Cancel my last. The output below is from my other test firewall. The actual output from the firewall in question of the iptables -nvL command does in fact show the accept all rule for the loopback addresss only. Thank you. pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 32 1600 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 RULES MORE RULES -----Original Message----- From: netfilter-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:netfilter-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Arthur DiSegna Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 12:07 PM To: netfilter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: First rule in the list seems to allow everything? iptables -nvL output Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 214K packets, 11M bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 195K packets, 356M bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination -----Original Message----- From: netfilter-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:netfilter-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rob Sterenborg Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 10:09 AM To: netfilter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: First rule in the list seems to allow everything? On Wed, January 25, 2006 15:58, Arthur DiSegna wrote: > > > Hello, > > I set my IPTABLES policy to clear all rules and then drop everything > before defining a policy. I suspect this is the default procedure > everyone uses from the looks of the web. Anwyay, when I run iptables > -L -n the first line reads: > > target prot opt source destination > ACCEPT all -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 > RULES -------- --- ------ > RULES -------- --- ------ > > Doing an nmap scan on the box only shows the open ports I specified in > the ruleset. This is good. However, the Accept all above in the first > line has me a little confused. What is happening here? Try listing the rules with : iptables -nvL Gr, Rob