In modern firewalls the possibility to control not particular packets but the whole connection session is an important aspect. In TCP it is done by controlling and saving packets initiating the connection. The micro-course describes using additional modules of the firewall for filtering the connection status.
Keywords: iptables, session, stateful, state, conntrack, UNTRACKED, EXPECTED, CONFIRMED, helper
Using additional firewall modules – filtering the connection status
List of available status filtering modules
Status tracking mechanism
The conntrack module
The helper module
Support of packet tracking