In this blog post I would like to share the configuration I have been trying out with Airwall from Tempered Networks over the past months. Airwall is a new approach to security leveraging the HIP protocol defined in RFC7401.
If you would like to read more about my experiences with Airwall, check out my first posts, Tampering Visibility with by Tempered and Configuring Airwall.
The following topology describes how I have included the Airwall gateway in my home network.
In this setup, I created a seperate VLAN for the untrusted VLAN that is effectively a subinterface on my FTD device. It allows traffic to the outside only. I have configured PAT to allow the necessary inbound Airwall communication ports.
The trusted port of the Airwall gateway is directly connected to the client VLAN in my network. Why? I wanted to test out bonjour and L2 extension / forwarding too.
Secure remote access
Probably one of the most visible use cases for Airwall is allowing secure access as if it was a VPN/SASE client allowing your users connecting securely to inside resources. And that is definitely possible with Airwall. You can leverage the gateway function to effectively connect secure (inside) hosts and networks via the secure ports.
For this use case, I want to securely allow access from my laptop to several management IP’s in my internal network, being:
- Firepower Management Center (FMC)
- C9800 Wireless Controller
- My Raspberry PI with Domoticz to see real-time power consumption
- My laser printer
- My distribution switch (SSH)
As the gateway has its secure port to my clients VLAN, I just need to define these devices (and yes, IP scanning is possible) as local devices and add static routing for my network management. All this is configured for the specific Airwall via the Conductor (Airwalls -> Select the right Airwall).
Add local devices to an Airwall gateway
Configure overlay routing via IP Gateway
I had some connectivity issues when I had my Mac conencted to the same VLAN and was not able to connect to my FMC. This is solvable by either setting a different overlay IP address on my Airwall Agents or configure PAT on the gateway. I’ve chosen the first option, and it has worked quite well.
Now that the Airwall components have the right (local) connectivity, it is time to configure a security policy for secure access. Within Airwalls paradigm, these security policies are overlay networks. And they work very easy. Within the conductor the tab “Overlays” is where you’ll configure all overlay networks. I have created a hub-spoke overlay network with my own devices (which I grouped) as hub. Why would I do that? It means that all the other devices are spokes and I can automatically communicate with them, once I add them.
Adding/Removing devices is like really easy. Just hit the plus and add any device you have defined in the Conductor, and that’s it.
Once I add a device in the overlay, it can communicate with the hub. And when I am outside, or even when I’m at home, I am actually connecting to these devices via the Airwall secure network, as can be seen via the below traceroute.
In summary, I have been very satisfied with the way Airwall is working. This common use case is really easy to configure and manage. And as long as the underlay ports can communicate, it is fast and reliable. But you can do more with Airwall. One of the things from Security Field Day that got me triggered was the full programmability, which I will describe in another post.