Basic of MikroTik Firewall

What is a Firewall?

A firewall is a device whose function is to examine and determine which data packets can get in or out of a network. With this capability, firewall plays a role in protecting the network from attacks originating from outside the network. The firewall implements filtering packet and thereby provides security functions that are used to manage data that flow to, from and through the router. For example,

the firewall functions to protect the local network (LAN) from possible attacks coming from the Internet. Besides protecting the network, a firewall is also intended to protect the user's computer or host (host firewalls).

Firewalls are used as means to prevent or minimize the security risks inherent in connecting to other networks. A well configured firewall will play an important role in sharing the network efficiently and safe infrastructure. MikroTik Router OS has a very powerful firewall implementation included:

State full packet inspection
Layer-7 protocol detection
peer-to-peer protocols filtering
traffic classification by :
source MAC address
IP addresses ( network or list ) and address types ( broadcast , local , multicast , unicast )
port or port range
IP protocols
protocol options ( ICMP type and code fields , TCP flags , IP options and MSS )
interface the packet arrived from or left through
internal flow and connection marks
DSCP byte
packet content
rate at the which packets arrive and sequence numbers
packet size
packet arrival time
etc.

You can access the Mikrotik Firewall via Winbox through the IP menu - > Firewall

Chain on Mikrotik Firewall

Firewalls operate based on firewall rules. Each rule consists of two parts - a matcher that is appropriate with traffic flow against given conditions and actions that define what should be done with the right plan. Firewall filtering rules are grouped together in a chain. It allows packets to be matched against one common criterion in one chain, and then it passes over for processing against some other common criteria to another chain.

For example, the package must match the IP address: port. Of course, it could be achieved by adding some rules to the IP address: appropriate port using chain forward. But there is another better way to add a rule that matches traffic from a particular IP address, for example : a firewall filter / ip add src -address = 1.1.1.2/32 jump - target = " mychain " .

There are three predefined chain on Mikrotik RouterOS:

1. Input - used to process packets entering the router through one of the interfaces in which the destination IP address is one of the router's address. Chain input allows you to restrict access

the configuration of the Mikrotik Router.

2. Forward - used to process the data packets passing through the router.

3. Output - used to process the data packets coming from the router and leaving through one of the interfaces.

When processing chain, rules taken from the order chain list will be executed from top to bottom. If the packet matches the rule criteria, then certain actions performed on it, and no more rules are processed in the chain. If the packet does not match any of the rules in the chain, then the packets will be accepted.

Connection State (Status of data packets passing through the router)

Invalid : the package is not owned by any connection; it is useless.
New : package which is opening a connection / first packet of a connection .
Established : continuation of the package is a package with the new status .
Related: a packet that opens a new connection but still related some previous connection.

Action Filter Firewall Mikrotik Router OS

In the mikrotik firewall configuration there are several Action options, including:

Accept : packets received and do not continue reading the next line
Drop : reject packets silently (do not send ICMP rejection message)
Reject : reject the packet and send an ICMP rejection message
Jump : jump to another chain specified by the value of parameter jump - targets
Tarpit : refuse, but still keep the incoming TCP connection (reply with a SYN / ACK for incoming TCP SYN packet)
Passthrough : ignore the rule and go to the next rule
log : add information of data packet to the log

Example of Firewall Usage on Mikrotik Router Let's say that our private network is 92.168.0.0/24 and the public (WAN) is interface ether1. We will set the firewall to allow connections to the router itself only from the local network and drop the rest. We will allow any ICMP protocol on the interface so that anyone can get a ping from our router in the internet. Here are the commands:

/ip firewall filter
add chain=input connection-state=invalid action=drop \
 comment="Drop Invalid connections"  
add chain=input connection-state=established action=accept \
 comment="Allow Established connections"  
add chain=input protocol=icmp action=accept \
 comment="Allow ICMP" 
add chain=input src-address=192.168.0.0/24 action=accept \
 in-interface=!ether1 
add chain=input action=drop comment="Drop all"

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