Securing Your Network With MikroTik Router Firewall Best Practices And Tips

Do you know that you can secure your router using port knocking? It's a simple and effective way to enhance your router's security measures against hackers. In this post, we'll take a deeper look at port knocking and how you can use it to protect your router.

MikroTik Firewall : Securing your Router with Port Knocking

What is Port Knocking?

Port knocking is a technique that makes it possible for you to protect your router from malicious attacks by keeping your ports closed to any inbound traffic. Here's how it works:

You configure your router to listen for a sequence of connection attempts on closed ports.
If the sequence is correct, the router will open a predefined port, allowing traffic to pass through.
After the traffic has passed through, the port is closed again.

As an example, let's say you want to protect port 22 (which is used for SSH) on your router. You can instruct your router to listen for connection attempts on ports 1234, 5678, and 9876 in that order. Once the router detects the correct sequence, it will open port 22, allowing SSH traffic to pass through.

How Does Port Knocking Improve Security?

Port knocking provides an additional layer of security for your router by keeping your ports closed to any inbound traffic. This means that your router will not respond to any requests that come in on closed ports, making it harder for hackers to find an open port to exploit. By requiring a specific sequence of connection attempts to open a port, port knocking makes it even harder for hackers to gain unauthorized access to your router.

Pros and Cons of Port Knocking

Pros:

Port knocking is simple to configure and implement.
It provides an additional layer of security for your router.
It can help protect your router against zero-day attacks.

Cons:

Port knocking can be difficult to use if you're not familiar with networking concepts.
If the port knocking sequence is discovered, it can be easily exploited by hackers.
If you forget the port knocking sequence, you won't be able to access your own router.

Implementing Port Knocking on Your Router

If you're interested in implementing port knocking on your router, here are the steps you need to follow:

Step 1: Choose the Ports to Knock

The first step is to choose which ports you want to protect. Typically, these are ports that are commonly used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to your router. Examples of these ports include port 22 (SSH), port 23 (Telnet), and port 80 (HTTP).

Step 2: Choose the Knocking Sequence

The next step is to choose the knocking sequence that will be used to open the ports. The sequence can consist of as many ports as you want, but it's recommended to use at least three ports to make it more difficult for hackers to guess the sequence. Each port in the sequence should only be used once.

Step 3: Configure Your Router

After you have chosen the ports and the sequence, you need to configure your router to listen for the sequence. This can be done using your router's firewall settings or with specialized software designed for port knocking.

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Step 4: Test Your Configuration

Once you have configured your router, it's important to test your configuration to ensure that it's working as intended. You can do this by attempting to connect to the protected port without first executing the port knocking sequence. If your configuration is working correctly, you should not be able to connect to the port.

Conclusion

Port knocking is a simple and effective way to enhance the security of your router. By keeping your ports closed to inbound traffic and requiring a specific sequence of connection attempts to open them, port knocking makes it significantly harder for hackers to gain unauthorized access to your router. If you're interested in implementing port knocking on your router, be sure to follow the steps we've outlined in this post to ensure that your configuration is secure and effective.