Description:
Advanced Policy Firewall (APF) is an iptables(netfilter) based firewall system designed around the essential needs of today’s Internet deployed servers and the unique needs of custom deployed Linux installations. The configuration of APF is designed to be very informative and present the user with an easy to follow process, from top to bottom of the configuration file.

The technical side of APF is such that it utilizes the latest stable features from the iptables (netfilter) project to provide a very robust and powerful firewall. The filtering performed by APF is three fold:
1) Static rule based policies (not to be confused with a “static firewall”)
2) Connection based stateful policies
3) Sanity based policies

The first, static rule based policies, is the most traditional method of firewalling. This is when the firewall has an unchanging set of instructions (rules) on how traffic should be handled in certain conditions. An example of a static rule based policy would be when you allow/deny an address access to the server with the trust system or open a new port with conf.apf. So the short of it is rules that infrequently or never change while the firewall is running.

The second, connection based stateful policies, is a means to distinguish legitimate packets for different types of connections. Only packets matching a known connection will be allowed by the firewall; others will be rejected. An example of this would be FTP data transfers, in an older era of firewalling you would have to define a complex set of static policies to allow FTA data transfers to flow without a problem. That is not so with stateful policies, the firewall can see that an address has established a connection to port 21 then “relate” that address to the data transfer portion of the connection and dynamically alter the firewall to allow the traffic.

The third, sanity based policies, is the ability of the firewall to match various traffic patterns to known attack methods or scrutinize traffic to conform to Internet standards. An example of this would be when a would-be attacker attempts to forge the source IP address of data they are sending to you, APF can simply discard this traffic or optionally log it then discard it. To the same extent another example would be when a broken router on the Internet begins to relay malformed packets to you, APF can simply discard them or in other situations reply to the router and have it stop sending you new packets (TCP Reset).

Features:
– detailed and well commented configuration file
– granular inbound and outbound network filtering
– user id based outbound network filtering
– application based network filtering
– trust based rule files with an optional advanced syntax
– global trust system where rules can be downloaded from a central management server
– reactive address blocking (RAB), next generation in-line intrusion prevention
– debug mode provided for testing new features and configuration setups
– fast load feature that allows for 1000+ rules to load in under 1 second
– inbound and outbound network interfaces can be independently configured
– global tcp/udp port & icmp filtering with multiple filters (drop, reject, prohibit)
– configurable policies for each ip on the system with convenience variables to import settings
– packet flow rate limiting that prevents abuse on the most widely abused protocol, icmp
– prerouting and postrouting rules for optimal network performance
– dshield.org block list support to ban networks exhibiting suspicious activity
– spamhaus Don’t Route Or Peer List support to ban known “hijacked zombie” IP blocks
– any number of additional interfaces may be configured as trusted or untrusted
– additional firewalled interfaces can have there own unique firewall policies applied
– intelligent route verification to prevent embarrassing configuration errors
– advanced packet sanity checks to make sure traffic coming and going meets the strictest of standards
– filter attacks such as fragmented UDP, port zero floods, stuffed routing, arp poisoning and more
– configurable type of service options to dictate the priority of different types of network traffic
– intelligent default settings to meet every day server setups
– dynamic configuration of your servers local DNS revolvers into the firewall
– optional filtering of common p2p applications
– optional filtering of private & reserved IP address space
– optional implicit blocks of the ident service
– configurable connection tracking settings to scale the firewall to the size of your network
– configurable kernel hooks (ties) to harden the system further to syn-flood attacks & routing abuses
– advanced network control such as explicit congestion notification and overflow control
– helper chains for FTP DATA and SSH connections to prevent client side issues
– optional rate limited event logging
– logging subsystem that allows for logging data to user space programs or standard syslog files
– comprehensive logging of every rule added
– detailed startup error checking
– if you are familiar with netfilter you can create your own rules in any of the policy files
– pluggable and ready advanced use of QoS algorithms provided by the Linux
– 3rd party add-on projects that compliment APF features

Funding:
Funding for the continued development and research into this and other projects is solely dependent on public contributions and donations. If this is your first time using this software we ask that you evaluate it and consider a small donation; for those who frequent and are continued users of this and other projects we also ask that you make an occasional donation to help ensure the future of our public projects.

https://www.rfxn.com/projects/advanced-policy-firewall/

This suite of scripts provides:

• Straight-forward SPI iptables firewall script
• Daemon process that checks for login authentication failures for:
  • Courier imap, Dovecot, uw-imap, Kerio
  • openSSH
  • cPanel, WHM, Webmail (cPanel servers only)
  • Pure-ftpd, vsftpd, Proftpd
  • Password protected web pages (htpasswd)
  • Mod_security failures (v1 and v2)
  • Suhosin failures
  • Exim SMTP AUTH
  • Custom login failures with separate log file and regular expression matching
• POP3/IMAP login tracking to enforce logins per hour
• SSH login notification
• SU login notification
• Excessive connection blocking
• UI Integration for cPanel, DirectAdmin and Webmin
• Easy upgrade between versions from within cPanel/WHM, DirectAdmin or Webmin
• Easy upgrade between versions from shell
• Pre-configured to work on a cPanel server with all the standard cPanel ports open
• Pre-configured to work on a DirectAdmin server with all the standard DirectAdmin ports open
• Auto-configures the SSH port if it's non-standard on installation
• Block traffic on unused server IP addresses - helps reduce the risk to your server
• Alert when end-user scripts sending excessive emails per hour - for identifying spamming scripts
• Suspicious process reporting - reports potential exploits running on the server
• Excessive user processes reporting
• Excessive user process usage reporting and optional termination
• Suspicious file reporting - reports potential exploit files in /tmp and similar directories
• Directory and file watching - reports if a watched directory or a file changes
• Block traffic on a variety of Block Lists including DShield Block List and Spamhaus DROP List
• BOGON packet protection
• Pre-configured settings for Low, Medium or High firewall security (cPanel servers only)
• Works with multiple ethernet devices
• Server Security Check - Performs a basic security and settings check on the server (via cPanel/DirectAdmin/Webmin UI)
• Allow Dynamic DNS IP addresses - always allow your IP address even if it changes whenever you connect to the internet
• Alert sent if server load average remains high for a specified length of time
• mod_security log reporting (if installed)
• Email relay tracking - tracks all email sent through the server and issues alerts for excessive usage (cPanel servers only)
• IDS (Intrusion Detection System) - the last line of detection alerts you to changes to system and application binaries
• SYN Flood protection
• Ping of death protection
• Port Scan tracking and blocking
• Permanent and Temporary (with TTL) IP blocking
• Exploit checks
• Account modification tracking - sends alerts if an account entry is modified, e.g. if the password is changed or the login shell
• Shared syslog aware
• Messenger Service - Allows you to redirect connection requests from blocked IP addresses to preconfigured text and html pages to inform the visitor that they have been blocked in the firewall. This can be particularly useful for those with a large user base and help process support requests more efficiently
• Country Code blocking - Allows you to deny or allow access by ISO Country Code
• Port Flooding Detection - Per IP, per Port connection flooding detection and mitigation to help block DOS attacks
• DirectAdmin UI integration
• Updated Webmin UI integration
• WHM root access notification (cPanel servers only)
• lfd Clustering - allows IP address blocks to be automatically propagated around a group of servers running lfd. It allows allows cluster-wide allows, removals and configuration changes
• Quick start csf - deferred startup by lfd for servers with large block and/or allow lists
• Distributed Login Failure Attack detection
• Temporary IP allows (with TTL)
• IPv6 Support with ip6tables
• Integrated UI - no need for a separate Control Panel or Apache to use the csf configuration
• Integrated support for cse within the Integrated UI
• cPanel Reseller access to per reseller configurable options Unblock, Deny, Allow and Search IP address blocks
• System Statistics - Basic graphs showing the performance of the server, e.g. Load Averages, CPU Usage, Memory Usage, etc
• ipset support for large IP lists
• ...lots more!

The reason we have developed this suite is that we have found over the years of providing server services that many of the tools available for the task are either over-complex, not user friendly, or simply aren't as effective as they could be.

ConfigServer Firewall (csf)

We have developed an SPI iptables firewall that is comprehensive, straight-forward, easy and flexible to configure

Login Failure Daemon (lfd)

To complement the ConfigServer Firewall (csf), we have developed a Login Failure Daemon (lfd) process that runs all the time and periodically (every X seconds) scans the latest log file entries for login attempts against your server that continually fail within a short period of time. Such attempts are often called "Brute-force attacks" and the daemon process responds very quickly to such patterns and blocks offending IP's quickly. Other similar products run every x minutes via cron and as such often miss break-in attempts until after they've finished, our daemon eliminates such long waits and makes it much more effective at performing its task.

Login tracking is an extension of lfd, it keeps track of POP3 and IMAP logins and limits them to X connections per hour per account per IP address.

Control Panel Configuration Interface

To help with the ease and flexibility of the suite we have developed a front-end to both csf and lfd which is accessible by the root account through cPanel, DirectAdmin and Webmin. From there you can modify the configuration files and stop, start and restart the applications and check their status. This makes configuring and managing the firewall very simple indeed.

ChangeLog:

9.24   - UI html fixes

9.23   - Added upgrade note to the top of the UI if available

         UI improvements for integrated cse and interface to cxs

	 Added Scroll to Top/Bottom buttons

	 Consolidate images, css and javascript into a common directory in the
	 installer