Firewall Practices with “PfSense” on Your Virtual Home Network Lab

Part-1 Deploying Home Network with VMware and Pfsense

PfSense software is a free, open-source customized distribution of FreeBSD specifically tailored for use as a firewall and router that is entirely managed via the web interface.

LAB Topology At the end of the page you can find download links for KALI, VMware, PfSense, and Metasploitable.

Step-1 Download PfSense ISO:

download AMD64 bit, DVD ISO Installer.

Select Create a new Virtual Machine option.

Browse downloaded PfSense ISO

First, create LAN and DMZ segments.

ensure you have added 3 network adapters (Vmnet, LAN, DMZ) Then power on the machine.

Select BIOS option during installation

First, we will assign interfaces. Enter 1 for option. Then select yes for setting up Vlans

After creating VLANs we will set interfaces IP Addresses. Select option 2. Then enter IP addresses of LAN and DMZ(OPT1).

According to our lab topology, our IP plan is in the first chart. We determine the first addresses of the 24 prefix IP blocks that we have determined for the LAN network and DMZ network’s interface IP addresses. Afterward, these addresses will be gateway addresses for Server and client machines.

During LAN installation select yes for the “Do you want to revert HTTP as the WebConfiguratar protocol” option. Via this, we have created a web management interface of PfSense. It will serve on the LAN interface address.

Configuring Kali as LAN Client

During KALI’s network adapter configuration select “LAN Segment” then select LAN option.

Right-click on the ethernet sign which is on the upper right the corner of KALI screen. Then select edit connections.

Select IPv+ Settings for static IP configuration.

We will assign a static IP to our KALI machine. Gateway address is LAN interface address. Then give a IP address from the LAN network’s 24 prefix subnet. We have entered google DNS address “8.8.8.8" you can choose a different DNS address.

Accessing Pfsense Web Interface from LAN

We need to see the firewall interfaces on the Dashboard screen.

Configuring Metaspolitable as a DMZ Machine

During Network Adapter settings choose LAN Segment then DMZ option.

we will chance /etc/network/interfaces file. For this enter “sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces” command.

Finally, our home network is ready. Now you can continue to Part-2 FW Practices.

More for Pfsense and Cybersecurity

https://www.udemy.com/course/cybersecurity101cybersecurity-essentials-with-hands-on-labs/?referralCode=DFE610F0B41743B76100

Download Links

KALI:

https://www.kali.org/get-kali/

VMware Workstation Pro (free for one month) : https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation-pro/workstation-pro-evaluation.html

Pfsense:

https://www.pfsense.org/download/

Metasploiatable-2: https://sourceforge.net/projects/metasploitable/files/Metasploitable2/