Firewall capabilities: block unwanted traffic ️
"Comfortably monitor your Internet traffic".
This has always been our motto.
Sniffnet surely enables everyone to monitor their network activity. However, a huge step ahead will be made once the app will also permit to manage such network activity.
Sniffnet, thanks to its polished dashboards, already allows to identify traffic that may look suspicious or unnecessary. Imagine the intuitiveness of Sniffnet paired with the ability to control the network flows at your discretion: a simple click would be enough to block unwanted network hosts / services / programs.
This is where introducing firewall capabilities comes into play.
All the major operating systems have built-in firewalls that Sniffnet can use to implement such a behaviour. I'm talking for instance about:
- nftables (on Linux)
- Windows Firewall (on Windows)
- Packet Filter (on macOS)
Sniffnet must be able to seamlessly integrate with the aforementioned native firewalls to perform the following:
- block all the IPs associated with a selected network host
- block all the IPs associated with a selected upper layer service
- block all the IPs associated with a selected program / process
- enable / disable / clear previously configured firewall rules
- provide a new user-friendly in-app page to interact with all the configured firewall policies
Blocking all the IP addresses associated with a given entity (network host / service / program) isn't trivial, and will require the support for periodically updating firewall rules to include new IPs attempting to generate traffic from an entity previously blocked by the user. This behaviour must also be reversible: in case a user decides to unblock a previously blocked entity, all of its IPs must be unblocked without causing conflicts or race conditions.
The implementation will require a considerable effort, especially considering that this a platform-dependant, low-level feature. But finally, we'll be able to upgrade our motto. Because sometimes, a single word makes a huge difference.
"Comfortably manage your Internet traffic".
Source: GyulyVGC/sniffnet