Software

pfSense – A move to an easier life?

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Even up to having the FTTP installed I was a MikroTik router through and through kidn of guy however running my CHR in the way I did meant some trade offs were made and my day to day work life forking further away from Mikrotik based or even theorised usage meant that my mind went that way for my home network as well. I did the unthinkable.

I’ve repurposed my DellR210ii which has been rebuilt with a Xeon E3-1220 v2, 8GB of RAM and an SSD. I also added in some Noctua fans to keep the noise down below a whisper as the rebuild meant it won’t be working hard as the whole install is now “bare metal” rather than the complexitiy of being virtualised.

Has it made a huge difference to my life? No. I still have a working router/firewall however it is now a decent GUI rather than an app that had to be levered onto my laptop (I’m also now a Mac boi) and to be honest the OpenVPN implementation has been a breeze to get working as has all of the firewalling and NAt rules as well as pushing on with trying to squeeze more from the LAN itself (10Gb backbone and tolerance).

I’ve gone for pfSense+ as it’s my home firewall and I qualify as such for the + usage FOC (for now) and I’m pretty happy with it. Time will tell but currently I don’t see me folding back to ESXi with a CHR running on top.

unRAID SSH Key Exchange

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There’s a lot more to update you on than just this but my home setup has evolved a fair bit to the point where I need unRAID to unRAID RSYNC capability and previously I’ve done this manually. Now with SpaceInvaderOne’s guide on SSH key exchange. I have automated it. Happy days!

After a small break away…

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I’m semi back. Not fully into the swing of things as I don’t thing the online gaming will ever reignite but the networky bit may evolve slightly into less Mikrotik, more variety and possibly some connectivity stuff as well.

Anyway… First update for a while, notable things to mention, PC has been upgraded to 12th Gen i7, laptop has changed now to an M1 Air and I’m moved away from the Ubiquiti wireless onto Zyxel Nebula.

Now that’s out of the way, living in the small out of city town I do, FTTP is due to be installed in 2 weeks. Fingers crossed it goes well (Openreach can go without issues sometimes).

Honeypot and Blacklist v3

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It’s been a while since I looked at updating this and that’s mostly due to how my working focus has shifted away from the firewall and onto some hotspot related things so the bulk of my research has gone into that however after a visitor to my website engaged with me regarding this I thought it the right time to drop this almost “final” implementation to my blacklist script.

As much as I’d like to have written a totally automated list that dynamically adjusted, there are far cleverer people out there doing this more or less as a day job. I’ve been using now the implementation from Joshaven, some loose geographic blocks and then the IntrusDave list from the MikroTik forum.

I’ve finished that up with a far less brutal approach on something to pick out port scanners and any other snoopers;

/ip firewall filter
add action=accept chain=input comment="ACCEPT ESTABLISHED & RELATED INTERNET" connection-state=established,related in-interface=ether2_INTERNET
add action=accept chain=input comment="ACCEPT WHITELIST" src-address-list=WHITELIST
add action=accept chain=input comment="ACCEPT PING" protocol=icmp
add action=drop chain=input comment="DROP BLACKLISTED INPUT" in-interface=ether2_INTERNET src-address-list=myblocklist
add action=add-src-to-address-list address-list=myblocklist address-list-timeout=1w chain=input comment="BLACKLISTING TCP" dst-port=22,23,80,123,1723,443,8080,10000,5060,5061 in-interface=ether2_INTERNET protocol=tcp src-address-list=!WHITELIST
add action=add-src-to-address-list address-list=myblocklist address-list-timeout=1w chain=input comment="BLACKLISTING UDP" dst-port=123,53,5060,5061,3478 in-interface=ether2_INTERNET protocol=udp src-address-list=!WHITELIST
add action=drop chain=input comment="DROP ALL" in-interface=ether2_INTERNET

This approach is roughly netting me about 500 blocked IP’s on my private connection and some 2000 on my colo unit.