Linux Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Ethernet Interface Requirements and Configuration

Linux Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Ethernet Interface Requirements and ...
1 de 7
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-demilitarized-zone-howto/
Main menu
BASH Shell
Linux
CentOS
Debian / Ubuntu
Ubuntu Linux
Suse
RedHat and Friends
Slackware Linux
UNIX
AIX
Mac os x
FreeBSD
FreeBSD Jails (VPS)
Openbsd
Solaris
Troubleshooting
Nginx
Networking
MySQL
See all tutorial topics
Blog
About
Contact us
Forum
RSS/FEED
Linux FAQ / Howtos
Linux Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Ethernet Interface Requirements and

Configuration
by Vivek Gite on December 15, 2007 25 comments last updated at January 2, 2008
Q. Can you tell me more about Linux Demilitarized Zone and Ethernet Interface Card Requirements for typical DMZ
implementation? How can a rule be set to route traffic to certain machines on a DMZ for HTTP or SMTP?
A. Demilitarized zone, used to secure an internal network from external access. You can use Linux firewall to create DMZ easily.
There are many different ways to design a network with a DMZ. The basic method is to use a single Linux firewall with 3 Ethernet
cards. The following simple example discusses DMZ setup and forwarding public traffic to internal servers.
Sample Example DMZ Setup

Consider the following DMZ host with 3 NIC:
[a] eth0 with 192.168.1.1 private IP address - Internal LAN ~ Desktop system
[b] eth1 with 202.54.1.1 public IP address - WAN connected to ISP router
[c] eth2 with 192.168.2.1 private IP address - DMZ connected to Mail / Web / DNS and other private servers
(Fig 01: A typical Linux based DMZ setup [ Image modified from Wikipedia article] )
Routing traffic between public and DMZ server

To set a rule for routing all incoming SMTP requests to a dedicated Mail server at IP address 192.168.2.2 and port 25, network address translation (NAT)
calls a PREROUTING table to forward the packets to the proper destination.
This can be done with appropriate IPTABLES firewall rule to route traffic between LAN to DMZ and public interface to DMZ. For example, all
10/10/2012 15:02
2 de 7
incoming mail traffic from internet (202.54.1.1) can be send to DMZ mail server (192.168.2.2) with the following iptables prerouting rule (assuming
default DROP all firewall policy):
### end init firewall .. Start DMZ stuff ####
# forward traffic between DMZ and LAN
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth2 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth2 -o eth0 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
# forward traffic between DMZ and WAN servers SMTP, Mail etc
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth2 -o eth1 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -o eth2 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
# Route incoming SMTP (port 25 ) traffic to DMZ server 192.168.2.2
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i eth1 -d 202.54.1.1 --dport 25 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.2.2
# Route incoming HTTP (port 80 ) traffic to DMZ server load balancer IP 192.168.2.3
# Route incoming HTTPS (port 443 ) traffic to DMZ server reverse load balancer IP 192.168.2.4
### End DMZ .. Add other rules ###
Where,
-i eth1 : Wan network interface
-d 202.54.1.1 : Wan public IP address
--dport 25 : SMTP Traffic
-j DNAT : DNAT target used set the destination address of the packet with --to-destination
--to-destination 192.168.2.2: Mail server ip address (private IP)
Multi port redirection

You can also use multiport iptables module to matches a set of source or destination ports. Up to 15 ports can be specified. For example, route incoming
HTTP (port 80 ) and HTTPS ( port 443) traffic to WAN server load balancer IP 192.168.2.3:
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i eth1 -d 202.54.1.1 -m multiport --dport 80,443 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.2.3
Pitfalls
Above design has few pitfalls:
1. Single point of failure - The firewall becomes a single point of failure for the network.
2. Hardware - The firewall Host must be able to handle all of the traffic going to the DMZ as well as the internal network.
Linux / BSD Firewall Distros

If you find above discussion little hard to digest, I suggest getting a Linux / BSD distribution which aims to provide a simple-to-manage firewall appliance
based on PC hardware to setup DMZ and gateways:
IPCop
Shorewall
PfSense (FreeBSD based)
Further readings:
Wes Sonnenreich. Building Linux And Openbsd Firewalls. - A step-by-step guide to bulding a commercial-grade firewall with open source
software.
Eric Maiwald. Network Security: A Beginner's Guide. Second Edition. - It gives a brief overview of most of the security related topics, perhaps one
of the best books to start with.
Michael Rash. Linux Firewalls: Attack Detection and Response with iptables, psad, and fwsnort [ILLUSTRATED] - Linux Firewalls discusses the
technical details of the iptables firewall and the Netfilter framework that are built into the Linux kernel, and it explains how they provide strong
filtering, Network Address Translation (NAT), state tracking, and application layer inspection capabilities that rival many commercial tools. You'll
learn how to deploy iptables as an IDS with psad and fwsnort and how to build a strong, passive authentication layer around iptables with fwknop.
Updated for accuracy.
Tweet
18
0
Curtir
14
StumbleUpon
You should follow me on twitter here or grab rss feed to keep track of new changes.
{ 25 comments read them below or add one }

George January 2, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I want to add that theres a mistake in the iptables rules: iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i eth2 -d 202.54.1.1 dport 25 -j DNAT
10/10/2012 15:02
3 de 7
to-destination 192.168.2.2. The problem is coming from -i eth2, the correct way is -i eth1 because we want packets coming from internet to be
redirect to the DMZ.
Reply
vivek January 2, 2008 at 4:21 pm
George,
Thanks for the heads up.
Reply
Sathish August 1, 2008 at 8:35 am
Hi,
I have configured the DMZ mentioned in the above article. Routing concept is working fine, where as if I click on my LAN/Other networks by
accessing the web-page [ex :www.xyz.com or http://xyz.com, it showing Apache test page, where as domain related page not working, what may
be the problem.
Please help me out.
Thanks,
Sathish
Reply
vivek August 1, 2008 at 9:09 am
You need to configure Apache properly.
Reply
mirza August 5, 2008 at 2:38 am
after Georges correction.
is the script already updated ?
Reply
vivek August 5, 2008 at 5:41 am
mirza,
Yes, it was updated after Georges correction..
Reply
umesh October 7, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Hi,
I have 8 public Ips and want to configure FreeBSD as router and firewall and also want to use all 8 public IPs for my servers so pls can you suggest
me how to do this. I am very confused.
Pls help.
Reply
Gerald Sagoonick January 19, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Nice one
Reply
satya February 27, 2009 at 7:32 am
I tried with 2 network card to set as gateway server on Ubuntu 8.10 lts, its not working. Is thr any tips to troubleshoot
Reply
Vivek Gite February 27, 2009 at 7:51 am
DMZ needs 3 network card.
Reply
Nepguy February 27, 2009 at 9:00 am
Hey,
Great Stuff !
But i have a little different case with me and wondering if you could help me.
I want to put a server ( Mail and proxy) in same machine and instead of assigning Private IP in the server in DMZ, I want to assign a public Ip.
10/10/2012 15:02
4 de 7
So can you please help me out with the iptables and routing in the linux server having 3 Nics.
Thanks in advance.
Reply
Vivek Gite February 27, 2009 at 11:09 am
Rules remains same and replace private IP with public one.
Reply
Nepguy March 2, 2009 at 9:48 am
Doesnt any NATing thing required here?
Reply
satya March 19, 2009 at 6:32 am
I am having 3 network card with
1..public Ip
2. 192.168.0.0-servers
3. 192.168.1.0-Lan
I tried setting as router to allow internet access on lan , it dint work, can u help me out
Reply
V.Balaviswanathan April 29, 2009 at 2:32 pm
How to use iptables on a Debian or Ubuntu systems? You the ufw utility as a firewall and so how can one use that to forward or deny the ip
packets?
Please help me
Reply
yshri June 4, 2009 at 8:34 am
hey, great article. Very informative and helped me a lot. But in my case, i found it risky and dont want to use 3 interfaces on the same machine.
Instead, I want to configure two firewall machines one sits in front of DMZ and other sits in front of Local LAN. Could you please explore in
little in depth the configuration and setup required in this ? If you could give a diagram of it would be of great help to me. Thanks a lot.
Reply
PG June 16, 2009 at 10:32 am
Does this iptables rules share internet to the local LAN users?
I want to implement like this:
INTERNET(pub ip)LINUX ROUTER(pvt ip) PROXY/MAIL SVR
|
LAN
how will be the iptable rules change if i want to direct the LAN internet access through the proxy server?
Thanks in advance.
Prakash
What will be the rules if i need to direct
Reply
PG June 16, 2009 at 10:41 am
hey,
in the earlier post, the LAN actually connects to one other NIC of LINUX Router.
Reply
Sachin March 13, 2010 at 7:29 pm
My Network setup :I have 3 network card in CentOS firewall machine connected to ADSL router
1)Public ip > 59.181.x.x which is nat on router to 192.168.1.1
2) eth0 (External interface) which had IP ADDR 192.168.1.5 and Gateway 192.168.1.1
In ifcfg-eth0 I have entry GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
3) eth1 (Lan network) which has IP ADDR 192.168.2.1 and connected to switch1
In ifcfg-eth1 I have not mentioned any GAETWAY
4) eth2 (DMZ) which has IP ADDR 192.168.0.50 and connected to switch2
10/10/2012 15:02
5 de 7
In ifcfg-eth2 I have not mentioned any GATEWAY

5) Webserver is connected in DMZ network and has IP ADDR 192.16.0.51 (other Centos machine)
My Problem :I am able to ssh from firewall machine to 192.168.0.51 and vice versa.ALso I am able to ping 192.168.1.5 from 192.168.0.51, BUT I am not able to
ping 192.168.1.1 which is GATEWAY to 192.1681.5
I want my machine 192.168.0.51 to access outside network (internet) i.e it should ping 59.181.x.x
Can someone suggest solution for this problem?
Reply
sparc86 May 8, 2010 at 9:07 pm
@Sachin, could you show us your firewall script and your routing table ?
Reply
Mike December 1, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Why would you want to include these rules:
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth2 -m state state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth2 -o eth0 -m state state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
Since eth2 is on DMZ wouldnt you want to completely separate it from the lan ?
Reply
Andr Ricardo March 5, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Great!
Reply
Akhim March 23, 2011 at 1:43 am
great article Vivek Gite!
Reply
A.Jesin April 22, 2011 at 8:02 am
Someone please help me Im struggling to get port forwarding working. I have 2 machines
system 1. with 2 ethernet ports
eth1 public (ip 192.168.56.2)
eth0 connected to system 2 (192.168.0.240)
system 2. with 1 ethernet port
eth0 connected to system1 (192.168.0.201) running a web server at 80
On system 1 Ive set the following rule
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i eth1 -d 192.168.56.2 dport 80 -j DNAT to-destination 192.168.0.201
but it doesnt work at all when I access http://192.168.56.2/
But http://192.168.0.201/ works indicating that port 80 is open on system 2
Reply
origama June 19, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Hi,
nice article, like every reading from this blog.
I just want to suggest another distro: Zeroshell.
Ok I am a little bit patriot (its an italian dostro) but I am using zeroshell since a year ago now and I find it is really simple and effective.
Reply
Leave a Comment
Name *
E-mail *
Website
You can use these HTML tags and attributes for your code and commands: <strong> <em> <ol> <li> <u> <ul> <kbd> <blockquote> <pre> <a href=""
title="">
10/10/2012 15:02
6 de 7
Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

Security Question:
What is 6 + 7 ?
Solve the simple math so we know that you are a human and not a bot.
Tagged as: apache dmz, demilitarized zone, dmz configuration, dmz firewall, dmz host, dmz router, dnat, forward traffic, internal servers, iptables dmz, linux dmz, linux firewall dmz, load
balancer, private ip address, private servers, public interface, public traffic, route traffic, sendmail dmz, shorewall dmz, smoothwall dmz
Previous Faq: Explain Linux / UNIX dot-files

Next Faq: Mac OS X Remove SSH Known Host
Follow us @ Youtube | Twitter | Google +
nixCraft no Facebook
Curtir
24,586 pessoas curtiram nixCraft.
Ashish
Nyaradzo
George
Tahiri
Febrian
Puneet
Antonio
Nazmul
Phisit
Plug-in social do Facebook
Sysadmin To Be Resources
20 Linux system monitoring tools every sysAdmin should know
20 Linux server hardening security tips
Linux: 20 Iptables examples for new sysAdmins
My 10 Unix command line mistakes
Top 25 PHP security best practices for Sys admins
The novice guide to buying a Linux laptop
Top 20 OpenSSH server best security practices
Related FAQs
Troubleshoot Linux / UNIX bind dns server zone problems with named-checkzone tool
How To Run Linux Web Server / Service on Private IP Network
10/10/2012 15:02
7 de 7
OpenBSD Set / Configure Time Zone

Linux / UNIX: Set The Time Zone On a Per User Basis
BIND DNS: Disable Dynamic Updates
2006-2012 nixCraft. All rights reserved. Cannot be reproduced without written permission.
Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Questions or Comments | Sitemap
10/10/2012 15:02

Linux Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Ethernet Interface Requirements and Configuration

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Linux Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Ethernet Interface Requirements and Configuration

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Linux Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Ethernet Interface Requirements and ...

Linux FAQ / Howtos