Book Image

OPNsense Beginner to Professional

By : Julio Cesar Bueno de Camargo
5 (1)
Book Image

OPNsense Beginner to Professional

5 (1)
By: Julio Cesar Bueno de Camargo

Overview of this book

OPNsense is one of the most powerful open source firewalls and routing platforms available. With OPNsense, you can now protect networks using features that were only previously available to closed source commercial firewalls. This book is a practical guide to building a comprehensive network defense strategy using OPNsense. You’ll start with the basics, understanding how to install, configure, and protect network resources using native features and additional OPNsense plugins. Next, you’ll explore real-world examples to gain in-depth knowledge of firewalls and network defense. You’ll then focus on boosting your network defense, preventing cyber threats, and improving your knowledge of firewalling using this open source security platform. By the end of this OPNsense book, you’ll be able to install, configure, and manage the OPNsense firewall by making the most of its features.

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Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
1
Section 1: Initial Configuration
Section 1: Initial Configuration
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: An OPNsense Overview
Chapter 1: An OPNsense Overview
About the OPNsense project
Rock-solid FreeBSD – HardenedBSD
Why OPNsense?
Features and common deployments
Where to get help?
Summary
3
Chapter 2: Installing OPNsense
Chapter 2: Installing OPNsense
Technical requirements
Versions and requirements
Downloading and installing OPNsense
Updating firmware
Installing plugins
Advanced – Accessing the CLI through SSH
FreeBSD packages
Summary
4
Chapter 3: Configuring an OPNsense Network
Chapter 3: Configuring an OPNsense Network
Technical requirements
Hardware considerations
Basic network configuration
Types of interfaces
Exploring virtual IPs
Network diagnostics and troubleshooting
Summary
5
Chapter 4: System Configuration
Chapter 4: System Configuration
Technical requirements
Managing users and groups
External authentication
Certificates – a brief introduction
General settings
Advanced settings
Configuration backup
Summary
6
Section 2: Securing the Network
Section 2: Securing the Network
7
Chapter 5: Firewall
Chapter 5: Firewall
Technical requirements
Understanding firewalling concepts
Firewall aliases
The firewall rules
Firewall settings
Diagnostics and troubleshooting
Summary
8
Chapter 6: Network Address Translation (NAT)
Chapter 6: Network Address Translation (NAT)
Technical requirements
NAT concepts
Port forwarding
Outbound NAT
One-to-one NAT
Summary
9
Chapter 7: Traffic Shaping
Chapter 7: Traffic Shaping
Technical requirements
Introduction to traffic shaping
Possible scenarios
Creating rules
Monitoring
Summary
10
Chapter 8: Virtual Private Networking
Chapter 8: Virtual Private Networking
Technical requirements
OPNsense core VPN types
Site-to-site deployments using IPsec
VPN deployments using OpenVPN
OpenVPN diagnostics
Summary
11
Chapter 9: Multi-WAN – Failover and Load Balancing
Chapter 9: Multi-WAN – Failover and Load Balancing
Technical requirements
Failover and load balancing
Policy-based routing
Troubleshooting
Summary
12
Chapter 10: Reporting
Chapter 10: Reporting
Technical requirements
System health graphs
Understanding Netflow and how to use it
Exploring real-time traffic
Troubleshooting common problems in the network using Netflow and graphs
Summary
13
Section 3: Going beyond the Firewall
Section 3: Going beyond the Firewall
14
Chapter 11: Deploying DHCP in OPNsense
Chapter 11: Deploying DHCP in OPNsense
Technical requirements
DHCP concepts
DHCP server
DHCP relay
Diagnostics
Summary
15
Chapter 12: DNS Services
Chapter 12: DNS Services
Technical requirements
Core DNS services
DNS plugins
DDNS
Troubleshooting
Summary
16
Chapter 13: Web Proxy
Chapter 13: Web Proxy
Technical requirements
Web proxy fundamentals
Basic configuration
Web filtering
Reading logs and troubleshooting
Summary
17
Chapter 14: Captive Portal
Chapter 14: Captive Portal
Technical requirements
Captive Portal concepts
Setting up a guest network
Web proxy integration
Common issues
Summary
18
Chapter 15: Network Intrusion (Detection and Prevention) Systems
Chapter 15: Network Intrusion (Detection and Prevention) Systems
Technical requirements
IDS and IPS definition
Suricata and Netmap
Rulesets
Configuration
SSL fingerprint
Troubleshooting
Summary
19
Chapter 16: Next-Generation Firewall with Zenarmor
Chapter 16: Next-Generation Firewall with Zenarmor
Technical requirements
Layer7 application control with Zenarmor
Choosing a Zenarmor edition
Installing and setting up the Zenarmor plugin
Summary
20
Chapter 17: Firewall High Availability
Chapter 17: Firewall High Availability
Technical requirements
High availability concepts
Configuring high availability
Testing the HA configuration
Summary
21
Chapter 18: Website Protection with OPNsense
Chapter 18: Website Protection with OPNsense
Technical requirements
Publishing websites to the world
About the NGINX plugin
Installing and configuring the NGINX plugin
Adding WAF rules
Troubleshooting
Summary
22
Chapter 19: Command-Line Interface
Chapter 19: Command-Line Interface
Technical requirements
Directory structure
Managing the backend daemons
Useful system commands
Advanced customization
Filtering log files
Summary
23
Chapter 20: API – Application Programming Interface
Chapter 20: API – Application Programming Interface
Technical requirements
Concepts
Setting up API keys
API calls
Summary
Why subscribe?
24
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Core DNS services

The DNS protocol is the base of our modern internet. It makes it easy for users to find websites and other services available on the internet without remembering every website’s Internet Protocol (IP) address. To resolve website names to IP addresses, we have two classes of DNS services—servers that host domain entries, and recursive resolvers that translate domain names to IP addresses. OPNsense can become a DNS server and host domain entries. It isn’t recommended to transform a firewall into a DNS server for security best practices, so we’ll explore only the DNS resolver feature in this chapter.

Default DNS resolvers on OPNsense

OPNsense has two DNS resolver services installed by default—Dnsmasq and Unbound. The last one became the default service since the 17.7 OPNsense version. We’ll discuss both services one by one.

Unbound

As the maintainers define it, "Unbound is a validating, recursive, caching DNS...

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