pfSense XML Configuration Redactor
Redact secrets from a pfSense config.xml so you can share it with Netgate
support, a vendor, a forum or an AI tool, without handing over your passwords,
keys and network layout.
Unlike generic XML redaction, it understands pfSense structures: IPsec, OpenVPN, WireGuard, captive portal, and the package configs where credentials actually hide.
Install
pip install pfsense-redactor
Pure Python standard library, no dependencies, Python 3.9+.
If pip reports externally-managed-environment
Common on macOS and recent Linux distributions. Any of these work:
pipx install pfsense-redactor # recommended for CLI tools
python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install pfsense-redactor
pip install --user pfsense-redactor
From source
git clone https://github.com/grounzero/pfsense-redactor.git
cd pfsense-redactor
pip install -e .
Quick start
Sharing with support, keeping internal addressing readable:
pfsense-redactor config.xml redacted.xml --keep-private-ips
Removes secrets and public identifiers, leaves RFC 1918 addressing intact so whoever is helping can still follow your topology.
Sharing with a vendor, forum or AI tool, anonymising identifiers:
pfsense-redactor config.xml redacted.xml --anonymise
Replaces addresses and domains with consistent placeholders, so relationships between rules and interfaces survive while the real values do not.
Check before you commit to it:
pfsense-redactor config.xml --dry-run-verbose
Prints what would change, with samples safely masked.
Using an unusual package? Add --aggressive. Webhook tokens live in URL
paths, and paths are otherwise preserved so package feed URLs are not destroyed.
Slack, Discord and Telegram are recognised and redacted without it; anything
else needs the flag. See
security.
How well does it work?
Measured against a 46-secret canary corpus that ships with the repository:
| Tool | Caught |
|---|---|
| pfsense-redactor | 44 / 46 (45 with --redact-descriptions) |
| ForesightCyber Config Anonymizer | 17 / 46 |
| netgate-xlsx | 11 / 46 |
The corpus was built alongside this tool, which biases it. Every released version was re-run against it to measure by how much: 31 of the 46 markers were planted against gaps this tool had, and none came from outside the project. Both misses are documented rather than hidden. Run it yourself:
pfsense-redactor tests/corpus/canary-corpus.xml --stdout --aggressive \
| grep -oE 'CANARY_[A-Z0-9_]+' | sort -u
Full method, caveats and per-secret results in the benchmark.
Before you share the output
Never restore a redacted file to pfSense. Comments, CDATA and some metadata do not survive the round trip. Keep your original.
Read the run summary. It reports high-entropy values it deliberately kept, with their element paths, so you can audit them. For a second opinion from a scanner that fails differently, see verifying output.
Documentation
| Guide | Covers |
|---|---|
| CLI reference | Every flag, with examples |
| Use cases | Netgate TAC, AI tools, MSP handoff, audits, and how this relates to diag_sanitize.php |
| Allow-lists | Keep specific IPs, CIDRs and domains readable |
| Security | Threat model, what gets redacted, path safety |
| Verifying output | Checking the result, and using gitleaks alongside |
| Benchmark | Canary corpus results and known gaps |
| Examples | Before/after output, statistics, testing |
| FAQ | Common questions |
| Security remediation tracker | Status of the July 2026 review findings |
| Changelog | Release history |
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are welcome. If you find a secret that survives
redaction, that is the most valuable report there is. A minimal fragment with
the value replaced by a CANARY_* marker can go straight into the corpus so the
miss stays fixed.
Run the tests with:
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest
Licence
MIT. See LICENSE.
1 maintainer
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