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    Outgoing traffic being blocked to strange dns servers

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved DHCP and DNS
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    • johnpozJ
      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
      last edited by

      that IP is a cloudflare IP

      cf-198-41-223-131.cloudflare.com

      I don't think pfsense would do would be talking to that for its own stuff, but it could be some package using loopback (unbound) directly that is resolving.

      Out of the box pfsense would just check if there is an update, and pull listing of packages, etc.

      But if you have say pfblocker trying to download lists of IPs and such, then it could be asking unbound directly, which would resolve where ever that domain is..

      Why is snort blocking it? What does the snort log say? Snort likes to block specific tlds that it feels are not legit.. or used for bad stuff.

      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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      • provelsP
        provels
        last edited by provels

        Try a NAT rule. Will force all LAN DNS to pfSense.
        5d14a150-9467-4805-9116-cf1cdce906b6-image.png

        Peder

        MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
        BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

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        • S
          stepariley
          last edited by

          So, I tried blocking requests on lan for port 53 that weren't going to the firewall directly, and all of a sudden my zimbra server started complaining. Not sure what it's doing, since it's resolv.conf file is the same as every other client, i.e. use the firewall for dns. It starts to fail to respond to smtp requests of all things.

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          • S
            stepariley
            last edited by

            Also, I suspected pfBlocker and such, but like I said, I have the same configuration on a different firewall and I don't see it. I only have zimbra on the firewall that's giving me a problem.

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            • V
              viragomann @stepariley
              last edited by

              @stepariley said in Outgoing traffic being blocked to strange dns servers:

              So, I tried blocking requests on lan for port 53 that weren't going to the firewall directly, and all of a sudden my zimbra server started complaining. Not sure what it's doing, since it's resolv.conf file is the same as every other client, i.e. use the firewall for dns. It starts to fail to respond to smtp requests of all things.

              If you cannot change the DNS settings on the host, however, by adding the NAT suggested by @provels you can direct its request to pfSense without taking a notice.

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              • S
                stepariley
                last edited by

                I just added the NAT rule suggested. Checking the log, I still see the same snort messages. So, I'm not sure what this means.

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                • S
                  stepariley
                  last edited by

                  Also, putting some filtering in place, I don't see any logs showing requests coming from LAN that don't go to the LAN address of the firewall or the 8.8.8.8 server.

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                  • johnpozJ
                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                    last edited by

                    You make not mention of actually setting up forwarding in unbound or using dnsmasq.

                    You do understand that out of the box unbound is a resolver right? Doesn't matter what you put in the dns settings under general.. Unless you told unbound to forward.

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                    • S
                      stepariley
                      last edited by

                      Where do you configure that? I don't know anything about unbound.

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                      • johnpozJ
                        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                        last edited by

                        unbound is the default dns for pfsense, out of the box. It resolves, it doesn't forward by default.. So you have no need to put anything in dns for general, or even get dns from isp.

                        Its under services menu, dns resolver.

                        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                        SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                        • S
                          stepariley
                          last edited by

                          Ok, so I looked in the resolver, and I saw that my Enable Forwarding was turned off. I turned it on, and I haven't seen any snort warnings in the last 10 minutes since then. So, maybe this is snort being overly aggressive on outgoing dns queries? My other firewall was the same, and I never got any snort errors.

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                          • johnpozJ
                            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                            last edited by

                            So you would have to look in the snort log for why something was specific blocked. But I do know it can be very aggressive for specific tlds, like biz as example.. and some of the other ones that are cheap and not really used for normal major business..

                            I do see with that specific IP a wuai.biz related to it - atleast at one point in time, as well as ns4.cloudflare.net etc.

                            An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                            If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                            Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                            SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                            • S
                              stepariley
                              last edited by

                              Yeah, I will look at the snort logs for that, but I think for now, I'm happy with the firewall not going out to the root dns servers. Just makes me nervous to see queries like that, especially when they are going outside the country.

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                              • johnpozJ
                                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                last edited by

                                And where do you think they go when you forward to 8.8.8.8 ;)

                                That is an anycast IP, you have no idea where the actual server that answers you might be..

                                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                                • S
                                  stepariley
                                  last edited by

                                  Yeah, I realize that, but at that point, I feel it's someone else's problem. 🤠

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                                  • johnpozJ
                                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                    last edited by

                                    Huh, Im not talking about where they go to resolve.. You have no idea where the actual servers are that your asking.. While you hope they are close to you - its an anycast IP.. It could be anywhere on the planet, in your country or not, etc.

                                    Not sure why should be concerned with directly talking to the authoritative NS you asked for.. Its not like your resolving for anything your own devices didn't ask to resolve, etc.

                                    But sure if you feel better handing over everything you look for to 1 company.. Then sure do that.

                                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                                    • S
                                      stepariley
                                      last edited by

                                      My main concern is that snort trusts it. Before, all my dns queries were being blocked by snort. Maybe I'll spend time figuring out why that is at some point, but I have other things to do.

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                                      • J
                                        jdeloach @stepariley
                                        last edited by

                                        @stepariley said in Outgoing traffic being blocked to strange dns servers:

                                        My main concern is that snort trusts it.

                                        Not sure what you mean by this statement?

                                        Before, all my dns queries were being blocked by snort.

                                        This statement says that you have Snort misconfigured and are most likely running it in Blocked Mode. Until you get it tuned to your system, YOU SHOULD NOT run it in Blocked mode. Also you should not enable ALL the rules in Snort until you learn what each rules is looking for other wise you will get all kinds of false positives blocks with it. It can take several days, weeks or even months to get it tuned to your system depending on what your doing on your network.

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                                        • S
                                          stepariley
                                          last edited by

                                          No, I'm not.

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                                          • GertjanG
                                            Gertjan @stepariley
                                            last edited by Gertjan

                                            @stepariley said in Outgoing traffic being blocked to strange dns servers:

                                            My main concern is that snort trusts it.

                                            Yeah, lol, Snort trust 8.8.8.8. .....

                                            @stepariley said in Outgoing traffic being blocked to strange dns servers:

                                            Before, all my dns queries were being blocked by snort

                                            Snort will trust the main 13 Internet Root servers., as without them, you might as well cut the connection and go live in the forest. Snort will probably 'trust'"all tld servers, like com net org etc.
                                            But Snort might kick in when the resolver hits the final stage : the third level is reached : the domain name servers. because they are listed as they give the IP to sites that are listed - and you want them to visit these sites.
                                            8.8.8.8 will hide all this for you, as it does the job for you, it a resolver just like Unbound (and data mine while doing so - so they can give you the 'right' answer for you ^^).

                                            So, again :

                                            @stepariley said in Outgoing traffic being blocked to strange dns servers:

                                            Before, all my dns queries were being blocked by snort

                                            You are trying to visit sites that are listed in Snort.
                                            Up to you to decide :
                                            The lists are wrong - adapt them,
                                            Or,
                                            Stop going there.

                                            😊

                                            No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
                                            Edit : and where are the logs ??

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