that originate from the public Internet have the limit option to stop flooding. All rules use in or out to clarify direction. All rules use via interface name to specify the interface the packet is traveling over. The following rules go into /etc/ipfw.rules. ################ Start of IPFW rules file ############################### # Flush out the list before we begin. ipfw -q -f flush # Set rules command prefix cmd="ipfw -q add" pif="dc0" # public interface name of NIC # facing the public Internet ################################################################# # No restrictions on Inside LAN Interface for private network # Not needed unless you have LAN. # Change xl0 to your LAN NIC interface name ################################################################# #$cmd 00005 allow all from any to any via xl0 ################################################################# # No restrictions on Loopback Interface ################################################################# $cmd 00010 allow all from any to any via lo0 ################################################################# # Allow the packet through if it has previous been added to the # the "dynamic" rules table by a allow keep-state statement. ################################################################# $cmd 00015 check-state ################################################################# # Interface facing Public Internet (Outbound Section) # Interrogate session start requests originating from behind the # firewall on the private network or from this gateway server # destine for the public Internet. ################################################################# # Allow out access to my ISP's Domain name server. # x.x.x.x must be the IP address of your ISP.s DNS # Dup these lines if your ISP has more than one DNS server # Get the IP addresses from /etc/resolv.conf file $cmd 00110 allow tcp from any to x.x.x.x 53 out via $pif setup keep-state $cmd 00111 allow udp from any to x.x.x.x 53 out via $pif keep-state # Allow out access to my ISP's DHCP server for cable/DSL configurations. # This rule is not needed for .user ppp. connection to the public Internet. # so you can delete this whole group. # Use the following rule and check log for IP address. # Then put IP address in commented out rule & delete first rule $cmd 00120 allow log udp from any to any 67 out via $pif keep-state #$cmd 00120 allow udp from any to x.x.x.x 67 out via $pif keep-state # Allow out non-secure standard www function $cmd 00200 allow tcp from any to any 80 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out secure www function https over TLS SSL $cmd 00220 allow tcp from any to any 443 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out send & get email function $cmd 00230 allow tcp from any to any 25 out via $pif setup keep-state $cmd 00231 allow tcp from any to any 110 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out FBSD (make install & CVSUP) functions # Basically give user root "GOD" privileges. $cmd 00240 allow tcp from me to any out via $pif setup keep-state uid root # Allow out ping $cmd 00250 allow icmp from any to any out via $pif keep-state # Allow out Time $cmd 00260 allow tcp from any to any 37 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out nntp news (i.e. news groups) $cmd 00270 allow tcp from any to any 119 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out secure FTP, Telnet, and SCP # This function is using SSH (secure shell) $cmd 00280 allow tcp from any to any 22 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out whois $cmd 00290 allow tcp from any to any 43 out via $pif setup keep-state # deny and log everything else that.s trying to get out. # This rule enforces the block all by default logic. $cmd 00299 deny log all from any to any out via $pif ################################################################# # Interface facing Public Internet (Inbound Section) # Interrogate packets originating from the public Internet # destine for this gateway server or the private network. ################################################################# # Deny all inbound traffic from non-routable reserved address spaces $cmd 00300 deny all from 192.168.0.0/16 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 00301 deny all from 172.16.0.0/12 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 00302 deny all from 10.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 00303 deny all from 127.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #loopback $cmd 00304 deny all from 0.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #loopback $cmd 00305 deny all from 169.254.0.0/16 to any in via $pif #DHCP auto-config $cmd 00306 deny all from 192.0.2.0/24 to any in via $pif #reserved for docs $cmd 00307 deny all from 204.152.64.0/23 to any in via $pif #Sun cluster interconnect $cmd 00308 deny all from 224.0.0.0/3 to any in via $pif #Class D & E multicast # Deny public pings $cmd 00310 deny icmp from any to any in via $pif # Deny ident $cmd 00315 deny tcp from any to any 113 in via $pif # Deny all Netbios service. 137=name, 138=datagram, 139=session # Netbios is MS/Windows sharing services. # Block MS/Windows hosts2 name server requests 81 $cmd 00320 deny tcp from any to any 137 in via $pif $cmd 00321 deny tcp from any to any 138 in via $pif $cmd 00322 deny tcp from any to any 139 in via $pif $cmd 00323 deny tcp from any to any 81 in via $pif # Deny any late arriving packets $cmd 00330 deny all from any to any frag in via $pif # Deny ACK packets that did not match the dynamic rule table $cmd 00332 deny tcp from any to any established in via $pif # Allow traffic in from ISP's DHCP server. This rule must contain # the IP address of your ISP.s DHCP server as it.s the only # authorized source to send this packet type. # Only necessary for cable or DSL configurations. # This rule is not needed for .user ppp. type connection to # the public Internet. This is the same IP address you captured # and used in the outbound section. #$cmd 00360 allow udp from any to x.x.x.x 67 in via $pif keep-state # Allow in standard www function because I have apache server $cmd 00400 allow tcp from any to me 80 in via $pif setup limit src-addr 2 # Allow in secure FTP, Telnet, and SCP from public Internet $cmd 00410 allow tcp from any to me 22 in via $pif setup limit src-addr 2 # Allow in non-secure Telnet session from public Internet # labeled non-secure because ID & PW are passed over public # Internet as clear text. # Delete this sample group if you do not have telnet server enabled. $cmd 00420 allow tcp from any to me 23 in via $pif setup limit src-addr 2 # Reject & Log all incoming connections from the outside $cmd 00499 deny log all from any to any in via $pif # Everything else is denied by default # deny and log all packets that fell through to see what they are $cmd 00999 deny log all from any to any ################ End of IPFW rules file ############################### An Example <acronym>NAT</acronym> and Stateful Ruleset NAT and IPFW There are some additional configuration statements that need to be enabled to activate the NAT function of IPFW. The kernel source needs 'option divert' statement added to the other IPFIREWALL statements compiled into a custom kernel. In addition to the normal IPFW options in /etc/rc.conf, the following are needed. natd_enable="YES" # Enable NATD function natd_interface="rl0" # interface name of public Internet NIC natd_flags="-dynamic -m" # -m = preserve port numbers if possible Utilizing stateful rules with divert natd rule (Network Address Translation) greatly complicates the rule set coding logic. The positioning of the check-state, and 'divert natd' rules in the rule set becomes very critical. This is no longer a simple fall-through logic flow. A new action type is used, called 'skipto'. To use the skipto command it is mandatory that you number each rule so you know exactly where the skipto rule number is you are really jumping to. The following is an uncommented example of one coding method, selected here to explain the sequence of the packet flow through the rule sets. The processing flow starts with the first rule from the top of the rule file and progress one rule at a time deeper into the file until the end is reach or the packet being tested to the selection criteria matches and the packet is released out of the firewall. It is important to take notice of the location of rule numbers 100 101, 450, 500, and 510. These rules control the translation of the outbound and inbound packets so their entries in the keep-state dynamic table always register the private Lan IP address. Next notice that all the allow and deny rules specified the direction the packet is going (IE outbound or inbound) and the interface. Also notice that all the start outbound session requests all skipto rule 500 for the network address translation. Lets say a LAN user uses their web browser to get a web page. Web pages use port 80 to communicate over. So the packet enters the firewall, It does not match 100 because it is headed out not in. It passes rule 101 because this is the first packet so it has not been posted to the keep-state dynamic table yet. The packet finally comes to rule 125 a matches. It is outbound through the NIC facing the public Internet. The packet still has it's source IP address as a private Lan IP address. On the match to this rule, two actions take place. The keep-state option will post this rule into the keep-state dynamic rules table and the specified action is executed. The action is part of the info posted to the dynamic table. In this case it is "skipto rule 500". Rule 500 NATs the packet IP address and out it goes. Remember this, this is very important. This packet makes its way to the destination and returns and enters the top of the rule set. This time it does match rule 100 and has it destination IP address mapped back to its corresponding Lan IP address. It then is processed by the check-state rule, it's found in the table as an existing session conversation and released to the LAN. It goes to the LAN PC that sent it and a new packet is sent requesting another segment of the data from the remote server. This time it gets checked by the check-state rule and its outbound entry is found, the associated action, 'skipto 500', is executed. The packet jumps to rule 500 gets NATed and released on it's way out. On the inbound side, everything coming in that is part of an existing session conversation is being automatically handled by the check-state rule and the properly placed divert natd rules. All we have to address is denying all the bad packets and only allowing in the authorized services. Lets say there is a apache server running on the firewall box and we want people on the public Internet to be able to access the local web site. The new inbound start request packet matches rule 100 and its IP address is mapped to LAN IP for the firewall box. The packet is them matched against all the nasty things we want to check for and finally matches against rule 425. On a match two things occur The packet rule is posted to the keep-state dynamic table but this time any new session requests originating from that source IP address is limited to 2. This defends against DoS attacks of service running on the specified port number. The action is allow so the packet is released to the LAN. On return the check-state rule recognizes the packet as belonging to an existing session conversation sends it to rule 500 for NATing and released to outbound interface. Example Ruleset #1: #!/bin/sh cmd="ipfw -q add" skip="skipto 500" pif=rl0 ks="keep-state" good_tcpo="22,25,37,43,53,80,443,110,119" ipfw -q -f flush $cmd 002 allow all from any to any via xl0 # exclude LAN traffic $cmd 003 allow all from any to any via lo0 # exclude loopback traffic $cmd 100 divert natd ip from any to any in via $pif $cmd 101 check-state # Authorized outbound packets $cmd 120 $skip udp from any to xx.168.240.2 53 out via $pif $ks $cmd 121 $skip udp from any to xx.168.240.5 53 out via $pif $ks $cmd 125 $skip tcp from any to any $good_tcpo out via $pif setup $ks $cmd 130 $skip icmp from any to any out via $pif $ks $cmd 135 $skip udp from any to any 123 out via $pif $ks # Deny all inbound traffic from non-routable reserved address spaces $cmd 300 deny all from 192.168.0.0/16 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 301 deny all from 172.16.0.0/12 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 302 deny all from 10.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 303 deny all from 127.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #loopback $cmd 304 deny all from 0.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #loopback $cmd 305 deny all from 169.254.0.0/16 to any in via $pif #DHCP auto-config $cmd 306 deny all from 192.0.2.0/24 to any in via $pif #reserved for docs $cmd 307 deny all from 204.152.64.0/23 to any in via $pif #Sun cluster $cmd 308 deny all from 224.0.0.0/3 to any in via $pif #Class D & E multicast # Authorized inbound packets $cmd 400 allow udp from xx.70.207.54 to any 68 in $ks $cmd 420 allow tcp from any to me 80 in via $pif setup limit src-addr 1 $cmd 450 deny log ip from any to any # This is skipto location for outbound stateful rules $cmd 500 divert natd ip from any to any out via $pif $cmd 510 allow ip from any to any ######################## end of rules ################## The following is pretty much the same as above, but uses a self documenting coding style full of description comments to help the inexperienced IPFW rule writer to better understand what the rules are doing. Example Ruleset #2: #!/bin/sh ################ Start of IPFW rules file ############################### # Flush out the list before we begin. ipfw -q -f flush # Set rules command prefix cmd="ipfw -q add" skip="skipto 800" pif="rl0" # public interface name of NIC # facing the public Internet ################################################################# # No restrictions on Inside LAN Interface for private network # Change xl0 to your LAN NIC interface name ################################################################# $cmd 005 allow all from any to any via xl0 ################################################################# # No restrictions on Loopback Interface ################################################################# $cmd 010 allow all from any to any via lo0 ################################################################# # check if packet is inbound and nat address if it is ################################################################# $cmd 014 divert natd ip from any to any in via $pif ################################################################# # Allow the packet through if it has previous been added to the # the "dynamic" rules table by a allow keep-state statement. ################################################################# $cmd 015 check-state ################################################################# # Interface facing Public Internet (Outbound Section) # Interrogate session start requests originating from behind the # firewall on the private network or from this gateway server # destine for the public Internet. ################################################################# # Allow out access to my ISP's Domain name server. # x.x.x.x must be the IP address of your ISP's DNS # Dup these lines if your ISP has more than one DNS server # Get the IP addresses from /etc/resolv.conf file $cmd 020 $skip tcp from any to x.x.x.x 53 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out access to my ISP's DHCP server for cable/DSL configurations. $cmd 030 $skip udp from any to x.x.x.x 67 out via $pif keep-state # Allow out non-secure standard www function $cmd 040 $skip tcp from any to any 80 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out secure www function https over TLS SSL $cmd 050 $skip tcp from any to any 443 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out send & get email function $cmd 060 $skip tcp from any to any 25 out via $pif setup keep-state $cmd 061 $skip tcp from any to any 110 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out FreeBSD (make install & CVSUP) functions # Basically give user root "GOD" privileges. $cmd 070 $skip tcp from me to any out via $pif setup keep-state uid root # Allow out ping $cmd 080 $skip icmp from any to any out via $pif keep-state # Allow out Time $cmd 090 $skip tcp from any to any 37 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out nntp news (i.e. news groups) $cmd 100 $skip tcp from any to any 119 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out secure FTP, Telnet, and SCP # This function is using SSH (secure shell) $cmd 110 $skip tcp from any to any 22 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow out whois $cmd 120 $skip tcp from any to any 43 out via $pif setup keep-state # Allow ntp time server $cmd 130 $skip udp from any to any 123 out via $pif keep-state ################################################################# # Interface facing Public Internet (Inbound Section) # Interrogate packets originating from the public Internet # destine for this gateway server or the private network. ################################################################# # Deny all inbound traffic from non-routable reserved address spaces $cmd 300 deny all from 192.168.0.0/16 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 301 deny all from 172.16.0.0/12 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 302 deny all from 10.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #RFC 1918 private IP $cmd 303 deny all from 127.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #loopback $cmd 304 deny all from 0.0.0.0/8 to any in via $pif #loopback $cmd 305 deny all from 169.254.0.0/16 to any in via $pif #DHCP auto-config $cmd 306 deny all from 192.0.2.0/24 to any in via $pif #reserved for docs $cmd 307 deny all from 204.152.64.0/23 to any in via $pif #Sun cluster $cmd 308 deny all from 224.0.0.0/3 to any in via $pif #Class D & E multicast # Deny ident $cmd 315 deny tcp from any to any 113 in via $pif # Deny all Netbios service. 137=name, 138=datagram, 139=session # Netbios is MS/Windows sharing services. # Block MS/Windows hosts2 name server requests 81 $cmd 320 deny tcp from any to any 137 in via $pif $cmd 321 deny tcp from any to any 138 in via $pif $cmd 322 deny tcp from any to any 139 in via $pif $cmd 323 deny tcp from any to any 81 in via $pif # Deny any late arriving packets $cmd 330 deny all from any to any frag in via $pif # Deny ACK packets that did not match the dynamic rule table $cmd 332 deny tcp from any to any established in via $pif # Allow traffic in from ISP's DHCP server. This rule must contain # the IP address of your ISP's DHCP server as it's the only # authorized source to send this packet type. # Only necessary for cable or DSL configurations. # This rule is not needed for 'user ppp' type connection to # the public Internet. This is the same IP address you captured # and used in the outbound section. $cmd 360 allow udp from x.x.x.x to any 68 in via $pif keep-state # Allow in standard www function because I have Apache server $cmd 370 allow tcp from any to me 80 in via $pif setup limit src-addr 2 # Allow in secure FTP, Telnet, and SCP from public Internet $cmd 380 allow tcp from any to me 22 in via $pif setup limit src-addr 2 # Allow in non-secure Telnet session from public Internet # labeled non-secure because ID & PW are passed over public # Internet as clear text. # Delete this sample group if you do not have telnet server enabled. $cmd 390 allow tcp from any to me 23 in via $pif setup limit src-addr 2 # Reject & Log all unauthorized incoming connections from the public Internet $cmd 400 deny log all from any to any in via $pif # Reject & Log all unauthorized out going connections to the public Internet $cmd 450 deny log all from any to any out via $pif # This is skipto location for outbound stateful rules $cmd 800 divert natd ip from any to any out via $pif $cmd 801 allow ip from any to any # Everything else is denied by default # deny and log all packets that fell through to see what they are $cmd 999 deny log all from any to any ################ End of IPFW rules file ############################### diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml index 9743e1e230..779236ef3c 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml @@ -1,2294 +1,2294 @@ Bill Lloyd Original work by Jim Mock Rewritten by Electronic Mail Synopsis email Electronic Mail, better known as email, is one of the most widely used forms of communication today. This chapter provides a basic introduction to running a mail server on &os;, as well as an introduction to sending and receiving email using &os;; however, it is not a complete reference and in fact many important considerations are omitted. For more complete coverage of the subject, the reader is referred to the many excellent books listed in . After reading this chapter, you will know: What software components are involved in sending and receiving electronic mail. Where basic sendmail configuration files are located in FreeBSD. The difference between remote and local mailboxes. How to block spammers from illegally using your mail server as a relay. How to install and configure an alternate Mail Transfer Agent on your system, replacing sendmail. How to troubleshoot common mail server problems. How to use SMTP with UUCP. How to set up the system to send mail only. How to use mail with a dialup connection. How to configure SMTP Authentication for added security. How to install and use a Mail User Agent, such as mutt to send and receive email. How to download your mail from a remote POP or IMAP server. How to automatically apply filters and rules to incoming email. Before reading this chapter, you should: Properly set up your network connection (). Properly set up the DNS information for your mail host (). Know how to install additional third-party software (). Using Electronic Mail POP IMAP DNS There are five major parts involved in an email exchange. They are: the user program, the server daemon, DNS, a remote or local mailbox, and of course, the mailhost itself. The User Program This includes command line programs such as mutt, pine, elm, and mail, and GUI programs such as balsa, xfmail to name a few, and something more sophisticated like a WWW browser. These programs simply pass off the email transactions to the local mailhost, either by calling one of the server daemons available, or delivering it over TCP. Mailhost Server Daemon mail server daemons sendmail mail server daemons postfix mail server daemons qmail mail server daemons exim &os; ships with sendmail by default, but also support numerous other mail server daemons, just some of which include: exim; postfix; qmail. The server daemon usually has two functions—it is responsible for receiving incoming mail as well as delivering outgoing mail. It is not responsible for the collection of mail using protocols such as POP or IMAP to read your email, nor does it allow connecting to local mbox or Maildir mailboxes. You may require an additional daemon for that. Older versions of sendmail have some serious security issues which may result in an attacker gaining local and/or remote access to your machine. Make sure that you are running a current version to avoid these problems. Optionally, install an alternative MTA from the &os; Ports Collection. Email and DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) and its daemon named play a large role in the delivery of email. In order to deliver mail from your site to another, the server daemon will look up the remote site in the DNS to determine the host that will receive mail for the destination. This process also occurs when mail is sent from a remote host to your mail server. MX record DNS is responsible for mapping hostnames to IP addresses, as well as for storing information specific to mail delivery, known as MX records. The MX (Mail eXchanger) record specifies which host, or hosts, will receive mail for a particular domain. If you do not have an MX record for your hostname or domain, the mail will be delivered directly to your host provided you have an A record pointing your hostname to your IP address. You may view the MX records for any domain by using the &man.host.1; command, as seen in the example below: &prompt.user; host -t mx FreeBSD.org FreeBSD.org mail is handled (pri=10) by mx1.FreeBSD.org Receiving Mail email receiving Receiving mail for your domain is done by the mail host. It will collect all mail sent to your domain and store it either in mbox (the default method for storing mail) or Maildir format, depending on your configuration. Once mail has been stored, it may either be read locally using applications such as &man.mail.1; or mutt, or remotely accessed and collected using protocols such as POP or IMAP. This means that should you only wish to read mail locally, you are not required to install a POP or IMAP server. Accessing remote mailboxes using <acronym>POP</acronym> and <acronym>IMAP</acronym> POP IMAP In order to access mailboxes remotely, you are required to have access to a POP or IMAP server. These protocols allow users to connect to their mailboxes from remote locations with ease. Though both POP and IMAP allow users to remotely access mailboxes, IMAP offers many advantages, some of which are: IMAP can store messages on a remote server as well as fetch them. IMAP supports concurrent updates. IMAP can be extremely useful over low-speed links as it allows users to fetch the structure of messages without downloading them; it can also perform tasks such as searching on the server in order to minimize data transfer between clients and servers. In order to install a POP or IMAP server, the following steps should be performed: Choose an IMAP or POP server that best suits your needs. The following POP and IMAP servers are well known and serve as some good examples: qpopper; teapop; imap-uw; courier-imap; Install the POP or IMAP daemon of your choosing from the ports collection. Where required, modify /etc/inetd.conf to load the POP or IMAP server. It should be noted that both POP and IMAP transmit information, including username and password credentials in clear-text. This means that if you wish to secure the transmission of information across these protocols, you should consider tunneling sessions over &man.ssh.1;. Tunneling sessions is described in . Accessing local mailboxes Mailboxes may be accessed locally by directly utilizing MUAs on the server on which the mailbox resides. This can be done using applications such as mutt or &man.mail.1;. The Mail Host mail host The mail host is the name given to a server that is responsible for delivering and receiving mail for your host, and possibly your network. Christopher Shumway Contributed by <application>sendmail</application> Configuration sendmail &man.sendmail.8; is the default Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) in FreeBSD. sendmail's job is to accept mail from Mail User Agents (MUA) and deliver it to the appropriate mailer as defined by its configuration file. sendmail can also accept network connections and deliver mail to local mailboxes or deliver it to another program. sendmail uses the following configuration files: /etc/mail/access /etc/mail/aliases /etc/mail/local-host-names /etc/mail/mailer.conf /etc/mail/mailertable /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /etc/mail/virtusertable Filename Function /etc/mail/access sendmail access database file /etc/mail/aliases Mailbox aliases /etc/mail/local-host-names Lists of hosts sendmail accepts mail for /etc/mail/mailer.conf Mailer program configuration /etc/mail/mailertable Mailer delivery table /etc/mail/sendmail.cf sendmail master configuration file /etc/mail/virtusertable Virtual users and domain tables <filename>/etc/mail/access</filename> The access database defines what host(s) or IP addresses have access to the local mail server and what kind of access they have. Hosts can be listed as , , or simply passed to sendmail's error handling routine with a given mailer error. Hosts that are listed as , which is the default, are allowed to send mail to this host as long as the mail's final destination is the local machine. Hosts that are listed as are rejected for all mail connections. Hosts that have the option for their hostname are allowed to send mail for any destination through this mail server. Configuring the <application>sendmail</application> Access Database - cyberspammer.com 550 We don't accept mail from spammers -FREE.STEALTH.MAILER@ 550 We don't accept mail from spammers + cyberspammer.com 550 We do not accept mail from spammers +FREE.STEALTH.MAILER@ 550 We do not accept mail from spammers another.source.of.spam REJECT okay.cyberspammer.com OK 128.32 RELAY In this example we have five entries. Mail senders that match the left hand side of the table are affected by the action on the right side of the table. The first two examples give an error code to sendmail's error handling routine. The message is printed to the remote host when a mail matches the left hand side of the table. The next entry rejects mail from a specific host on the Internet, another.source.of.spam. The next entry accepts mail connections from a host okay.cyberspammer.com, which is more exact than the cyberspammer.com line above. More specific matches override less exact matches. The last entry allows relaying of electronic mail from hosts with an IP address that begins with 128.32. These hosts would be able to send mail through this mail server that are destined for other mail servers. When this file is updated, you need to run make in /etc/mail/ to update the database. <filename>/etc/mail/aliases</filename> The aliases database contains a list of virtual mailboxes that are expanded to other user(s), files, programs or other aliases. Here are a few examples that can be used in /etc/mail/aliases: Mail Aliases root: localuser ftp-bugs: joe,eric,paul bit.bucket: /dev/null procmail: "|/usr/local/bin/procmail" The file format is simple; the mailbox name on the left side of the colon is expanded to the target(s) on the right. The first example simply expands the mailbox root to the mailbox localuser, which is then looked up again in the aliases database. If no match is found, then the message is delivered to the local user localuser. The next example shows a mail list. Mail to the mailbox ftp-bugs is expanded to the three local mailboxes joe, eric, and paul. Note that a remote mailbox could be specified as user@example.com. The next example shows writing mail to a file, in this case /dev/null. The last example shows sending mail to a program, in this case the mail message is written to the standard input of /usr/local/bin/procmail through a &unix; pipe. When this file is updated, you need to run make in /etc/mail/ to update the database. <filename>/etc/mail/local-host-names</filename> This is a list of hostnames &man.sendmail.8; is to accept as the local host name. Place any domains or hosts that sendmail is to be receiving mail for. For example, if this mail server was to accept mail for the domain example.com and the host mail.example.com, its local-host-names might look something like this: example.com mail.example.com When this file is updated, &man.sendmail.8; needs to be restarted to read the changes. <filename>/etc/mail/sendmail.cf</filename> sendmail's master configuration file, sendmail.cf controls the overall behavior of sendmail, including everything from rewriting e-mail addresses to printing rejection messages to remote mail servers. Naturally, with such a diverse role, this configuration file is quite complex and its details are a bit out of the scope of this section. Fortunately, this file rarely needs to be changed for standard mail servers. The master sendmail configuration file can be built from &man.m4.1; macros that define the features and behavior of sendmail. Please see /usr/src/contrib/sendmail/cf/README for some of the details. When changes to this file are made, sendmail needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect. <filename>/etc/mail/virtusertable</filename> The virtusertable maps mail addresses for virtual domains and mailboxes to real mailboxes. These mailboxes can be local, remote, aliases defined in /etc/mail/aliases or files. Example Virtual Domain Mail Map root@example.com root postmaster@example.com postmaster@noc.example.net @example.com joe In the above example, we have a mapping for a domain example.com. This file is processed in a first match order down the file. The first item maps root@example.com to the local mailbox root. The next entry maps postmaster@example.com to the mailbox postmaster on the host noc.example.net. Finally, if nothing from example.com has matched so far, it will match the last mapping, which matches every other mail message addressed to someone at example.com. This will be mapped to the local mailbox joe. Andrew Boothman Written by Gregory Neil Shapiro Information taken from e-mails written by Changing Your Mail Transfer Agent email change mta As already mentioned, FreeBSD comes with sendmail already installed as your MTA (Mail Transfer Agent). Therefore by default it is in charge of your outgoing and incoming mail. However, for a variety of reasons, some system administrators want to change their system's MTA. These reasons range from simply wanting to try out another MTA to needing a specific feature or package which relies on another mailer. Fortunately, whatever the reason, FreeBSD makes it easy to make the change. Install a New MTA You have a wide choice of MTAs available. A good starting point is the FreeBSD Ports Collection where you will be able to find many. Of course you are free to use any MTA you want from any location, as long as you can make it run under FreeBSD. Start by installing your new MTA. Once it is installed it gives you a chance to decide if it really fulfills your needs, and also gives you the opportunity to configure your new software before getting it to take over from sendmail. When doing this, you should be sure that installing the new software will not attempt to overwrite system binaries such as /usr/bin/sendmail. Otherwise, your new mail software has essentially been put into service before you have configured it. Please refer to your chosen MTA's documentation for information on how to configure the software you have chosen. Disable <application>sendmail</application> The procedure used to start sendmail changed significantly between 4.5-RELEASE and 4.6-RELEASE. Therefore, the procedure used to disable it is subtly different. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE before 2002/4/4 and Earlier (Including 4.5-RELEASE and Earlier) Enter: sendmail_enable="NO" into /etc/rc.conf. This will disable sendmail's incoming mail service, but if /etc/mail/mailer.conf (see below) is not changed, sendmail will still be used to send e-mail. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE after 2002/4/4 (Including 4.6-RELEASE and Later) In order to completely disable sendmail you must use sendmail_enable="NONE" in /etc/rc.conf. If you disable sendmail's outgoing mail service in this way, it is important that you replace it with a fully working alternative mail delivery system. If you choose not to, system functions such as &man.periodic.8; will be unable to deliver their results by e-mail as they would normally expect to. Many parts of your system may expect to have a functional sendmail-compatible system. If applications continue to use sendmail's binaries to try to send e-mail after you have disabled them, mail could go into an inactive sendmail queue, and never be delivered. If you only want to disable sendmail's incoming mail service, you should set sendmail_enable="NO" in /etc/rc.conf. More information on sendmail's startup options is available from the &man.rc.sendmail.8; manual page. Running Your New MTA on Boot You may have a choice of two methods for running your new MTA on boot, again depending on what version of FreeBSD you are running. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE before 2002/4/11 (Including 4.5-RELEASE and Earlier) Add a script to /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ that ends in .sh and is executable by root. The script should accept start and stop parameters. At startup time the system scripts will execute the command /usr/local/etc/rc.d/supermailer.sh start which you can also use to manually start the server. At shutdown time, the system scripts will use the stop option, running the command /usr/local/etc/rc.d/supermailer.sh stop which you can also use to manually stop the server while the system is running. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE after 2002/4/11 (Including 4.6-RELEASE and Later) With later versions of FreeBSD, you can use the above method or you can set mta_start_script="filename" in /etc/rc.conf, where filename is the name of some script that you want executed at boot to start your MTA. Replacing <application>sendmail</application> as the System's Default Mailer The program sendmail is so ubiquitous as standard software on &unix; systems that some software just assumes it is already installed and configured. For this reason, many alternative MTA's provide their own compatible implementations of the sendmail command-line interface; this facilitates using them as drop-in replacements for sendmail. Therefore, if you are using an alternative mailer, you will need to make sure that software trying to execute standard sendmail binaries such as /usr/bin/sendmail actually executes your chosen mailer instead. Fortunately, FreeBSD provides a system called &man.mailwrapper.8; that does this job for you. When sendmail is operating as installed, you will find something like the following in /etc/mail/mailer.conf: sendmail /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail send-mail /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail mailq /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail newaliases /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail hoststat /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail purgestat /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail This means that when any of these common commands (such as sendmail itself) are run, the system actually invokes a copy of mailwrapper named sendmail, which checks mailer.conf and executes /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail instead. This system makes it easy to change what binaries are actually executed when these default sendmail functions are invoked. Therefore if you wanted /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat to be run instead of sendmail, you could change /etc/mail/mailer.conf to read: sendmail /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat send-mail /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat mailq /usr/local/supermailer/bin/mailq-compat newaliases /usr/local/supermailer/bin/newaliases-compat hoststat /usr/local/supermailer/bin/hoststat-compat purgestat /usr/local/supermailer/bin/purgestat-compat Finishing Once you have everything configured the way you want it, you should either kill the sendmail processes that you no longer need and start the processes belonging to your new software, or simply reboot. Rebooting will also give you the opportunity to ensure that you have correctly configured your system to start your new MTA automatically on boot. Troubleshooting email troubleshooting Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site? You will probably find that the host is actually in a different domain; for example, if you are in foo.bar.edu and you wish to reach a host called mumble in the bar.edu domain, you will have to refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, mumble.bar.edu, instead of just mumble. BIND Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However the current version of BIND that ships with FreeBSD no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully qualified domain names other than the domain you are in. So an unqualified host mumble must either be found as mumble.foo.bar.edu, or it will be searched for in the root domain. This is different from the previous behavior, where the search continued across mumble.bar.edu, and mumble.edu. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this was considered bad practice, or even a security hole. As a good workaround, you can place the line: search foo.bar.edu bar.edu instead of the previous: domain foo.bar.edu into your /etc/resolv.conf. However, make sure that the search order does not go beyond the boundary between local and public administration, as RFC 1535 calls it. MX record sendmail says mail loops back to myself This is answered in the sendmail FAQ as follows: I'm getting these error messages: 553 MX list for domain.net points back to relay.domain.net 554 <user@domain.net>... Local configuration error How can I solve this problem? You have asked mail to the domain (e.g., domain.net) to be forwarded to a specific host (in this case, relay.domain.net) by using an MX record, but the relay machine does not recognize itself as domain.net. Add domain.net to /etc/mail/local-host-names [known as /etc/sendmail.cw prior to version 8.10] (if you are using FEATURE(use_cw_file)) or add Cw domain.net to /etc/mail/sendmail.cf. The sendmail FAQ can be found at and is recommended reading if you want to do any tweaking of your mail setup. PPP How can I run a mail server on a dial-up PPP host? You want to connect a FreeBSD box on a LAN to the Internet. The FreeBSD box will be a mail gateway for the LAN. The PPP connection is non-dedicated. UUCP MX record There are at least two ways to do this. One way is to use UUCP. Another way is to get a full-time Internet server to provide secondary MX services for your domain. For example, if your company's domain is example.com and your Internet service provider has set example.net up to provide secondary MX services to your domain: example.com. MX 10 example.com. MX 20 example.net. Only one host should be specified as the final recipient (add Cw example.com in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf on example.com). When the sending sendmail is trying to deliver the mail it will try to connect to you (example.com) over the modem link. It will most likely time out because you are not online. The program sendmail will automatically deliver it to the secondary MX site, i.e. your Internet provider (example.net). The secondary MX site will then periodically try to connect to your host and deliver the mail to the primary MX host (example.com). You might want to use something like this as a login script: #!/bin/sh # Put me in /usr/local/bin/pppmyisp ( sleep 60 ; /usr/sbin/sendmail -q ) & /usr/sbin/ppp -direct pppmyisp If you are going to create a separate login script for a user you could use sendmail -qRexample.com instead in the script above. This will force all mail in your queue for example.com to be processed immediately. A further refinement of the situation is as follows: Message stolen from the &a.isp;. > we provide the secondary MX for a customer. The customer connects to > our services several times a day automatically to get the mails to > his primary MX (We do not call his site when a mail for his domains > arrived). Our sendmail sends the mailqueue every 30 minutes. At the > moment he has to stay 30 minutes online to be sure that all mail is > gone to the primary MX. > > Is there a command that would initiate sendmail to send all the mails > now? The user has not root-privileges on our machine of course. In the privacy flags section of sendmail.cf, there is a definition Opgoaway,restrictqrun Remove restrictqrun to allow non-root users to start the queue processing. You might also like to rearrange the MXs. We are the 1st MX for our customers like this, and we have defined: # If we are the best MX for a host, try directly instead of generating # local config error. OwTrue That way a remote site will deliver straight to you, without trying the customer connection. You then send to your customer. Only works for hosts, so you need to get your customer to name their mail machine customer.com as well as hostname.customer.com in the DNS. Just put an A record in the DNS for customer.com. Why do I keep getting Relaying Denied errors when sending mail from other hosts? In default FreeBSD installations, sendmail is configured to only send mail from the host it is running on. For example, if a POP server is available, then users will be able to check mail from school, work, or other remote locations but they still will not be able to send outgoing emails from outside locations. Typically, a few moments after the attempt, an email will be sent from MAILER-DAEMON with a 5.7 Relaying Denied error message. There are several ways to get around this. The most straightforward solution is to put your ISP's address in a relay-domains file at /etc/mail/relay-domains. A quick way to do this would be: &prompt.root; echo "your.isp.example.com" > /etc/mail/relay-domains After creating or editing this file you must restart sendmail. This works great if you are a server administrator and do not wish to send mail locally, or would like to use a point and click client/system on another machine or even another ISP. It is also very useful if you only have one or two email accounts set up. If there is a large number of addresses to add, you can simply open this file in your favorite text editor and then add the domains, one per line: your.isp.example.com other.isp.example.net users-isp.example.org www.example.org Now any mail sent through your system, by any host in this list (provided the user has an account on your system), will succeed. This is a very nice way to allow users to send mail from your system remotely without allowing people to send SPAM through your system. Advanced Topics The following section covers more involved topics such as mail configuration and setting up mail for your entire domain. Basic Configuration email configuration Out of the box, you should be able to send email to external hosts as long as you have set up /etc/resolv.conf or are running your own name server. If you would like to have mail for your host delivered to the MTA (e.g., sendmail) on your own FreeBSD host, there are two methods: Run your own name server and have your own domain. For example, FreeBSD.org Get mail delivered directly to your host. This is done by delivering mail directly to the current DNS name for your machine. For example, example.FreeBSD.org. SMTP Regardless of which of the above you choose, in order to have mail delivered directly to your host, it must have a permanent static IP address (not a dynamic address, as with most PPP dial-up configurations). If you are behind a firewall, it must pass SMTP traffic on to you. If you want to receive mail directly at your host, you need to be sure of either of two things: MX record Make sure that the (lowest-numbered) MX record in your DNS points to your host's IP address. Make sure there is no MX entry in your DNS for your host. Either of the above will allow you to receive mail directly at your host. Try this: &prompt.root; hostname example.FreeBSD.org &prompt.root; host example.FreeBSD.org example.FreeBSD.org has address 204.216.27.XX If that is what you see, mail directly to yourlogin@example.FreeBSD.org should work without problems (assuming sendmail is running correctly on example.FreeBSD.org). If instead you see something like this: &prompt.root; host example.FreeBSD.org example.FreeBSD.org has address 204.216.27.XX example.FreeBSD.org mail is handled (pri=10) by hub.FreeBSD.org All mail sent to your host (example.FreeBSD.org) will end up being collected on hub under the same username instead of being sent directly to your host. The above information is handled by your DNS server. The DNS record that carries mail routing information is the Mail eXchange entry. If no MX record exists, mail will be delivered directly to the host by way of its IP address. The MX entry for freefall.FreeBSD.org at one time looked like this: freefall MX 30 mail.crl.net freefall MX 40 agora.rdrop.com freefall MX 10 freefall.FreeBSD.org freefall MX 20 who.cdrom.com As you can see, freefall had many MX entries. The lowest MX number is the host that receives mail directly if available; if it is not accessible for some reason, the others (sometimes called backup MXes) accept messages temporarily, and pass it along when a lower-numbered host becomes available, eventually to the lowest-numbered host. Alternate MX sites should have separate Internet connections from your own in order to be most useful. Your ISP or another friendly site should have no problem providing this service for you. Mail for Your Domain In order to set up a mailhost (a.k.a. mail server) you need to have any mail sent to various workstations directed to it. Basically, you want to claim any mail for any hostname in your domain (in this case *.FreeBSD.org) and divert it to your mail server so your users can receive their mail on the master mail server. DNS To make life easiest, a user account with the same username should exist on both machines. Use &man.adduser.8; to do this. The mailhost you will be using must be the designated mail exchanger for each workstation on the network. This is done in your DNS configuration like so: example.FreeBSD.org A 204.216.27.XX ; Workstation MX 10 hub.FreeBSD.org ; Mailhost This will redirect mail for the workstation to the mailhost no matter where the A record points. The mail is sent to the MX host. You cannot do this yourself unless you are running a DNS server. If you are not, or cannot run your own DNS server, talk to your ISP or whoever provides your DNS. If you are doing virtual email hosting, the following information will come in handy. For this example, we will assume you have a customer with his own domain, in this case customer1.org, and you want all the mail for customer1.org sent to your mailhost, mail.myhost.com. The entry in your DNS should look like this: customer1.org MX 10 mail.myhost.com You do not need an A record for customer1.org if you only want to handle email for that domain. Be aware that pinging customer1.org will not work unless an A record exists for it. The last thing that you must do is tell sendmail on your mailhost what domains and/or hostnames it should be accepting mail for. There are a few different ways this can be done. Either of the following will work: Add the hosts to your /etc/mail/local-host-names file if you are using the FEATURE(use_cw_file). If you are using a version of sendmail earlier than 8.10, the file is /etc/sendmail.cw. Add a Cwyour.host.com line to your /etc/sendmail.cf or /etc/mail/sendmail.cf if you are using sendmail 8.10 or higher. SMTP with UUCP The sendmail configuration that ships with FreeBSD is designed for sites that connect directly to the Internet. Sites that wish to exchange their mail via UUCP must install another sendmail configuration file. Tweaking /etc/mail/sendmail.cf manually is an advanced topic. sendmail version 8 generates config files via &man.m4.1; preprocessing, where the actual configuration occurs on a higher abstraction level. The &man.m4.1; configuration files can be found under /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf. If you did not install your system with full sources, the sendmail configuration set has been broken out into a separate source distribution tarball. Assuming you have your FreeBSD source code CDROM mounted, do: &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/src &prompt.root; cat scontrib.?? | tar xzf - -C /usr/src/contrib/sendmail This extracts to only a few hundred kilobytes. The file README in the cf directory can serve as a basic introduction to &man.m4.1; configuration. The best way to support UUCP delivery is to use the mailertable feature. This creates a database that sendmail can use to make routing decisions. First, you have to create your .mc file. The directory /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf contains a few examples. Assuming you have named your file foo.mc, all you need to do in order to convert it into a valid sendmail.cf is: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf &prompt.root; make foo.cf &prompt.root; cp foo.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf A typical .mc file might look like: VERSIONID(`Your version number') OSTYPE(bsd4.4) FEATURE(accept_unresolvable_domains) FEATURE(nocanonify) FEATURE(mailertable, `hash -o /etc/mail/mailertable') define(`UUCP_RELAY', your.uucp.relay) define(`UUCP_MAX_SIZE', 200000) define(`confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES') MAILER(local) MAILER(smtp) MAILER(uucp) Cw your.alias.host.name Cw youruucpnodename.UUCP The lines containing accept_unresolvable_domains, nocanonify, and confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES features will prevent any usage of the DNS during mail delivery. The UUCP_RELAY clause is needed to support UUCP delivery. Simply put an Internet hostname there that is able to handle .UUCP pseudo-domain addresses; most likely, you will enter the mail relay of your ISP there. Once you have this, you need an /etc/mail/mailertable file. If you have only one link to the outside that is used for all your mails, the following file will suffice: # # makemap hash /etc/mail/mailertable.db < /etc/mail/mailertable . uucp-dom:your.uucp.relay A more complex example might look like this: # # makemap hash /etc/mail/mailertable.db < /etc/mail/mailertable # horus.interface-business.de uucp-dom:horus .interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus .heep.sax.de smtp8:%1 horus.UUCP uucp-dom:horus if-bus.UUCP uucp-dom:if-bus . uucp-dom: The first three lines handle special cases where domain-addressed mail should not be sent out to the default route, but instead to some UUCP neighbor in order to shortcut the delivery path. The next line handles mail to the local Ethernet domain that can be delivered using SMTP. Finally, the UUCP neighbors are mentioned in the .UUCP pseudo-domain notation, to allow for a uucp-neighbor !recipient override of the default rules. The last line is always a single dot, matching everything else, with UUCP delivery to a UUCP neighbor that serves as your universal mail gateway to the world. All of the node names behind the uucp-dom: keyword must be valid UUCP neighbors, as you can verify using the command uuname. As a reminder that this file needs to be converted into a DBM database file before use. The command line to accomplish this is best placed as a comment at the top of the mailertable file. You always have to execute this command each time you change your mailertable file. Final hint: if you are uncertain whether some particular mail routing would work, remember the option to sendmail. It starts sendmail in address test mode; simply enter 3,0, followed by the address you wish to test for the mail routing. The last line tells you the used internal mail agent, the destination host this agent will be called with, and the (possibly translated) address. Leave this mode by typing CtrlD. &prompt.user; sendmail -bt ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked) Enter <ruleset> <address> > 3,0 foo@example.com canonify input: foo @ example . com ... parse returns: $# uucp-dom $@ your.uucp.relay $: foo < @ example . com . > > ^D Bill Moran Contributed by Setting Up to Send Only There are many instances where you may only want to send mail through a relay. Some examples are: Your computer is a desktop machine, but you want to use programs such as &man.send-pr.1;. To do so, you should use your ISP's mail relay. The computer is a server that does not handle mail locally, but needs to pass off all mail to a relay for processing. Just about any MTA is capable of filling this particular niche. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to properly configure a full-featured MTA just to handle offloading mail. Programs such as sendmail and postfix are largely overkill for this use. Additionally, if you are using a typical Internet access service, your agreement may forbid you from running a mail server. The easiest way to fulfill those needs is to install the mail/ssmtp port. Execute the following commands as root: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/mail/ssmtp &prompt.root; make install replace clean Once installed, mail/ssmtp can be configured with a four-line file located at /usr/local/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf: root=yourrealemail@example.com mailhub=mail.example.com rewriteDomain=example.com hostname=_HOSTNAME_ Make sure you use your real email address for root. Enter your ISP's outgoing mail relay in place of mail.example.com (some ISPs call this the outgoing mail server or SMTP server). Make sure you disable sendmail by setting sendmail_enable="NONE" in /etc/rc.conf. mail/ssmtp has some other options available. See the example configuration file in /usr/local/etc/ssmtp or the manual page of ssmtp for some examples and more information. Setting up ssmtp in this manner will allow any software on your computer that needs to send mail to function properly, while not violating your ISP's usage policy or allowing your computer to be hijacked for spamming. Using Mail with a Dialup Connection If you have a static IP address, you should not need to adjust anything from the defaults. Set your host name to your assigned Internet name and sendmail will do the rest. If you have a dynamically assigned IP number and use a dialup PPP connection to the Internet, you will probably have a mailbox on your ISPs mail server. Let's assume your ISP's domain is example.net, and that your user name is user, you have called your machine bsd.home, and your ISP has told you that you may use relay.example.net as a mail relay. In order to retrieve mail from your mailbox, you must install a retrieval agent. The fetchmail utility is a good choice as it supports many different protocols. This program is available as a package or from the Ports Collection (mail/fetchmail). Usually, your ISP will provide POP. If you are using user PPP, you can automatically fetch your mail when an Internet connection is established with the following entry in /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: MYADDR: !bg su user -c fetchmail If you are using sendmail (as shown below) to deliver mail to non-local accounts, you probably want to have sendmail process your mailqueue as soon as your Internet connection is established. To do this, put this command after the fetchmail command in /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: !bg su user -c "sendmail -q" Assume that you have an account for user on bsd.home. In the home directory of user on bsd.home, create a .fetchmailrc file: poll example.net protocol pop3 fetchall pass MySecret This file should not be readable by anyone except user as it contains the password MySecret. In order to send mail with the correct from: header, you must tell sendmail to use user@example.net rather than user@bsd.home. You may also wish to tell sendmail to send all mail via relay.example.net, allowing quicker mail transmission. The following .mc file should suffice: VERSIONID(`bsd.home.mc version 1.0') OSTYPE(bsd4.4)dnl FEATURE(nouucp)dnl MAILER(local)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl Cwlocalhost Cwbsd.home MASQUERADE_AS(`example.net')dnl FEATURE(allmasquerade)dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl FEATURE(nocanonify)dnl FEATURE(nodns)dnl define(`SMART_HOST', `relay.example.net') Dmbsd.home define(`confDOMAIN_NAME',`bsd.home')dnl define(`confDELIVERY_MODE',`deferred')dnl Refer to the previous section for details of how to turn this .mc file into a sendmail.cf file. Also, do not forget to restart sendmail after updating sendmail.cf. James Gorham Written by SMTP Authentication Having SMTP Authentication in place on your mail server has a number of benefits. SMTP Authentication can add another layer of security to sendmail, and has the benefit of giving mobile users who switch hosts the ability to use the same mail server without the need to reconfigure their mail client settings each time. Install security/cyrus-sasl from the ports. You can find this port in security/cyrus-sasl. security/cyrus-sasl has a number of compile time options to choose from and, for the method we will be using here, make sure to select the option. After installing security/cyrus-sasl, edit /usr/local/lib/sasl/Sendmail.conf (or create it if it does not exist) and add the following line: pwcheck_method: passwd This method will enable sendmail to authenticate against your FreeBSD passwd database. This saves the trouble of creating a new set of usernames and passwords for each user that needs to use SMTP authentication, and keeps the login and mail password the same. Now edit /etc/make.conf and add the following lines: SENDMAIL_CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/sasl1 -DSASL SENDMAIL_LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib SENDMAIL_LDADD=-lsasl These lines will give sendmail the proper configuration options for linking to cyrus-sasl at compile time. Make sure that cyrus-sasl has been installed before recompiling sendmail. Recompile sendmail by executing the following commands: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail &prompt.root; make cleandir &prompt.root; make obj &prompt.root; make &prompt.root; make install The compile of sendmail should not have any problems if /usr/src has not been changed extensively and the shared libraries it needs are available. After sendmail has been compiled and reinstalled, edit your /etc/mail/freebsd.mc file (or whichever file you use as your .mc file. Many administrators choose to use the output from &man.hostname.1; as the .mc file for uniqueness). Add these lines to it: dnl set SASL options TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN')dnl define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN')dnl define(`confDEF_AUTH_INFO', `/etc/mail/auth-info')dnl These options configure the different methods available to sendmail for authenticating users. If you would like to use a method other than pwcheck, please see the included documentation. Finally, run &man.make.1; while in /etc/mail. That will run your new .mc file and create a .cf file named freebsd.cf (or whatever name you have used for your .mc file). Then use the command make install restart, which will copy the file to sendmail.cf, and will properly restart sendmail. For more information about this process, you should refer to /etc/mail/Makefile. If all has gone correctly, you should be able to enter your login information into the mail client and send a test message. For further investigation, set the of sendmail to 13 and watch /var/log/maillog for any errors. You may wish to add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf so this service will be available after every system boot: sasl_pwcheck_enable="YES" sasl_pwcheck_program="/usr/local/sbin/pwcheck" This will ensure the initialization of SMTP_AUTH upon system boot. For more information, please see the sendmail page regarding SMTP authentication. Marc Silver Contributed by Mail User Agents Mail User Agents A Mail User Agent (MUA) is an application that is used to send and receive email. Furthermore, as email evolves and becomes more complex, MUA's are becoming increasingly powerful in the way they interact with email; this gives users increased functionality and flexibility. &os; contains support for numerous mail user agents, all of which can be easily installed using the FreeBSD Ports Collection. Users may choose between graphical email clients such as evolution or balsa, console based clients such as mutt, pine or mail, or the web interfaces used by some large organizations. mail &man.mail.1; is the default Mail User Agent (MUA) in &os;. It is a console based MUA that offers all the basic functionality required to send and receive text-based email, though it is limited in interaction abilities with attachments and can only support local mailboxes. Although mail does not natively support interaction with POP or IMAP servers, these mailboxes may be downloaded to a local mbox file using an application such as fetchmail, which will be discussed later in this chapter (). In order to send and receive email, simply invoke the mail command as per the following example: &prompt.user; mail The contents of the user mailbox in /var/mail are automatically read by the mail utility. Should the mailbox be empty, the utility exits with a message indicating that no mails could be found. Once the mailbox has been read, the application interface is started, and a list of messages will be displayed. Messages are automatically numbered, as can be seen in the following example: Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help. "/var/mail/marcs": 3 messages 3 new >N 1 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/510 "test" N 2 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/509 "user account" N 3 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/509 "sample" Messages can now be read by using the t mail command, suffixed by the message number that should be displayed. In this example, we will read the first email: & t 1 Message 1: From root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05:52 2004 X-Original-To: marcs@localhost Delivered-To: marcs@localhost To: marcs@localhost Subject: test Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 14:05:52 +0200 (SAST) From: root@localhost (Charlie Root) This is a test message, please reply if you receive it. As can be seen in the example above, the t key will cause the message to be displayed with full headers. To display the list of messages again, the h key should be used. If the email requires a response, you may use mail to reply, by using either the R or r mail keys. The R key instructs mail to reply only to the sender of the email, while r replies not only to the sender, but also to other recipients of the message. You may also suffix these commands with the mail number which you would like make a reply to. Once this has been done, the response should be entered, and the end of the message should be marked by a single . on a new line. An example can be seen below: & R 1 To: root@localhost Subject: Re: test Thank you, I did get your email. . EOT In order to send new email, the m key should be used, followed by the recipient email address. Multiple recipients may also be specified by separating each address with the , delimiter. The subject of the message may then be entered, followed by the message contents. The end of the message should be specified by putting a single . on a new line. & mail root@localhost Subject: I mastered mail Now I can send and receive email using mail ... :) . EOT While inside the mail utility, the ? command may be used to display help at any time, the &man.mail.1; manual page should also be consulted for more help with mail. As previously mentioned, the &man.mail.1; command was not originally designed to handle attachments, and thus deals with them very poorly. Newer MUAs such as mutt handle attachments in a much more intelligent way. But should you still wish to use the mail command, the converters/mpack port may be of considerable use. mutt mutt is a small yet very powerful Mail User Agent, with excellent features, just some of which include: The ability to thread messages; PGP support for digital signing and encryption of email; MIME Support; Maildir Support; Highly customizable. All of these features help to make mutt one of the most advanced mail user agents available. See for more information on mutt. The stable version of mutt may be installed using the mail/mutt port, while the current development version may be installed via the mail/mutt-devel port. After the port has been installed, mutt can be started by issuing the following command: &prompt.user; mutt mutt will automatically read the contents of the user mailbox in /var/mail and display the contents if applicable. If no mails are found in the user mailbox, then mutt will wait for commands from the user. The example below shows mutt displaying a list of messages: In order to read an email, simply select it using the cursor keys, and press the Enter key. An example of mutt displaying email can be seen below: As with the &man.mail.1; command, mutt allows users to reply only to the sender of the message as well as to all recipients. To reply only to the sender of the email, use the r keyboard shortcut. To send a group reply, which will be sent to the original sender as well as all the message recipients, use the g shortcut. mutt makes use of the &man.vi.1; command as an editor for creating and replying to emails. This may be customized by the user by creating or editing their own .muttrc file in their home directory and setting the editor variable. In order to compose a new mail message, press m. After a valid subject has been given, mutt will start &man.vi.1; and the mail can be written. Once the contents of the mail are complete, save and quit from vi and mutt will resume, displaying a summary screen of the mail that is to be delivered. In order to send the mail, press y. An example of the summary screen can be seen below: mutt also contains extensive help, which can be accessed from most of the menus by pressing the ? key. The top line also displays the keyboard shortcuts where appropriate. pine pine is aimed at a beginner user, but also includes some advanced features. The pine software has had several remote vulnerabilities discovered in the past, which allowed remote attackers to execute arbitrary code as users on the local system, by the action of sending a specially-prepared email. All such known problems have been fixed, but the pine code is written in a very insecure style and the &os; Security Officer believes there are likely to be other undiscovered vulnerabilities. You install pine at your own risk. The current version of pine may be installed using the mail/pine4 port. Once the port has installed, pine can be started by issuing the following command: &prompt.user; pine The first time that pine is run it displays a greeting page with a brief introduction, as well as a request from the pine development team to send an anonymous email message allowing them to judge how many users are using their client. To send this anonymous message, press Enter, or alternatively press E to exit the greeting without sending an anonymous message. An example of the greeting page can be seen below: Users are then presented with the main menu, which can be easily navigated using the cursor keys. This main menu provides shortcuts for the composing new mails, browsing of mail directories, and even the administration of address book entries. Below the main menu, relevant keyboard shortcuts to perform functions specific to the task at hand are shown. The default directory opened by pine is the inbox. To view the message index, press I, or select the MESSAGE INDEX option as seen below: The message index shows messages in the current directory, and can be navigated by using the cursor keys. Highlighted messages can be read by pressing the Enter key. In the screenshot below, a sample message is displayed by pine. Keyboard shortcuts are displayed as a reference at the bottom of the screen. An example of one of these shortcuts is the r key, which tells the MUA to reply to the current message being displayed. Replying to an email in pine is done using the pico editor, which is installed by default with pine. The pico utility makes it easy to navigate around the message and is slightly more forgiving on novice users than &man.vi.1; or &man.mail.1;. Once the reply is complete, the message can be sent by pressing CtrlX . The pine application will ask for confirmation. The pine application can be customized using the SETUP option from the main menu. Consult for more information. Marc Silver Contributed by Using fetchmail fetchmail fetchmail is a full-featured IMAP and POP client which allows users to automatically download mail from remote IMAP and POP servers and save it into local mailboxes; there it can be accessed more easily. fetchmail can be installed using the mail/fetchmail port, and offers various features, some of which include: Support of POP3, APOP, KPOP, IMAP, ETRN and ODMR protocols. Ability to forward mail using SMTP, which allows filtering, forwarding, and aliasing to function normally. May be run in daemon mode to check periodically for new messages. Can retrieve multiple mailboxes and forward them based on configuration, to different local users. While it is outside the scope of this document to explain all of fetchmail's features, some basic features will be explained. The fetchmail utility requires a configuration file known as .fetchmailrc, in order to run correctly. This file includes server information as well as login credentials. Due to the sensitive nature of the contents of this file, it is advisable to make it readable only by the owner, with the following command: &prompt.user; chmod 600 .fetchmailrc The following .fetchmailrc serves as an example for downloading a single user mailbox using POP. It tells fetchmail to connect to example.com using a username of joesoap and a password of XXX. This example assumes that the user joesoap is also a user on the local system. poll example.com protocol pop3 username "joesoap" password "XXX" The next example connects to multiple POP and IMAP servers and redirects to different local usernames where applicable: poll example.com proto pop3: user "joesoap", with password "XXX", is "jsoap" here; user "andrea", with password "XXXX"; poll example2.net proto imap: user "john", with password "XXXXX", is "myth" here; The fetchmail utility can be run in daemon mode by running it with the flag, followed by the interval (in seconds) that fetchmail should poll servers listed in the .fetchmailrc file. The following example would cause fetchmail to poll every 60 seconds: &prompt.user; fetchmail -d 60 More information on fetchmail can be found at . Marc Silver Contributed by Using procmail procmail The procmail utility is an incredibly powerful application used to filter incoming mail. It allows users to define rules which can be matched to incoming mails to perform specific functions or to reroute mail to alternative mailboxes and/or email addresses. procmail can be installed using the mail/procmail port. Once installed, it can be directly integrated into most MTAs; consult your MTA documentation for more information. Alternatively, procmail can be integrated by adding the following line to a .forward in the home directory of the user utilizing procmail features: "|exec /usr/local/bin/procmail || exit 75" The following section will display some basic procmail rules, as well as brief descriptions on what they do. These rules, and others must be inserted into a .procmailrc file, which must reside in the user's home directory. The majority of these rules can also be found in the &man.procmailex.5; manual page. Forward all mail from user@example.com to an external address of goodmail@example2.com: :0 * ^From.*user@example.com ! goodmail@example2.com Forward all mails shorter than 1000 bytes to an external address of goodmail@example2.com: :0 * < 1000 ! goodmail@example2.com Send all mail sent to alternate@example.com into a mailbox called alternate: :0 * ^TOalternate@example.com alternate Send all mail with a subject of Spam to /dev/null: :0 ^Subject:.*Spam /dev/null A useful recipe that parses incoming &os;.org mailing lists and places each list in its own mailbox: :0 * ^Sender:.owner-freebsd-\/[^@]+@FreeBSD.ORG { LISTNAME=${MATCH} :0 * LISTNAME??^\/[^@]+ FreeBSD-${MATCH} }