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How To Configure a Secure Web App Infrastructure with DigitalOcean Cloud Firewalls

/ Discussion group //
How To Configure a Secure Web App Structure with DigitalOcean Cloud Firewalls
DigitalOcean Rain cloud Firewalls provide a powerful
firewall service on the network degree, leaving your servers loose to do their
job of serving your packages and storing your records. In this educational, we
are able to adapt a -server Wordpress and MySQL setup to use Cloud Firewalls,
and show a number of the advantages this provider can provide. If you’d like
extra background in this firewall carrier earlier than beginning, please read
our Introduction To DigitalOcean Cloud Firewalls educational.
Before starting this educational, you’ll want to have
created the infrastructure mentioned in How To Set Up a Remote Database to Heighten
Site Concert with MySQL on Ubuntu 16.04. This will dispensation you with two
servers, an Nginx net server with PHP and WordPress established, and a
standalone MySQL server. Throughout this tutorial we can name these servers
frontend-01 and database-01 respectively.
Right now, both of our servers have firewalls installation
the usage of the ufw utility. Ufw is an smooth-to-use wrapper around Linux’s
iptables firewall engine. Log in to each servers now and permit’s take a look
at the reputation of our firewalls:
First, at the net server, frontend-01:
In the output, after Default: we are proven that the
firewall is, through default, denying all incoming connections and allowing all
outgoing connections. Additionally we've four rules that allow incoming IPv4
and IPv6 TCP acquaintances (ALLOW IN) to ports 22 (SSH), eighty (HTTP), and 443
(HTTPS).
Let’s do the identical component on the database server, database-01:
This output is similar, besides we’ve swapped the two Nginx
ports for port 3306, that is the usual MySQL port. Now that we recognize our
modern-day setup, let’s plan our substitute.
Although we ought to just make Cloud Firewalls, one tailored for each
specific server, and practice one to frontend-01 and the opposite to
database-01, we’re going take a greater bendy approach to how we arrange our
policies.
First, we need to depart ourselves prepared for a future
where we might also want to feature a 3rd kind of provider to this device
(possibly a cache server). So we’re moneymaking to split up our firewall
regulations based totally on roles, now not with the aid of physical server. We
can observe more than one Cloud Firewalls to every Droplet, so it’s not a
problem to make these firewalls great-grained and modular.
Note: If you would like a closer exploration of
first-class-practices concerning structuring your Cloud Firewalls, please read
How To Organize DigitalOcean Cloud Firewalls.
If we destroy matters down a chunk, we word that both of our
servers actually have multiple features. There’s the primary function of either
serving internet pages or database facts, and there’s also a management
function provided by means of the SSH service. It could make proper feel for us
to create a administration firewall, a frontend firewall, and a database
firewall.
To cope with the future state of affairs where we scale our
internet or database offerings to multiple hosts, we’ll use DigitalOcean’s cataloguing
feature to prepare our Droplets by means of position. Tags are easy labels we
can observe to Droplets to categorize them and cope with whole companies of
servers without delay. The Cloud Firewall carrier can observe firewall policies
to all Droplets in a tag, making it clean to provision new Droplets with an
appropriate firewall rules already in location.
An extra bonus – and some thing that might be tough do in a
dynamic way using ufw – is that Cloud Firewalls can limit inbound get admission
to based totally on tags. So for example, our database servers best need to be
reachable from our frontend servers. The present day ufw setup has the database
open to anybody at the community. We’ll lock that down to simplest our Droplets
tagged with frontend.
Let’s summarize the three firewalls we want to installation, in plain language:
We’re now not going to restriction outbound visitors in any
respect on this tutorial. It’s now not a bad idea, however it does take a few
care to make certain you don’t damage vehicle-replace mechanisms and other
important features of the underlying operating machine.
Now that we've a plan for our new firewalls, allow’s get
began.
First, we’ll tag our Droplets via position, in training for
our firewall policies. Navigate to the DigitalOcean Control Panel. The nonpayment
view is a list of your Evening dew. Click on the More button to the proper of
your frontend-01 Droplet, and choose Add tags:
A text field will pop up where you could enter tags for this
Droplet. Enter frontend and click on the Add Tags button:
Do the same in your database server, giving it a database tag. The tags will show up to your Droplet list:
When developing future Droplets, you may practice these tags
at some point of the initial provisioning technique. The Droplets will then
robotically inherit the corresponding firewall policies.
We’ll installation the ones regulations in the next step.
We’re money-making to set up our Cloud Firewalls now. We’ll
do the frontend firewall first, followed through database, then management.
This order have to bring about no service disruptions to your internet site
visitors, however we will quickly lose the potential to make new SSH connections.
This will not affect already installed connections.
The Firewalls service is to be had under the Networking
segment on the DigitalOcean Controller Panel. Once in attendance, click the
Firewalls tab, then click the Produce Firewall button to get commenced.
On the Create Firewall web page, we want to fill out a Name,
construct our Inbound Rules, and select which Droplets to use the firewall to.
We will leave the Outbound Rules segment as is.
We’re growing the frontend firewall first, so placed frontend-fw within the Name field.
Note: We’ll upload -fw to the end of our firewall appellations
to disambiguate them. Nonetheless the Control Panel interface uses icons to
distinguish among resource types, it is able to get puzzling if you’re the
usage of the command line or API and feature multiple frontend gadgets, for occurrence.
Next, we need to remove the default SSH rule from the
Inbound Rules segment. We’ll spoil this rule out into the management firewall
for flexibility. Use the Delete hyperlink on the right-hand facet of the page
to remove the SSH regulation now.
Then, click on the New decree dropdown and select HTTP. This
will autofill the best protocol (TCP) and port (eighty), and by way of default
permit site visitors from all IPv4 and IPv6 discourses. This is I'm sorry we
want.
If you have HTTPS enabled, reiteration the above process to
create a 2nd rule, selecting HTTPS this time. Your Inbound Rules section will
emerge as like this:
Finally, inside the Apply to Droplets area, start typing
frontend then choose the frontend tag whilst it is auto-suggested.
Click the Create Firewall button. The new firewall will be
created and implemented to any Droplet with the frontend tag. You may be lower
back to an up to date firewall precis web page showing your new firewall:
Now we’ll create the database firewall.
On the Firewalls web page, click on Create Firewall once
more. The procedure could be often similar to for our frontend firewall.
Type database-fw into the Name subject.
In Inbound Rules, remove the default SSH rule. Then, create
a brand new rule the use of the dropdown, selecting MySQL. A default MySQL rule
can be created permitting access to port 3306 from all IPs. Delete All IPv4 and
All IPv6 on or after the Sources subject. We want best our frontend servers as
a way to get right of entry to the database. Start typing frontend into the
Sources field, and pick the frontend tag while it is vehicle-counseled. Now any
Droplet with that tag implemented can be allowed get admission to to the
database server. All other IPs are blocked.
Leave the Outbound Rules as is. Under Apply to Droplets,
practice this firewall to the database tag, then click on Create Firewall. Once
once more, you’ll be returned to the firewall precis web page:
Note that each firewalls display that they are implemented
to one Droplet each. If you load your website, it must nonetheless load
excellent. Now let’s re-enabled control via SSH.
Click Create Firewall one closing time. Add control-fw to
the Name area.
The default SSH rule is all we want for this firewall. This will permit any IP to hook up with port 22.
Alternately, you may trade the Sources area of the SSH rule
to a specific IP which you’ll be connecting from. For instance, if your
workplace has a static IP, and also you want to restrict SSH get entry to to
simplest connections from the office, placed that IP in Sources, replacing All
IPv4 and All IPv6. If your IP ever changes within the future, you’ll simply
should replace this one rule to restore management get entry to, another gain
of making plans in advance and making our guidelines modular.
Under Apply to Droplets, add each the frontend and database
tags, then click on Create Firewall. Let’s check our very last firewall
summary:
At this point, our Cloud Firewall ought to be fully useful,
however we also nevertheless have the host-based ufw firewalls active. Let’s
disable those, then take a look at our connections.
We want to disable the ufw firewall on both hosts. First, on
frontend-01:
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