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Feature #1935

open

Allow rule with max-src-conn-* options to make conditional use of "overload <virusprot>"

Added by Dim Hatz over 12 years ago.

Status:
New
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
-
Category:
Rules / NAT
Target version:
-
Start date:
10/07/2011
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:
Plus Target Version:
Release Notes:

Description

Firewall: Rules: Advanced Options offers various options, to limit max number of connections per source IP and connections/sec, however it silently puts any source IP that exceeds them into the <virusprot> table, effectively blocking all traffic from it for a significant period.

For pfsense rules involving max-src-conn-xyz restrictions, consider making the (overload <virusprot>) either an optional or a configurable action.

My aim is to do flexible TCP connection throttling with pfsense. I find it useful for e.g. outbound SMTP connections, as I wrote in http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,41679.0.html

Throttling outgoing SMTP (port 25) connections?

The situation I'm trying to mitigate is when e.g. in a public hotspot, a guest's malware-infected PC starts sending out 1000s of spam mails. I wouldn't want to block outgoing port 25 completely (as many people still connect to their mailserver using SMTP AUTH over TCP/25), but as a compromise I prefer to limit port 25 outgoing connections to a low number, e.g. 3/min.

With Linux iptables I might use directives like:
-p tcp --dport 25 --limit 3/min --limit-burst x
etc
This way, any port 25 connections beyond the limit of 3 per minute are dropped, but the port becomes available again very soon. And no other ports are affected.

pfsense offers advanced options with similar features (pf's max-src-conn-rate), but apparently adds "offending" IPs to the <virusprot> table, thus blocking those IPs entirely for all protocols, rather than effectively throttling port 25 only.

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