It is useful to protect your network, by filtering web requests and other types of traffic, a proxy server is designed to do this. You can create a Linux proxy server using Squid and SquidGuard, and configure network settings on your user’s browsers to access the proxy server which will then apply rules that will filter the requests. However, that can be bypassed by the host computer.
A stronger alternative is to create a transparent proxy server and configure your router to forward all web related requests to the proxy server, that way your network hosts are forced to go through the transparent proxy. A potential problem with that scenario is that you need to have a fairly decent router, which can forward interior traffic on a specified port, to the proxy server on the local area network. A third alternative is to make your transparent proxy server also handle routing, NAT, DHCP, and DNS. It would seem like that would be a huge undertaking, but it can actually be done fairly quickly, using a computer and a distribution of Linux.
To create a Linux proxy server that also functions as a router and more, it is recommended to use a server distribution of Linux like CentOS Linux, which is the freely distributed server equivalent to RedHat Enterprise Linux. Along with Debian ,CentOS is one the most popular server distributions of Linux available. For this lab, we download and burn CentOS 6.2, i386 (32bit) or x86_64 (64bit), ISO DVDs Parts 1 and 2. Pick a CentOS 6.2 mirror with Direct DVD downloads and download the DVD iso files, to burn as installation DVDs.
Once you have the CentOS installation DVD iso files downloaded and burned to DVD you need to install the operating system to a computer. You can choose to install to an actual computer or to a virtual computer (virtual machine). In order to do this lab from home, and if you do not have a lot of extra computers lying around, I recommend doing the whole project virtually through the use of virtual machines. For a virtualization platform, I recommend downloading either VMware Player or Virtualbox.
If you decide to follow along with the video tutorials and set up a CentOS server virtual machine and convert it into a router, remember that the IP addressing scheme will need to be modified to work with your personal network. Just because my wireless network uses a 192.168.2.0 /24 local addressing scheme does not mean that yours does also, in fact your network most likely uses a different scheme like 192.168.1.0 /24.
Network diagram of a CentOS proxy server and router using virtual machines
In the lab at the college we installed CentOS to actual physical
computers. Normally, I recommend using computers with two network
interface cards (NICs) installed, but the computers we had available to
us had only one network interface card (NIC). This posed a challenge
since the traffic would need to flow through the computers, from one
network to another, implying the need for two network interface cards.
We fixed this problem by configuring VLANs, and assigning IP addresses
to subinterfaces on the computer’s single NIC. We then connected to a
switchport configured for trunking with the same VLANs as we created on the
Network diagram of a CentOS proxy server-router implementation using a lab computer with only one network interface card (NIC) and a switch configured with VLANs and trunks
Lab Steps Overview (virtualized machines or physical machines)
a. Understand the benefits of a transparent proxy and a Linux server that can also route, NAT, etc. Plan and diagram your lab. See video tutorial part 1 below.
b. Download CentOS installation ISO files, i386 or x86_64, DVDs. See Lab Outline above and video tutorial part 2 below.
c. To do this lab on a physical computers you will need one computer for the CentOS server, preferably with two NICs, but one is okay too, and another computer for a test LAN host.
To do this lab virtually using a virtual platform like VMware or Virtualbox, first create a new virtual machine for the the Linux operating system. You will probably need to choose RedHat Enterprise 32 bit or 64 bit and walk through all the settings. At the end, configure your virtual CD/DVD to boot to the CentOS installation ISO file that you downloaded. Make sure to add or enable to virtual network interfaces (NICs). Set the first NIC to Bridged Networking mode and the second NIC to NAT mode (then once it is saved change it to again to LAN segment mode), in Virtualbox save the second NIC to Interior Network mode. See video tutorial part 2 below.
d. Configure network addressing on your server’s two network interfaces as well as your test host’s network addressing. See video tutorial part 3 below.
e. Configure routing and NATing using iptables on your server. See video tutorial part 4 below.
f. Install and configure Squid as a transparent proxy server. Configure iptables to port-forward web traffic to the server on port 3128 (Squid). See video tutorial part 5 below.
g. Secure your server by configuring iptables to accept and reject specific types of traffic. Install and configure DHCP server on your CentOS server in order to hand out IP addresses on your local network. See video tutorial part 6 below.
Lab Command Steps
Here is a list of the commands used in this lab project:
1. If you are working in my lab or have a computer with only one network card (NIC) jump to step 2. If you are using a virtual or physical computer with two NICs (e.g. eth0 and eth1) you will need to configure each NIC with the command below, then jump to step 6. You can dynamically receive an IP address through DHCP coming from your router/gateway on eth0, click on the network manager in the upper right of the task bar and click “auto ethernet” or just click on “eth0” to activate DHCP. Then you will need to manually configure the second NIC using an ifconfig command from the terminal (e.g. ifconfig eth1 192.168.111.1) you will need to have root access to do this. After you have activated DHCP on eth0 and manually configured eth1 use the ifconfig command to check your interface ip addresses to see that you have an address for eth0 and eth1. You are now ready to jump to step 6.
ifconfig eth1 192.168.111.1
2. If you are working in my lab or you have a computer with only one network interface card (NIC), you will need to configure trunking and two VLANs (e.g. 110, 111) on the CentOS Linux server (for students with a physical computer with only one NIC)
vconfig add eth0 110 (in my college lab we use VLAN110 for the 192.168.11.x network)
vconfig add eth0 111
vconfig rem eth0 111 (removes a VLAN trunk)
3. To configure sub-interfaces in
order to assign an IP address to each VLAN, in our classroom lab we use
VLAN110 for the 192.168.11.0 network.
ifconfig eth0.110 192.168.11.xxx
ifconfig eth0.111 192.168.111.xxx
4. To configure a default gateway/route
route add default gw 192.168.11.1
5. To configure DNS servers
echo “nameserver 126.96.36.199” > /etc/resolv.conf
echo “nameserver 188.8.131.52” >> /etc/resolv.conf
6. To add kernel support for IP forwarding (routing) we set a flag with the following command
sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
7. To set up NATing we can configure the iptables NAT table for masquerading.
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE (assuming eth0 is the outside interface)
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0.110 -j MASQUERADE (assuming the eth0.110 sub-interface is the outside interface)
8. To install the Squid proxy server
yum install squid
9. Edit the the squid.conf file and change the following line to enable transparent proxy mode:
http_port 3128 intercept
10. Issuing one of the following commands will restart the Squid service or reload the configuration file
service squid restart
service squid reload
11. Add an entry to iptables NAT table to port-forward inbound traffic on the inside interface (LAN side) to the Squid server on port 3128 (assuming eth1 is the inside interface with the IP address 192.168.11.1)
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth1 -p tcp –dport 80 -j DNAT –to (cont.) 192.168.111.1:3128
12. To get routing and forwarding to work correctly you will also need to remove some statements from the iptables tables that reject traffic. The following lines will remove reject statements from the filter INPUT iptable chain and the FORWARD iptable chain.
iptables -t filter -D INPUT -j REJECT –reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
iptables -t filter -D FORWARD -j REJECT –reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
From first glance, it seems that there is a rule in the iptables INPUT chain (third line) that accepts any protocol from any source to any destination. The following statement would delete the third line of the filter table INPUT chain, the “accept any anywhere anywhere” line: <iptables -t filter -D INPUT 3> but do not use it, because as it turns out, that particular line has information that does not appear in the output of an <iptables -L> command. Try using the following command and then compare it to the results of the <iptables -L> command:
You can see that the third line (-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT) is actually accepting all input on the loopback (lo) interface, and since it is only the loopback interface (i.e. 127.0.0.1) it is not a problem in the iptables, indiscriminately accepting all input on the outside interface. So to clarify, in the following three line commands (see below), the first command show the current iptables rules, the second command removes line 3 (-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT) which is the line that ACCEPTs packets on the loopback interface, filter table, INPUT chain. Finally, the third line below replaces it. To learn how to do this I referred the man pages for iptables <man iptables>.
iptables -t filter -D INPUT 3
iptables -t filter -I INPUT 3 -i lo -j ACCEPT
13. Now you can look at your iptables, default filter table, and nat table, using the following commands
iptables -L -t filter
iptables -L -t nat
14. Now you can add (append) to the iptable filter table with the following commands, to accept input on port 3128 for Squid, and reject all other types of traffic
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 3128 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A INPUT -j REJECT –reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
iptables -L -t filter
15. The following commands and instructions are used to install and configure a DHCP server in CentOS. You will need elevate to root access, run updates, then install:
yum install updates
yum install dhcp
16. You should see that the DHCP server fails on starting up, this is because we have not configured it yet. To configure the DHCP server we need to edit the dhcpd.conf file located in /etc/dhcp.
17. You should see a file called dhcpd.conf . You will want to edit the file in a text editor like Vim or Nano.
Here is a screenshot of my dhcpd.conf file after I edited it in Vim. The cat command is used to output the file to the terminal for viewing. The lines that begin with # are comments and not active configurations. You could duplicate what you see in my configuration file below, replacing every line that has 192.168.11.x ip addressing with your own network number, like 192.168.1.x, etc.:
The iptables consists of four separate tables: filter, nat, mangle, and raw. Each table has a set of rules or chains.
filter – the filter table is the default table not specified by the -t argument. The filter table has three chains: INPUT for traffic destined for a local socket, FORWARD for packets being routed through the server, and OUTPUT for packets generated locally on the machine
nat – the nat table is consulted when new connections are generated. The nat table has three chains: PREROUTING, OUTPUT, and POSTROUTING
mangle – the mangle table is used for specialized packet alteration. The mangle table has the following chains: PREROUTING, POSTROUTING, INPUT, FORWARD, and OUTPUT.
raw – the raw table is used for configuring exemptions from connection tracking.
In part 1, I outline creating a Linux proxy server and router and I diagram the network
In part 2, I create the VMware virtual machine with two NICs and install CentOS
In part 3, I configure network addressing on the CentOS server and a Fedora client
In part 4, I review network addressing, how to do the lab if the server has only one network interface.
I also set up routing and NATing on the CentOS server
In part 5, I install Squid on the CentOS server and configure it to be a transparent proxy.
I configure the iptables NAT table, to portforward all local web traffic to the CentOS server on port 3128.
In part 6, I continue to configure iptables and I install and configure DHCP server on the CentOS server.