Linux Prevent leaks with Linux & iptables

Staff

Are you maye aware of any Linux (ubuntu) solution, which can be used as Comodo on Windows?
Default gufw can not be configured that way, I haven't been able to find a proper simple solution....

Thank you

EDITED ON 21 Aug 12

EDITED ON 24 Nov 12: added important note for some Linux users, see bottom of message

EDITED ON 02 Jun 15: please refer to https://airvpn.org/faq/software_lock for a more advanced set of rules

WARNING: this guide assumes that you have no IPv6 connectivity. If you have, you should block outgoing IPv6 packets while connected to the VPN with "ip6tables". Please see https://airvpn.org/faq/software_lock

Hello!

You can use iptables, a very powerful packet filtering and NAT program (probably one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful of all). iptables is already included in all official Ubuntu distros and most Linux distros, anyway if you don't have it just install it with aptitude.

Adding the following simple rules will prevent leaks in case of [accidental] VPN disconnection. In this example, it is assumed that your network interface is eth+ (change it as appropriate; for example, you might have wlan0 for a WiFi connection).

a.b.c.d is the entry-IP address of the Air server you connect to. You can find out the address simply looking at the line "remote" of your air.ovpn configuration file. In case of doubts, just ask us. Some of the following rules might be redundant if you have already chains.

Assumptions: you are in a 192.168.0.0/16 network and your router is a DHCP server. You have a a physical network interface named eth*. The tun adapter is tun* and the loopback interface is lo.

iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT #allow loopback access
iptables -A OUTPUT -d 255.255.255.255 -j ACCEPT #make sure you can communicate with any DHCP server
iptables -A INPUT -s 255.255.255.255 -j ACCEPT #make sure you can communicate with any DHCP server
iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.0.0/16 -d 192.168.0.0/16 -j ACCEPT #make sure that you can communicate within your own network
iptables -A OUTPUT -s 192.168.0.0/16 -d 192.168.0.0/16 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth+ -o tun+ -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i tun+ -o eth+ -j ACCEPT # make sure that eth+ and tun+ can communicate
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o tun+ -j MASQUERADE # in the POSTROUTING chain of the NAT table, map the tun+ interface outgoing packet IP address, cease examining rules and let the header be modified, so that we don't have to worry about ports or any other issue - please check this rule with care if you have already a NAT table in your chain
iptables -A OUTPUT -o eth+ ! -d a.b.c.d -j DROP # if destination for outgoing packet on eth+ is NOT a.b.c.d, drop the packet, so that nothing leaks if VPN disconnects

When you add the above rules, take care about pre-existing rules, if you have already some tables, and always perform a test to verify that the subsequent behavior is what you expect: when you disconnect from the VPN, all outgoing traffic should be blocked, except for a reconnection to an Air server.

In order to block specific programs only, some more sophisticated usage of iptables is needed, and you will also need to know which ports those programs use. See "man iptables" for all the features and how to make the above rules persistent or not according to your needs.

Warning: the following applies ONLY for Linux users who don't have resolvconf installed and don't use up & down OpenVPN directives with update-resolv-conf script

In this case, your system has no way to process the DNS push from our servers. Therefore your system will just tunnel the DNS queries with destination the DNS IP address specified in the "nameserver" lines of the /etc/resolv.conf file. But if your first nameserver is your router IP, the queries will be sent to your router which in turn will send them out unencrypted. Solution is straightforward: edit the /etc/resolv.conf file and add the following line at the top (just an example, of course you can use any of your favorite DNS, as long as it is NOT your router):

nameserver 10.4.0.1 # in order to use AirVPN DNS

nameserver 31.220.5.106 # in order to use OpenNIC DNS only if AirVPN DNS is unavailable

Kind regards

Original thread post: https://airvpn.org/topic/1713-win-mac-bsd-block-traffic-when-vpn-disconnects/page-2?do=findComment&comment=2010