Please add a note to warn about possible Blue => Green access the proxy in the “Firewall Default Policy” guide

According to the Firewall Default Policy guide, by default the firewall does not allow the Blue zone to reach the Green zone. However the Network based access control guide states that “If the proxy is activated and used for both zones (blue and green), the blue zone is allowed to reach the green network via http or https, regardless of the settings of the firewall”.

IMHO a note should be added to the Firewall Default Policy to warn about this, linking to the Network based access control guide. I tried to do it myself, but I guess it has been deleted…

Can I add a note to the Firewall Default Policy page or will it be deleted again?

why run the web proxy on green and blue?

I’m not sure if I understood your questions, see here.

Its simple, web proxy is not required for normal router operations.

So why complicate your install with something you don’t need?

IPFire is not just a router.
A proxy is a possible functionality for an internet gateway.

But when you actually need to use it?

Because its not needed for green or blue to access the internet. I noticed orange has it but that is supposed to be isolated away from blue and green.

https://www.ipfire.org/docs/configuration/network/proxy/general#security

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If you have access from Orange to the web proxy on the firewall then you have created firewall rules to allow that.

The default for Orange to the Firewall is Closed.
https://www.ipfire.org/docs/configuration/firewall/default-policy#default-zone-ruleset

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See for instance here and here. The key is to block the clients from accessing the web directly with the firewall, so that they can only access allowed content through the proxy.

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Apart from the IP Address Blocklists firewall plugin, which addresses only some known threats blacklists, from what I know this is the only content filtering method able to block access to websites even if the clients directly enter IP addresses in the browser, which instead would easily allow to bypass DNS based filtering methods.

To enable the proxy filter with IPFire, see the URL filter plugin and the UT1 Blacklists.

In order to filter both HTTP and HTTPS traffic, you should set the proxy with Conventional mode (non-transparent mode), and then enter the proxy address in the network settings on each client machine.

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I would have to look at some things, but I don’t see why anyone couldn’t patch a routing so 80 and 443 are redirected to the proxy port (800)

If you mean to use the proxy in transparent mode, that would work only for HTTP traffic.

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For example: Like all output from green is routed to the proxy, so there is no client configuration needed and everything is forced through it ercrypted or not.

According to the reference I gave you, transparent mode works only for HTTP traffic, not for HTTPS traffic. If you find a way to make it work also for encrypted traffic, please report it here.

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I wonder how I can test this and what it looks for.

Because the request URI is never encrypted, nor its GET array or even its source/destination MAC address. So if they are not using the system’s DNS it shouldn’t matter. Only the message body part of the packet is encrypted.

To get around the liability trap of bumping squid or setting up MITM, you use and intercept on the SNI header instance.

But its been a long time I messed with squid and I’m still surprised its still around.

I wasn’t aware that this was the case, but the options in webproxy–>
“Disable internal proxy access to Green from other subnets“
”Disable internal proxy access from Blue to other subnets"
effectively prevent this, don’t they?

There is some other variables too that are associated with iptables.

Problem is, it was designed for a different network type: a single network. So the only real valid use for squid would be on a red-green type or just using green or just blue with it.

Instead of it being on green or blue or both, Squid should be patched on this system between them and red. However, you can’t use red’s network directly, as that is the isp’s however, there should be a way to double nat so it has an intermediate network for squid to be on.

It should be replaced with something better, but in all aspects even the most sophisticated proxies can be bypassed because people work on finding ways to bypass them all, and share how to do it.

Yes.

So does anybody agree that a note about this should be added to the Firewall Default Policy guide? I someone can confirm this, I will add the note.

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I would say that anyone who uses the proxy will know how to use it to restrict access and/or to log on to the internet, and not for storing internet traffic. If you look at the options, you will also see that a DNS server can be reached in green from blue.
But a footnote can never hurt.

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