Feature Suggestion for firewall rule

Greetings everyone!

Something I don’t like when I setup networks is that in firewalls there is no feature directly to disallow connection from lan clients to Gateways. A simple button, with a laconic but clear description about it’s function. I come often into disallowing lan networks direct connection to web interfaces of basic gateway and node machines. Seen that in big hotels and organizations too. For example: I join a big transit station, I use a basic and harmless tool like arp-scan and in a few secs and assuming by the network alphanumerics I get into gateway’s web interface, the most ethically easy way. No special tool, no scanning e.t.c

I was thinking that software firewall solutions or related appliances should make this path fool proof with a explanatory description. Alas many sysadmins just buy expensive and bleeding edge equipment instead of toggling features and doing basic iptables rulesets. Perhaps they are not sysadmins at all and they trust sale leaflets and help boards.

I am talking about SoHo and Small organizations - Hotels big or small, Local dpts of Administration and local authority establishments. I haven’t ethically found out accidentally this elsewhere. This must be ISP router > Machine with firewall > LAN. Perhaps small routers -/+ mostly not managed or vlan capable, updated last century.

I am against also the firewall solutions to offer connection to commercial vpn services. I usually do kill switches on the lan machines or between them and the firewall solutions. With or without vpn. Helps me for many other reasons, outside this threat’s purpose.

So this feature of mangling off the connections to the gateway, as described above and in simple buttons of toggling on/off or something similar sounds reasonable? What are your thoughts about it? What else an admin is to do in the most efficient and fast ways?

You can make a firewall group. to block or allow users access to WUI.

You can change firewall default to block everything.

You can block blue access to WUI.

www.ipfire.org - Blue Access

You can Guardian 2.0 addon

You could make a contribute a patch to add said button.

The power of open source.

Greetings and thanks you for your reply HVAC!

I tested and counted the clicks and typed entries to achieve what I mentioned above,

in creating kill switches or restrict connections and traffic to various IPs. I used Firewall submenus-pages 1 and 3. I tried to find out if my suggestion makes sense in accordance with the scopes and general appearance of the Web interface of IPfire. So for now I don’t see that really adds anything other than “bells and whistles”. Would add up nicely on a commercial app I guess. The properties page and the rule creation pages are extremely easy to comprehend, use and modify.

So I conclusion, if I get my hands on making buttons I will rethink twice so that I make

something really useful. Case closed.

Unfortunately I had no free time to test and think about the Guardian Addon. I will get into that at some point as soon as I sort out my priorities.

Best regards