linuxnet-iptables 7.6.5

programmatic access to Linux iptables

linuxnet-iptables

linuxnet-iptables provides programmatic access to the Linux iptables(8) (or ip6tables(8)) command. Using linuxnet-iptables one can view existing chains/rules, create new ones, or delete existing ones. The package documentation is available here.

For the following examples, Python3 (3.6 or later) is required.

>>> from linuxnet.iptables import IptablesPacketFilterTable
>>> table = IptablesPacketFilterTable('filter')
>>> table.read_system_config()
>>> input_chain = table.get_chain('INPUT')
>>> for rule in input_chain:
...    print(' '.join(rule.to_iptables_args()))
...
-j prod_bad_traffic
-m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
-j prod_ingress
-j prod_INPUT_ldrop
>>>
>>> print(input_chain.get_packet_count())
183506560
>>>

The above code requires root access in order to successfully invoke the iptables command. If you are uncomfortable running it as root, you can extract the iptables output as root and then process it with linuxnet-iptables (note that the -xnv options must be specified):

# iptables -xnv -L > /tmp/iptables.output
#

Then, as a regular user:

>>> with open("/tmp/iptables.output") as f:
...    output = f.read()
...
>>> from linuxnet.iptables import IptablesPacketFilterTable
>>> table = IptablesPacketFilterTable('filter')
>>> table.init_from_output(output)
True
>>> input_chain = table.get_chain('INPUT')
>>> for rule in input_chain:
...     print(' '.join(rule.to_iptables_args()))
...
-j prod_bad_traffic
-m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
-j prod_ingress
-j prod_INPUT_ldrop
>>>

Modifications to the chains are also supported as shown in the following (hereon, root permissions will be assumed).

Creating a new chain:

>>> from linuxnet.iptables import ChainRule, Targets
>>> newchain = table.create_chain('acceptall')
>>> newchain.append_rule(ChainRule(target=Targets.ACCEPT))
>>>

# iptables -nv -L acceptall
Chain acceptall (0 references)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
    0     0 ACCEPT     all  --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
#

Modifying the new chain to only accept TCP packets:

>>> newchain.flush()        # remove the existing rule
>>> from linuxnet.iptables import PacketMatch
>>> match_tcp = PacketMatch().protocol().equals('tcp')
>>> rule = ChainRule(match=match_tcp, target=Targets.ACCEPT)
>>> newchain.append_rule(rule)
>>> newchain.append_rule(ChainRule(target=Targets.DROP))
>>>

# iptables -L acceptall -nv
Chain acceptall (0 references)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
    0     0 ACCEPT     tcp  --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
    0     0 DROP       all  --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
#

Deleting the new chain:

>>> table.delete_chain(newchain)
>>>

---

Installation

Python3 is required.

Available Makefile targets can be listed by invoking make with no arguments.

make install will install the package.

make test runs the unit tests.