A Note about using UFW with Docker
Posted on Sun 06 August 2017 in Linux
UFW is a great program. It allows easy configuration of a powerful firewall, without the need to learn IPTables and the large amount of networking knowledge that goes with it.
However, when used with Docker, there is something you need to be aware of - UFW lies!
Although UFW makes changes to IPTables, it does not read back the same route tables it modifies. This means that a program that works directly with IPTables, such as Docker, could make rules that go against what you are trying to do with UFW.
For example, let's take a standard web server configuration: allow traffic on ports 22, 80 and 443. The output of UFW is as follows:
adam@ExampleHost:~$ sudo ufw status verbose
Status: active
Logging: on (low)
Default: deny (incoming), allow (outgoing), deny (routed)
New profiles: skip
To Action From
-- ------ ----
22/tcp ALLOW IN Anywhere
443/tcp ALLOW IN Anywhere
80/tcp ALLOW IN Anywhere
Now let's load up a Docker container that exposes port 8765 to the outside world:
adam@ExampleHost:~$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
f9955df5766f example/example "/bin/sh" 3 minutes ago Up 1 hours 0.0.0.0:8765->9000/tcp ExampleProgram
Now …
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