ufw and outgoing traffic

[ngmachado]

Hi,

I'm self-learning server administration so I installed Ubuntu 8.04 LTS in a VPS.

Since I'm very concerned with security I intalled ufw (uncomplicated firewall).

Then I created the following rule:


sudo ufw allow proto tcp from xxx.xxx.0.0/16 to any port yy

where yy is my changed ssh port and xxx.xxx is the beginning of my ISP IPs address. Fine!

I installed Apache2 and I had to define:


sudo ufw allow www

in order to visit my websites. Fine!

Finally I installed Postfix... and I'm able to send emails without creating any rule. It seems that ufw is not filtering outgoing traffic, only incoming. Is it normal? Should this be a concern?

[Monicker]

Normall you wouldn't filter outbound traffic on a workstation or server, because its usually trusted.

Now for a gateway to the internet, for example, I definitely would filter outbound traffic; only allow outbound to 25 from the mail server, to web sites from the proxy server, etc. Egress filtering is a good thing.