<> == Rationale == Since we primarily provide "Internet hosting" and not "shell servers," our primary concern is keeping our services up and reliable. To this end, we try to limit user actions as much as possible without stopping those users from doing reasonable things. One way we enforce this is by disallowing all network traffic that isn't covered by a specific "whitelist" rule in our {{{ferm}}} firewall configuration. We try to limit connections to particular IP addresses, as well, whenever feasible.<> == fwtool == To make it easy for us to manage these per-user tools, we've developed an administrative tool called {{{fwtool}}}. It generates the appropriate {{{ferm}}} configuration using input from the file {{{/afs/hcoop.net/common/etc/domtool/firewall/user.rules}}}. The portal has [[https://members.hcoop.net/portal/sec|an interface for requesting modifications to this file]] on your behalf. You should also be able to view this file directly, if curious. At the moment, {{{fwtool}}} supports these directives<>: * {{{user Client ports [hosts]}}}: Allow {{{user}}} to connect to remote hosts on any of the given {{{ports}}}, which are specified as a comma-separated list of single port numbers. The space-separated list {{{hosts}}} is optional. If omitted, connections are allowed to any remote IP addresses. If included, {{{hosts}}} provides an exhaustive list of the IP addresses and/or hostnames to which to allow connections. * {{{user Server ports [hosts]}}}: The analogue of the above, for the privileges of listening and accepting connections. * {{{user ProxiedServer ports}}}: Allow {{{user}}} to listen and accept connections on the {{{ports}}}, but only for connections from the public Apache servers. This is useful for things like running your own web server/application that Apache proxies, which you can configure using `mod_proxy`. * {{{user LocalServer ports}}}: Allow {{{user}}} to listen and accept connections on the {{{ports}}}, but only for connections from the local server to itself. This is useful if you have software that needs to locally communicate using the network, but does not need to be visible to the Internet. When requesting `*Server` rules, `ports` must be above `50000`, and you should avoid using ports too close to another member (see AllocatedFirewallPorts for allocated ports). A good rule is requesting ports skipping ten at a time (e.g. if the highest allocated ports were 50001 and 50002, you should request ports starting at 50010). If you have already requested ports, try to keep them near to your other ports if possible. We hope to automate port allocation in the future, and are isolating ad-hoc allocations to the upper range of ports to prevent problems later on. Both TCP and UDP are opened for user firewall rules at this time. The next iteration of `fwtool` will allow setting rules for each protocol independently. == Common Rules == On `shelob` (the web server), outgoing http and https are permitted to all hosts by default. On `marsh` (the shell server), outgoing http, https, git, and subversion are permitted to all hosts. mail and xmpp are permitted to the hcoop mail and xmpp hosts. IRC is permitted to the following networks generally (you may request access to additional networks on a personal basis, but we cannot allow access to networks known for any unlawful/shady activity): * freenode * oftc * mozilla * Libera.Chat Rules and recipes for common requests: irc network:: marsh USERNAME Client 6667 IRC_NETWORK_HOSTNAME == The Next Generation == The current firewall system is fairly limited and directly ported from what we were using on Fyodor, so it doesn't take advantage of the entire DomTool infrastructure. See FirewallTool for information on the next generation replacement. ---- CategorySystemAdministration CategoryMemberManual