Do I need a firewall for my fedora 38?
I'm new to Linux, previously been on Windows where I used defender + Windows firewall. Now I'm on fedora which also have its firewall called firewalld. Are those sufficient, or do I need any other solutions for my security?
Even without any firewall you should be fine by default. Access to ports with no services listening do nothing. Firewalls are just defense-in-depth in case a service that you didn't want to accidentally listens on a port. It may also slightly reduce kernel attack surface.
So I would say that you don't need it. You will be fine. But if you want to be sure about what is listening on your machine then feel free to apply one.
Unless your computer is exposed directly to the internet, your router's firewall should be enough. Fedora typically has SELinux and AppArmor enabled by default which should protect from something nasty executing on your machine.
Don't execute things as root if you don't know what it is and you should be fine.
Fedora doesn't use AppArmor, it uses SELinux.
You normally only use SELinux or AppArmor, not both, since they are the same goal and purpose.
I would definitely keep firewalld and SELinux installed and enabled on any system unless there's a good reason not to.
Uncomplicated Firewall is easy to setup and understand. It blocks traffic and allows it. Install UFW
sudo apt install ufw
My recommended(Chris Titus)
`sudo ufw limit 22/tcp
sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw enable`
Is this enough?
Yes, it is enough. Generally, the default handling of connections on Linux is enough but having
ufwcan't hurt. Certain developer or server software may not work unless you add UFW exceptions for them. They don't know how to do this on their own.By default, without a firewall, any program can communicate through any port it wants as long as it can bind that port. Ports that are special or low-numbered (e.g. TCP port 21 is reserved for FTP) require root to be bound. Otherwise, a program can bind any port that isn't already in use by something else. All incoming connections to a port that isn't bound will be refused and the information discarded.
Edit: Your router also usually has a firewall that is strong enough for most everyday purposes.
You probably is protected by your routers firewall already. But if you want to keep it safe and use a firewall in your computer, you may install ufw or firewalld. The default config should be alright to your needs
I use portmaster on my fedora instance. I disabled blocking all from LAN and made a custom rule set to allow some devices and block all others.
Unless you mess around with firewall commands/settings you don't understand firewalld should be sufficient.
That being said you might have to allow certain services at some point (openvpn) for example
