Introducing Firewall Objects: simplify your NethSecurity firewall configuration

NethSecurity
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We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature coming to your NethSecurity firewall: Firewall Objects! :hammer_and_pick:

Firewall Objects are predefined sets of network addresses that will streamline and simplify your firewall configuration.

With this new feature, you’ll be able to group related IP addresses, networks, or domain names into reusable units, making it easier than ever to create and maintain your firewall rules.

We believe this new feature will significantly enhance your experience with NethSecurity, especially for those managing more complex network environments. We’re eager to hear your feedback and see how you put Firewall Objects to use in your configurations!

Key benefits

  • Improved organization and readability of your firewall configuration
  • Reduced chance of errors when entering IP addresses or networks manually
  • Easier maintenance - updating an object automatically updates all associated rules
  • More efficient rule management, especially for complex networks

Types of objects

The initial release will support the following types of firewall objects:

  • Static Leases (DHCP Reservations)
  • DNS Records
  • VPN Users
  • Host Sets
  • Domain Sets

For now only within firewall rules

Firewall Objects will be available exclusively for use within firewall rules.
We’re already working on expanding their functionality, and in the near future, we plan to add support for MultiWAN rules and port forwarding as well.

A closer look

List existing objects

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Create an host set

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Add a domain set

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Check where an object is used

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Use objects inside firewall rules

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image1238×436 31.9 KB

Documentation

Documentation is already available:

Updates

New packages will be available starting from today (15 July 24) for all community installations.
The feature is shipped inside these packages:

  • ns-threat_shield: 0.0.6
  • ns-dedalo: 0.0.4
  • ns-api: 0.0.80
  • ns-objects: 0.0.6
  • ns-dpi: 0.0.7

Installations with a subscription will get this new feature starting next week, as always

Stay tuned for more updates, and as always, thank you for being part of the NethSecurity community.

8 Likes
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Very small thing but can we get the ability to use dashes or hyphens (or something) in the names of objects?
As an example a object with the two cloudflare dns servers in it currently needs to be named something like;
cloudflaredns but would be much easier to deal with / read as cloudflare-dns or cloudflare_dns

1 Like
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I understand very well the request but sadly is quite a pain adding support for special chars.
The - char is reserved in uci and the _ can sometime cause troubles on the nft side.
While it’s possible, with some extra code, allowing the use of these chars, I think the work does not worth the effort (and the possibility of regressions).