create iptables rule per process/service

Question

is it possible to use iptables in order to permit traffic initiated by a "process", ie using the process name? I would like for example to allow everything that is initiated by ping command.

Answer 1

It looks like the owner iptables module is that what you want. First, check if it's available in Your system:

iptables -m owner --help

You can read more here: http://www.frozentux.net/iptables-tutorial/iptables-tutorial.html#OWNERMATCH

Answer 2

-m owner --pid-owner PID

See http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-limit-network-access-by-user.html and http://linux.die.net/man/8/iptables

Note that you need the ipt_owner module, as --pid-owner is not supported by xt_owner.

For example (this is just an approximation)

#!/bin/bash
$@ &
iptables -m owner --pid-owner %1 -j REJECT

In reality, though, you're better off using --uid-owner and --gid-owner. First, the --pid-owner criterion only matches the exact pid, meaning your program could easily spawn a child process which would not be blocked by this rule. (At least I haven't read otherwise.) Secondly, iptables(8) warns that --pid-owner is broken on SMP systems (which may or may not apply to you, but in either case limits portability). Third, there is a race condition in the script above, because the process is started before it is blocked. (If there is a way to get a process's pid before it starts, then I've never heard about it.)

Answer 3

If there is a way to get a process's pid before it starts, then I've never heard about it.

You could write a wrapper which forks first, then adds the rule and execs the process (assuming the program you're running doesn't fork again), since the PID is not changed by the exec(3) call.

/* NOTE this contains zero error checking */
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    /* Eat argv[0] the name of the wrapper script */
    argv++;
    argc--;

    pid_t my_pid = getpid();

    char *iptables_cmd = NULL;
    asprintf(&iptables_cmd, "/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -m owner --pid_owner %d -j ACCEPT", my_pid);

    system(iptables_cmd);

    execv(argv[0], argv);
}