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CCNA HUB > Blog > Linux > Blacklist and Whitelist using IPtables and IPset > Building Public and Private IPtables Whitelists

Building Public and Private IPtables Whitelists

By Imad Daou Leave a Comment

Post Views: 3,539

Building Professional Web Hosting Solution
Blacklist and Whitelist using IPtables and IPset

section table
  1. Listing and Tracking Suspicious Bad IP Addresses
  2. Building Public and Private IPtables Blacklists
  3. Building Public and Private IPtables Whitelists
  4. Building Public and Private IPset Blacklists
  5. Building Public and Private IPset Whitelists
Image Source
Image Source

Function as IPtables Blacklist, but it’s for White and Good IPs that you trust. Building Public and Private IPtables Whitelists is another crucial thing to allow a service such CDN cloudflare to proxy your website without IPtables blocking it. Public Whitelists will be feed by Internet source and Private Whitelist will be feed by you to allow free and specific access to services such SSH, HTTP, Mail, FTP, and so on.

Objectives:

1. Building Simple Public IPv4 Whitelists

2. Building Simple Public IPv6 Whitelists

3. Building Simple Private IPv4 Whitelists

4. Building Simple Private IPv6 Whitelists

5. Adding Simple Whitelists to Startup File

Prerequisites:

A. Basic Linux Debian, Ubuntu, or CentOS Knowledge

B. If you haven’t built a VPS yet, login to DigitalOcean or Vultr

C. Linux Hardening Rules and IPtables Firewall Labs

Recommendations:

For better performance, use VPS with at least 2 CPUs, 4G Memory, 1G Bandwidth, and SSD Storage drive.

Note: My Whitelists ACCEPT good trusted IP Addresses through Multi-port such web access ports like 80 and 443, however, it can allow access as well to other services based in your needs by simply adding the extra ports beside 80 and 443 ports.

Table of Contents

  • Building Simple Public IPv4 Whitelists
  • Building Simple Public IPv6 Whitelists
  • Building Simple Private IPv4 Whitelists
  • Building Simple Private IPv6 Whitelists
  • Adding Simple Whitelists to Startup File

Building Simple Public IPv4 Whitelists

My first Online Whitelist would be allowing web access to Cloudflare CDN based on its IPv4 list at https://www.cloudflare.com/ips-v4

Run the following steps (1 to 10)

1. Install Required Packages

Debian Based

apt-get update
aptitude install curl ipset pv grep

Red Hat Based

yum update
yum install curl ipset pv grep

2. Create a Whitelist Directory

mkdir -p /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/

3. Create the Cloudflare Whitelist Script

nano /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/cloudflare-whitelist.sh

Open the following file, copy it’s content and paste it inside cloudflare-whitelist.sh file.

Cloudflare Whitelist Script

4. Set Execution Permission

chmod +x /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/cloudflare-whitelist.sh

5. Allow only Root Access

chmod 700 -R /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/

6. Run the Cloudflare Whitelist Script

/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/cloudflare-whitelist.sh

You should see something similar to the following:

####                                                           ####
#    Preparing Cloudflare White-list Loader Script for IPtables   #
#       Please be patient. The process might take Some time       #
####                                                           ####

----------------------------------------------------
 [+] loading Cloudflare White-listed IPs...
----------------------------------------------------
--2015-05-03 10:41:27--  https://www.cloudflare.com/ips-v4
Resolving www.cloudflare.com (www.cloudflare.com)... 198.41.214.163, 198.41.215.163, 2400:cb00:2048:1::c629:d7a3, ...
Connecting to www.cloudflare.com (www.cloudflare.com)|198.41.214.163|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text]
Saving to: `/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/cloudflare.ips'

    [ <=>                                                                                                                                                                                                ] 218         --.-K/s   in 0s

2015-05-03 10:41:28 (2.16 MB/s) - `/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/cloudflare.ips' saved [218]

 [+] Loading 13 White-listed IP Addresses. Please be patient...

 Estimate Time: is based on Hardware Resources. 4000 IP Addresses will take roughly 2 to 7 Minutes to load inside the Memory.

 Elapsed Time:

0:00:00

 Done!  ##############################################] (100%)

The Cloudflare Whitelist Chain has been loaded inside the Memory along the rest of the IPtables Chains.

7. List Iptv4 IPtables Chains

iptables -S | more

IPtables chains will be listed at the top, and among them should be the CLOUDFLARE-WHITELIST chain.

8. View the Cloudflare Whitelist IPtables Chain

iptables -L CLOUDFLARE-WHITELIST -nvx | less

So, the Cloudflare list is loaded. To have this list run on the startup, I will add it later on to custom-scripts.sh startup file.

9. Create Weekly Updates

nano /etc/cron.d/cloudflare-ips-update

Add the following to cloudflare-ips-update file

MAILTO=root
30 21 * * 7   root /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/cloudflare-whitelist.sh

Save: Ctrl-X, Hit Y Key, and Enter

How to Change the Execution time?

Based on the following chart, you can modify the stars as needed.

*     *     *     *     * 
-     -     -     -     -
|     |     |     |     |
|     |     |     |     +----- Day of week (0-7)
|     |     |     +------- Month (1 - 12)
|     |     +--------- Day of month (1 - 31)
|     +----------- Hour (0 - 23)
+------------- Min (0 - 59)

10. Set Execution Permission

chmod +x /etc/cron.d/cloudflare-ips-update

Pingdom Monitoring Service

Below is a Pingdom Whitelist Script you need at step 3 above. You need to go through all the upper steps if you decide to build a Pingdom Whitelist.

As of this writing, Pingdom is a free Web Server Monitoring Service. Follow the steps above except step 1, however, don’t forget to change the name. E.g. change cloudflare-whitelist.sh to pingdom-whitelist.sh in every step to set Pingdom Whitelist.

Pingdom Whitelist Script

Note: Building Public and Private IPset Whitelists will take all those individual whitelists and combine them into one database file. IPtables will deal with IPset database module which would be lighter and faster to load. As I said in previously, gaining experience in both types Simple Individual whitelists and IPset Whitelist will make you understand the overall concept and be able to differentiate between them.

Building Simple Public IPv6 Whitelists

Based on IPv6 Cloudflare Whitelist.

Run the following steps (1 to 9)

1. Create a Whitelist Directory

mkdir -p /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/

2. Create IPv6 Cloudflare Whitelist Script

nano /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/ipv6-cloudflare-whitelist.sh

Open the following file, copy it’s content inside ipv6-cloudflare-whitelist.sh file.

IPv6 Cloudflare Whitelist Script

3. Set Execution Permission

chmod +x /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/ipv6-cloudflare-whitelist.sh

4. Allow only Root Access

chmod 700 -R /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/

5. Run the IPv6 Cloudflare Whitelist Script

/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/ipv6-cloudflare-whitelist.sh

You should see something similar to the following:

####                                                                ####
#    Preparing IPv6 Cloudflare White-list Loader Script for IPtables   #
#         Please be patient. The process might take Some time          #
####                                                                ####

-------------------------------------------------------
 [+] loading IPv6 Cloudflare White-listed IPs...
-------------------------------------------------------
--2015-05-03 21:11:00--  https://www.cloudflare.com/ips-v6
Resolving www.cloudflare.com (www.cloudflare.com)... 198.41.215.163, 198.41.214.163, 2400:cb00:2048:1::c629:d6a3, ...
Connecting to www.cloudflare.com (www.cloudflare.com)|198.41.215.163|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text]
Saving to: `/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/ipv6-cloudflare.ips'

    [ <=>                                                                                                                                                                                                ] 74          --.-K/s   in 0s

2015-05-03 21:11:01 (12.6 MB/s) - `/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/ipv6-cloudflare.ips' saved [74]

 [+] Loading 4 White-listed IP Addresses. Please be patient...

 Estimate Time: is based on Hardware Resources. 4000 IP Addresses will take roughly 2 to 7 Minutes to load inside the Memory.

 Elapsed Time:

0:00:00

 Done!  ##############################################] (100%)

The IPv6 Cloudflare Whitelist Chain has been loaded inside the Memory along the rest of the IPtables Chains.

6. List IPv6 IPtables Chains

ip6tables -S | more

7. View IPv6 Cloudflare Whitelist Chain

ip6tables -L IPV6-CLOUDFLARE-WHITELIST -nvx

8. Create ipv6-cloudflare-whitelist.sh Weekly Update

nano /etc/cron.d/ipv6-cloudflare-ips-update

Add the following to ipv6-cloudflare-ips-update

MAILTO=root
21 23 * * 7  root /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/ipv6-cloudflare-whitelist.sh

Save: Ctrl-X, Hit Y Key, and Enter

9. Set Execution Permission

chmod +x /etc/cron.d/ipv6-cloudflare-ips-update

More IPv6 Whitelist if Needed

If you want to create another IPv6 Whitelist pointing to different online source, just create a copy of ipv6-cloudflare-whitelist.sh, rename it as needed, edit the script to suite your needs. For instance, if you need to set an IPv6 Pingdom Whitelist, here is the link as well. https://my.pingdom.com/probes/ipv6 just follow the same steps of cloudflare, however, use different name such ipv6-pngdom-whitelist.sh and for update file ipv6-pngdom-ips-update.

IPv6 Pingdom Whitelist Script

Building Simple Private IPv4 Whitelists

Run the following steps (1 to 8)

1. Create a Whitelist Directory

mkdir -p /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/

2. Create Custom Admin Whitelist Script

nano /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/custom-admin-whitelist.sh

Open the following file, copy it’s content and paste inside custom-admin-whitelist.sh file

Custom Admin Whitelist Script

Save: Ctrl-X, Hit Y Key, and Enter

3. Set Execute Permission

chmod +x /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/custom-admin-whitelist.sh

4. Create a Database IP Addresses File

touch /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/custom-admin-allow.ips

5. Allow only Root Access

chmod 700 -R /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/

6. Add Some IPv4 address to the Database

Here you can add your White IPv4 Addresses to the database.

nano /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/custom-admin-allow.ips

Save: Ctrl-X, Hit Y Key, and Enter

7. Run Custom Admin Whitelist Script

/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/custom-admin-whitelist.sh

8. View the Custom Admin Whitelist IPtables Chain

iptables -L CUSTOM-ADMIN-WHITELIST -nvx

Building Simple Private IPv6 Whitelists

Run the following steps (1 to 8)

1. Create a Whitelist Directory

mkdir -p /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/

2. Create Custom Admin Whitelist Script

nano /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/v6custom-admin-whitelist.sh

Open the following file, copy it’s content and paste it inside v6custom-admin-whitelist.sh file

IPv6 Custom Admin Whitelist Script

Save: Ctrl-X, Hit Y Key, and Enter

3. Set Execute Permission

chmod +x /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/v6custom-admin-whitelist.sh

4. Create a Database IP Addresses File

touch /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/v6custom-admin-allow.ips

5. Allow only Root Access

chmod 700 -R /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/

6. Add IPv6 address to the Database

Here you can add your White IPv6 Addresses to the database.

nano /etc/network/iptables/whitelists/v6custom-admin-allow.ips

Save: Ctrl-X, Hit Y Key, and Enter

7. Run v6Custom Admin Whitelist Script

/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/v6custom-admin-whitelist.sh

8. View IPv6 Custom Admin Whitelist IPtables Chain Again

ip6tables -L V6CUSTOM-ADMIN-WHITELIST -nvx

Adding Simple Whitelists to Startup File

Run the following steps (1 to 2)

1. Edit Custom Scripts Startup file

nano /etc/init.d/custom-scripts.sh

2. Add the following to the end of the file.

# Cloudflare Whitelist
/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/cloudflare-whitelist.sh
# IPv6 Cloudflare Whitelist
/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/ipv6-cloudflare-whitelist.sh
# Custom Admin Whitelist
/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/custom-admin-whitelist.sh
# IPv6 Custom Admin Whitelist
/etc/network/iptables/whitelists/v6custom-admin-whitelist.sh

Save: Ctrl-X, Hit Y Key, and Enter

Note: Be patience after a VPS reboot, the system might take 1 to 2 minutes to load all the scripts inside the startup file, you can view the Web console to monitor the process. Hence, using IPset is always a better choice than IPtables Lists.

Subject Related

Building Professional Web Hosting Solution
Blacklist and Whitelist using IPtables and IPset

section table
  1. Listing and Tracking Suspicious Bad IP Addresses
  2. Building Public and Private IPtables Blacklists
  3. Building Public and Private IPtables Whitelists
  4. Building Public and Private IPset Blacklists
  5. Building Public and Private IPset Whitelists
  • Was this information helpful?
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Filed Under: Blacklist and Whitelist using IPtables and IPset, Linux Tagged With: Linux Security, IPtables Firewall

About Imad Daou

CCNA HUB Founder, Imad has been in IT field since 2007. Currently holding A+, Network+, Server+, Security+, and Storage+. HP, Dell, and IBM Hardware Certified. Pursuing Linux+, LPIC-2, RHCSA, RHCE, AWS, CCNA, and JNCIA.

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