Murus' purpose is to unleash its potential. It comes in an "under the hood" fashion, installed and disabled by default. This will cause the firewall rules to load every time the Mac is rebooted.MacOS features one of the best network firewalls: PF (Packet Filter).
Murus lite install#
Once you’re happy with the firewall rules, navigate to Status and click the Install Boot Scripts button. This will leave the new firewall rules in place.Īt this point, we have a working firewall, but it will not be enabled after the next reboot. Doing so will bring up a 60 second timer.Īfter disconnecting from Screen Sharing (VNC) and reconnecting, click the Dismiss button. Murus will ask if you’re remotely controlling the Mac, and it’s important to click I’m using remote control. This is very useful when configuring firewall rules in a remote environment.Ĭlick the blue arrow at the top of the Murus window. If we haven’t clicked the button in 60 seconds, it will disable the firewall rules. Murus will give us 60 seconds to disconnect and then reconnect to the remote Mac and click a button. Now it’s time to test our rules to make sure we can still connect after enabling the firewall rules. Repeat these steps for SSH (port 22) if applicable. Make sure to add the IP address that you are currently connecting from. We have named our group Testing, and added several IP addresses to it. Choose a Group Name and click Add New Group. Navigate to Groups and click the + icon towards the top. A group can be your home or office IP, or any other IP address that you would like to grant access to certain ports on your remote Mac. Moving on, we’re going to create a group. Navigate to Option Rules -> Filtering Preferences and uncheck the box for Block inbound icmp echo requests. By default, Murus drops inbound ICMP traffic. Overview – This screen shows the raw output of the pf rules that have been created by Murus.įirst, we’re going to enable inbound ICMP so that it is available as a troubleshooting option. We will be allowing traffic from specific groups in this screen.
Inbound Rules – All inbound traffic is blocked by default. Option Rules – General options for Murus rules Groups – To allow connections to specific services from certain IP addresses, we will create a group of IPs or IP ranges. Each service has one or more tcp/udp ports assigned to it. Services – This screen contains a predefined list of services known to Murus. Status – We won’t use this screen until the end, when we have our firewall rules configured and tested. Click OK and then select Start Murus Menulet At User Login if you would like (recommended).Īfter Murus is started, click Start Murus Lite.
Start by downloading and installing the latest version of Murus: Īfter it is installed, open Murus and there may be a couple informational popups about the menulet that will display in the menu bar. When configuring a firewall on a production server, do so during a maintenance window. Applying the default Murus rules can result in an unreachable server. We recommend reading through this guide fully before beginning. WARNING: Configuring a firewall on a remote server can result in an unreachable server.
Murus lite how to#
This tutorial will show how to enable ICMP and lock down a Mac with only VNC (Screen Sharing) and SSH ports open to specific IPs.
Murus lite free#
This tutorial will be using the latest free version of Murus. It is a frontend for the built-in macOS pf (packet filter) firewall.
Murus lite software#
Murus is a powerful software firewall available for macOS.