Announcing pfSense plus

netblues · Jan 23, 2021, 4:20 AM

@kiokoman No, you can still do that, even on closed source.
What you cant do is see the code fix .
You should also expect quicker resolution too.
This is something that must also happen on a paid project to be successful.
What is totally unclear to me is what will happen to the new generation features and the feeds that make it happen. Especially pfblockerng, snort and suricata. Far more people depend on that. compared to running at speeds @10g+. (and there is tnsr for that)
If this is lost, opnsense will be a more palatable option.

apollo13 · Jan 23, 2021, 4:45 PM

Is there a chance that customers will have access to the source code of pfSense plus? Being able to look through the box and (often) being able to locally fix issues before handing in a bug-report is a big plus imo (For customers as well as netgate because the quality of bugreports can be better due to that). How does this all play together with GPLed parts of the software?

Spacecase · Jan 23, 2021, 4:56 PM

@dennis_s
I have a Netgate appliance (MBT-4220) which uses CE. Will there be a migration path to pfSense plus?

bmeeks · Jan 23, 2021, 5:35 PM

@netblues said in Announcing pfSense plus:

What is totally unclear to me is what will happen to the new generation features and the feeds that make it happen. Especially pfblockerng, snort and suricata. Far more people depend on that.

One thing people often fail to realize is that the rise of end-to-end encryption is basically a death knell for IDS packages. You can't inspect encrypted traffic unless you break the chain of trust via MITM (man-in-the-middle) interception/proxying. Already Snort and Suricata both bail on a session as soon as they see the packets are part of an HTTPS, TLS, or SSH encrypted stream. So now ask yourself how many malware payloads are served up via HTTPS either through malicious ads on web sites or file downloads. Who sends emails with attachments in the clear these days? Nobody. Everyone uses some manner of TLS with email. Even DNS traffic is beginning to move over encrypted channels (DoT and its devil child, DoH). So when you think about all of that, you begin to see how encryption is killing the effectiveness of IDS/IPS.

While this has no direct bearing on the conversation at hand, I just wanted to point out that due to the changing landscape of the Internet, the need for some packages is going to die no matter what direction pfSense takes.

johnpoz · Jan 23, 2021, 5:52 PM

^ well stated.. And while its a tiny bit off topic with packages and +... Its still very relevant in my opinion..

Like to mention - everyone loves the FREE ssl certs anyone can get in 2 minutes if their IP resolves to a domain with ACME... This also makes it nobrainer simple for even the lamest of scriptkiddie malware pushers to have your box use https to their device via a tunnel, and trust the shit out of it - nor warnings of any kind.. Hiding whatever they might be doing from any sort of ips/ids..

The internet is changing place - and everyone wants you info... Send your dns to me - oh your company doesn't want that - well F your company and its policies.. Will just have your browser sneak their dns via a tunnel over standard ports to make it PITA for your company to even know or block..

To be honest I have no freaking idea what these people that came up with doh were thinking - my opinion is all they were thinking about is $ signs.. Think of all the money we can make with these uses sending us free money, I mean data ;)

Ad companies - oh your domains are blocked because you serve up ads.. No worry, for a very low cost we will serve up your domains via our dns.. Yeah Yeah - the users "trust" us to do all their dns ;) we can serve them anything you want to serve.. Malware - oh that will cost you just a few pennies more per hit.. No the companies can not stop us - we just bypass all their controls ;) But say they can stop if after they jump through a billion hoops, that sure some of the top players will be able to do... But the millions of smbs and ma and pop shops wont have a clue ;)

sorry got on a bit of a rant there ;)

netblues · Jan 23, 2021, 6:53 PM

@bmeeks Still, some filtering is better than no filtering.
If pfsense wants to compete with e.g fortigate or sophos utm, then it needs feeds.
Professionally maintained and supported.

Interesting times.

bmeeks · Jan 23, 2021, 7:06 PM

@netblues said in Announcing pfSense plus:

@bmeeks Still, some filtering is better than no filtering.
If pfsense wants to compete with e.g fortigate or sophos utm, then it needs feeds.
Professionally maintained and supported.

Interesting times.

I don't disagree with you. I would point out, though, that NGFW (Next Generation Firewall) can have a lot of differently nuanced meanings. And some of them might actually be marketing hype (translation, BS ... ).

Let's not derail this thread with this topic. If desired, we can discuss further over in the IDS/IPS sub-forum. My original post here was just to say that having Snort or Suricata is not a make-or-break thing in my opinion because of how end-to-end encryption is hiding lots of stuff from the eyes of the IDS anyway.

bmeeks · Jan 23, 2021, 7:12 PM

@bmeeks said in Announcing pfSense plus:

@netblues said in Announcing pfSense plus:

@bmeeks Still, some filtering is better than no filtering.
If pfsense wants to compete with e.g fortigate or sophos utm, then it needs feeds.
Professionally maintained and supported.

Interesting times.

I don't disagree with you. I would point out, though, that NGFW (Next Generation Firewall) can have a lot of differently nuanced meanings. And some of them might actually be marketing hype (translation, BS ... ).

Let's not derail this thread with this topic. If desired, we can discuss further over in the IDS/IPS sub-forum. My original post here was just to say that having Snort or Suricata is not a make-or-break thing in my opinion because of how end-to-end encryption is hiding lots of stuff from the eyes of the IDS anyway.

Can't seem to edit a post in this forum, so I want to follow up on my remark above about NGFW. I really meant to say UTM more so than NGFW, but they are really closely associated. My remark is not aimed at any vendor, but just refers to those concepts in general terms. End-to-end encryption is fouling up a lot of old-school network-level inspection, and is moving it instead to the endpoint clients.

kdub1234 · Jan 25, 2021, 2:42 AM

I appreciate that a no cost home/lab version will be offered, but is there any chance we can get a direct version upgrade instead of how the free TNSR offering is setup?

After initial excitement of the TNSR free tier, I decided not to install largely because of the upgrade hassle. I am definitely not a fan of having to backup, reregister, re-provision and restore my appliance for every new patch/feature.

al · Feb 7, 2021, 11:26 PM

To the pfSense team:
Why would it be a problem for 'pfSense Plus' to be held open source like pfSense CE in regards to adding trust & confidence to the product as well as adding to security and privacy in regards to be able to look under the hood of e.g. the GUI, the backend and the various tools?

login-to-view

slu · Jan 25, 2021, 2:00 PM

@dennis_s

it would be so great to have the gold membership back, only for sponsoring the CE edition / Netgate. Call it "gold sponsoring", we buy it per year (as the gold membership was).

Rico · Jan 25, 2021, 2:21 PM

Back in the days when I was asked 'what is so great about pfSense?' my answers (sorted in order of importance):

Open Source, you can trust the code 100%
rock stable
really nice feature set
awesome community

Good old times...

-Rico

matsan · Jan 26, 2021, 8:45 AM

Too bad, for us the USP of pfSense was the open source model, knowing there are (at least potentially) multiple and external eyes on the code.
Been supporting the project with both hardware purchases and gold subscriptions during the years. With open source gone the differentiator between our deployed SG-3100:s and the USG from UniFi is lost and we can move to a fully-integrated UniFi experience that is another closed-source-trust-the-company-running-it-relationship.

Wishing you best of luck. So long and thank you for all the years!

Vollans · Jan 26, 2021, 9:00 AM

@rico said in Announcing pfSense plus:

2x Netgate XG-7100 | 11x Netgate SG-5100 | 6x Netgate SG-3100 | 2x Netgate SG-1100

Surely Netgate have to be nervous when someone who has over 20 devices and has been a big supporter of those is worried?

I’m only a new convert to pfSense, as of about July, but the fact it was open source was a big thing as I was fed up of hardware that had rubbish firewalls that promised lots and delivered nothing with unresponsive support that ignored requests to fix things. I did almost buy your hardware just after Christmas, but decided to wait. I’m glad I did. :(

Cool_Corona · Jan 26, 2021, 9:54 AM

Just to make things clear....

Currently testing freebsd based FW's for the foreign state department here and closed source is a no go.

They have issues with the US spying on live traffic thats encrypted. So it can be done...

And I will always, on a personal level, run MiTM and not make anybody beeing able ro run anything other than the DNS provided.

Exordium · Jan 26, 2021, 10:37 AM

@dennis_s said in Announcing pfSense plus:

Read our latest blog which includes a FAQ to learn more about this exciting change.

I can't see anything exciting in this post... only stupid decisions.

Just my 0,02$

Bob.Dig · Jan 26, 2021, 10:46 AM

I am ok with it, if there is a full free version for home use, because I don't think that those people will pay for a firewall in the first place... unless it becomes a full-fledged WiFi-router. Pls don't.

JeGr · Jan 26, 2021, 11:31 AM

@bob-dig said in Announcing pfSense plus:

I am ok with it, if there is a full free version for home use, because I don't think that those people will pay for a firewall in the first place... unless it becomes a full-fledged WiFi-router. Pls don't.

Free version doesn't equal OSS version and for many projects that reach out about ditching other vendors in favor of pfSense, that IS one of the - if not THE - main incentive. So while free version for home use is fine, that does nothing for planning bigger projects at the moment. And because of the "we don't know yet" throughout the FAQ/blog post in terms of 3rd party HW, licensing, costs and future of the CE version, that is an almost impossible sell at the moment for any new project that goes on right now or in the following weeks. Because no company wants a solution that will change course, get stale in the future or other fears that already have been laid out.

noplan · Jan 26, 2021, 12:20 PM

@jegr

as far as I am concerned

It is as informed as possible about this

**
It is an impossible sell**

behemyth · Jan 26, 2021, 4:43 PM

I completely understand the free-to-use community being frustrated by the move to close-source a product and charge for full-featured software, but I can tell you from my years working with companies to build solutions, there are a lot of companies out there that aren't allowed to use open source anything.

I don't agree with that thinking, but it is what it is in the business world.

This may make a lot of people who aren't paying anyway stop using this platform, but this is going to open another set of doors for pfSense, ones that simply don't exist under an open source code model - and those doors are going to be willing to pay - potentially a lot of money for support and to use the software.

I'm not trying to start a huge argument here, that's just fact.