Hello!

The following is a proposal to introduce network traffic filtering capabilities for the network traffic originating from and destined to virtual machines. Libvirt's capabilities will be extended to allow users to describe what traffic filtering rules are to be applied on a virtual machine (using XML) and libvirt then creates the appropriate ebtables and iptables rules and applies those on the host when the virtual machine starts up, resumes after suspension or resumes on a new host after migration. libvirt tears down the traffic filtering rules when the virtual machine shuts down, suspends, or a VM is migrated to another host. It will also be possible to modify the filtering rules while a virtual machine is running. In this architecture we apply the firewall rules on the outside of the virtual machines on the Linux host and make use of the fact that virtual machines can be configured by libvirt to have their network traffic pass through the host and the host exposes (tap) 'backend' interfaces on which the firewall rules can be applied. The application of the firewall rules is optional and those who do not want to introduce a raw network throughput performance hit on their system due to the evaluation of every packet passing through the filtering chains, do not have to use these capabilities. An initial implementation would be done for libvirt's Qemu support.

As stated above, the application of firewall rules on virtual machines will require some form of XML description that lets the user choose what type of filtering is to be performed. In effect the user needs to be able to tell libvirt which ebtables and iptables rules to generate so that the appropriate filtering can be done. We realize that ebtables and iptables have lots of capabilities but think that we need to restrict which capabilities can actually be 'reached' through this XML.

The following proposal is based on an XML as defined by the DMTF (http://www.dmtf.org/standards/cim/cim_schema_v2230/CIM_Network.pdf, slide 10) with extensions for processing of ARP packets.It gives control over the evaluation of Ethernet (MAC) frames, ARP packet data and IP header information. A (draft) XML skeleton in this case could look as follows:

<FilterEntry>
<Action>DROP|ACCEPT</Action> 

<TrafficType>incoming [to VM]|outgoing [from VM]</TrafficType>

<Hdr8021Filter>
<HdrSrcMACAddr8021> </HdrSrcMACAddr8021>
<HdrSrcMACMask8021> </HdrSrcMACMask8021>
<HdrDestMACAddr8021> </HdrDestMACAddr8021>
<HdrDestMACMask8021> </HdrDestMACMask8021>
<HdrProtocolID8021> numeric and/or string? </HdrProtocolID8021>
<HdrPriorityValue8021></HdrPriorityValue8021>
<HdrVLANID8021> </HdrVLANID8021>
</Hdr8021Filter>

<ARPFilter>
<HWType> </HWType>
<ProtocolType> </ProtocolType>
<OPCode> </OPCode>
<SrcMACAddr> </SrcMACAddr>
<SrcIPAddr> </SrcIPAddr>
<DestMACAddr> </DestMACAddr>
<DestIPAddr> </DestIPAddr>
</ARPFilter>

<IPHeadersFilter>
<HdrIPVersion> </HdrIPVersion>
<HdrSrcAddress> </HdrSrcAddress>
<HdrSrcMask> </HdrSrcMask>
<HdrDestAddress> </HdrDestAddress>
<HdrDestMask> </HdrDestMask>
<HdrProtocolID> numeric and/or string? </HdrProtocolID>
<HdrSrcPortStart> </HdrSrcPortStart>
<HdrSrcPortEnd> </HdrSrcPortEnd>
<HdrDestPortStart> </HdrDestPortStart>
<HdrDestPortEnd> </HdrDestPortEnd>
<HdrDSCP> </HdrDSCP>
</IPHeadersFilter>

</FilterEntry>

Since the ebtables and iptables command cannot accept all possible parameters at the same time, only a certain subset of the above parameters may be set for any given filter command. Higher level application writers will likely use a library that lets them choose which features they would want to have enforced, such as no-broadcast or no-multicast, enforcement of MAC spoofing prevention or ARP poisoning prevention, which then generates this lower level XML rules in the appropriate order of the rules.

Further, we will introduce filter pools where a collection of the above filter rules can be stored and referenced to by virtual machines' individual interface. A reference to such a filter pool entry will be given in the interface description and may look as in the following draft XML:

<interface type='bridge'> <source bridge='virbr0'/> <script path='vif-bridge'/> <firewall> <reference profile='generic-layer2' ip_address='10.0.0.1'/> <reference profile='VM-specific-layer3'/> </firewall> </interface>

The above XML has one reference to a generic layer2 filter template XML that should be usable by multiple virtual machines but would need to be customized with interface-specific parameters. In this case, the IP address of the interface is explicitly provided in order to make the filter XML template a concrete XML for the particular interface. The MAC address of the interface is not explicitly provided since it will already have been randomly generated by libvirt at the point when this layer2 filter XML needs to be converted into concrete ebtables commands/rules. We still need to determine how the format of a template should look like, though an idea would be to indicate a placeholder for a VM's MAC address using THIS_MAC and similarly for the IP address with THIS_IP as placeholder.

Further, we would introduce the management of filter 'pools'. Considering existing functionality in libvirt and CLI commands for similar type of management functionality, the following CLI commands would be added:

virsh nwfilter-create <file> virsh nwfilter-destroy <profile name> virsh nwfilter-list <options> virsh nwfilter-dumpxml <profile name> virsh nwfilter-update <filename> (performs an update on an existing profile replacing all rules)
possibly also:
virsh nwfilter-edit <profile name>
virsh nwfilter-create-from <profile name>

Please let us know what you think of this proposal.

Regards
Stefan, Gerhard and Vivek