To begin using iptables, you should first add the rules for allowed inbound traffic for the services you require. The latter is often the recommended approach, as it allows pre-emptively blocking traffic, rather than having to reactively reject connections that should not be attempting to access your cloud server. Adding rulesįirewalls can commonly be configured in one of two ways, either set the default rule to accept and then block any unwanted traffic with specific rules, or by using the rules to define allowed traffic and blocking everything else. Each chain also has its policy setting which determines how the traffic is handled if it doesn’t match any specific rules, by default it’s set to accept. The chain names indicate which traffic the rules in each list will be applied to, input is for any connections coming to your cloud server, output is any leaving traffic and forward for any pass through. REJECT all - anywhere anywhere reject-with icmp-host-prohibited Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)ĪCCEPT all - anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHEDĪCCEPT tcp - anywhere anywhere state NEW tcp dpt:ssh This will print out a list of three chains, input, forward and output, like the empty rules table example output below.

On CentOS and other Red Hat variants, iptables often comes with some pre-configured rules, check the current iptable rules using the following command. Try UpCloud for free! Deploy a server in just 45 seconds Listing current rules If you are using CentOS 7, you should look into configuring firewalld, which combines the functionality of iptables and ip6tables, though it’s possible to still use iptables just the same.

The kernel module currently used for iptables only applies to IPv4 traffic, to configure firewall rules for IPv6 connections instead use ip6tables, which respond to the same command structures as iptables. The user-space application program iptables allows configuring the tables provided by the Linux kernel firewall, as well as the chains and rules it stores.

Iptables chains