Mastering Linux Firewalls: A Deep Dive into Netfilter and iptables
Introduction Linux firewalls form the critical security perimeter of modern infrastructure, protecting servers, networks, and cloud environments from unauthorized access and malicious traffic. At the heart of this protection lies the Netfilter framework, a sophisticated kernel-level infrastructure that intercepts and processes network packets at strategic points in the networking stack. iptables, the user-space command-line utility, provides administrators with granular control over firewall policies, enabling the