Skip to content

Configure Firewalld to Restrict Loopback Traffic

An XCCDF Rule

Description

Configure firewalld to restrict loopback traffic to the lo interface. The loopback traffic must be trusted by assigning the lo interface to the firewalld trusted zone. However, the loopback traffic must be restricted to the loopback interface as an anti-spoofing measure. To configure firewalld to restrict loopback traffic to the lo interface, run the following commands:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=trusted --add-rich-rule='rule family=ipv4 source address="127.0.0.1" destination not address="127.0.0.1" drop'
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=trusted --add-rich-rule='rule family=ipv6 source address="::1" destination not address="::1" drop'
To ensure firewalld settings are applied in runtime, run the following command:
firewall-cmd --reload

Rationale

Loopback traffic is generated between processes on machine and is typically critical to operation of the system. The loopback interface is the only place that loopback network traffic should be seen, all other interfaces should ignore traffic on this network as an anti-spoofing measure.

ID
xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_rule_firewalld_loopback_traffic_restricted
Severity
Medium
References
Updated



Remediation - Shell Script

# Remediation is applicable only in certain platforms
if [ ! -f /.dockerenv ] && [ ! -f /run/.containerenv ]; then

if ! rpm -q --quiet "firewalld" ; then
    yum install -y "firewalld"
fi

Remediation - Ansible

- name: Configure Firewalld to Restrict Loopback Traffic - Ensure firewalld Package
    is Installed
  ansible.builtin.package:
    name: '{{ item }}'
    state: present
  with_items: