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.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Section 1: Initial Configuration
6
Section 2: Securing the Network
13
Section 3: Going beyond the Firewall

Certificates – a brief introduction

OPNsense uses certificates to ensure secure communication between nodes in services such as OpenVPN and IPsec, and HTTP services such as Captive Portal, web proxies, and WebGUI.

The available types of certificates in OPNsense are the following:

  • Certificate Authority (CA): A CA is a trusted entity that issues trusted certificates. On OPNsense, this will be used to issue self-signed certificates.
  • Server type certificate: This certificate must be used on the server side of encrypted communication. On OPNsense, you will enable it in services such as OpenVPN or WebGUI, for example.
  • Client type certificate: This type of certificate will be used on the other side of client-server encrypted communication. On OPNsense, we use it, for example, on OpenVPN clients' certificates and on some plugins such as NGINX or HAProxy.
  • Combined Client/Server: This type of certificate can be used on both the server side and client side.
  • ...