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18.12.9. Filter Rules

The following XML shows a simple example of a network traffic filter implementing a rule to drop traffic if the IP address (provided through the value of the variable IP) in an outgoing IP packet is not the expected one, thus preventing IP address spoofing by the VM.

Example 18.8. Example of network traffic filtering

<filter name='no-ip-spoofing' chain='ipv4'>
  <uuid>fce8ae33-e69e-83bf-262e-30786c1f8072</uuid>
  <rule action='drop' direction='out' priority='500'>
    <ip match='no' srcipaddr='$IP'/>
  </rule>
</filter>
The traffic filtering rule starts with the rule node. This node may contain up to three of the following attributes:
  • action is mandatory can have the following values:
    • drop (matching the rule silently discards the packet with no further analysis)
    • reject (matching the rule generates an ICMP reject message with no further analysis)
    • accept (matching the rule accepts the packet with no further analysis)
    • return (matching the rule passes this filter, but returns control to the calling filter for further analysis)
    • continue (matching the rule goes on to the next rule for further analysis)
  • direction is mandatory can have the following values:
    • in for incoming traffic
    • out for outgoing traffic
    • inout for incoming and outgoing traffic
  • priority is optional. The priority of the rule controls the order in which the rule will be instantiated relative to other rules. Rules with lower values will be instantiated before rules with higher values. Valid values are in the range of -1000 to 1000. If this attribute is not provided, priority 500 will be assigned by default. Note that filtering rules in the root chain are sorted with filters connected to the root chain following their priorities. This allows to interleave filtering rules with access to filter chains. Refer to Section 18.12.3, “Filtering Chain Priorities” for more information.
  • statematch is optional. Possible values are '0' or 'false' to turn the underlying connection state matching off. The default setting is 'true' or 1
The above example Example 18.7, “An Example of a clean traffic filter” indicates that the traffic of type ip will be associated with the chain ipv4 and the rule will have priority=500. If for example another filter is referenced whose traffic of type ip is also associated with the chain ipv4 then that filter's rules will be ordered relative to the priority=500 of the shown rule.
A rule may contain a single rule for filtering of traffic. The above example shows that traffic of type ip is to be filtered.