Hello good folks of the Internet,

For more than 3 years now, OPNsense is driving innovation through modularising and hardening the open source firewall, with simple and reliable firmware upgrades, multi-language support, HardenedBSD security, fast adoption of upstream software updates as well as clear and stable 2-Clause BSD licensing.

We humbly present to you the sum of another major iteration of the OPNsense firewall. Over the second half of 2017 well over 500 changes have made it into this release, nicknamed "Groovy Gecko". Most notably, the firewall NAT rules have been reworked to be more flexible and usable via plugins, which is going to pave the way for subsequent API works on the core firewall functionality. For more details please find the attached list of changes below.

The upgrade track from 17.7 will be available later today. Please be patient. 🙂

Meltdown and Spectre patches are currently being worked on in FreeBSD[1], but there is no reliable timeline. We will keep you up to date through the usual channels as more news become available. Hang in there!

These are the most prominent changes since version 17.7:

FreeBSD 11.1, PHP 7.1 and jQuery 3 migration

Realtek vendor NIC driver version 1.94

Portable NAT before IPsec support

Local group restriction feature in OpenVPN and IPsec

OpenVPN multi-remote support for clients

Strict interface binding for SSH and web GUI

Improved MVC tabs and general page layout

Shared forwarding now works on IPv6, in conjunction with "try-forwarding" and improved reply-to multi-WAN behaviour

Easy-to-use update cache support for Linux and Windows in web proxy

Intrusion detection alert improvements and plugin support for new rulesets (ET Pro, Snort VRT)

Revamped HAProxy plugin with introduction pages

Moved interface selection to menu and quick search for firewall rules, DHCP and wireless status

Alias backend rewrite for future extensibility

Plugin-capable firewall NAT rules

Migration of system routes UI and backend to MVC (also available via API)

Reverse DNS support for insight reporting (also available via API)

Fully rewritten firewall live log in MVC (also available via API)

New plugins: zerotier, mdns-repeater, collectd, telegraf, clamav, c-icap, tor, siproxd, web-proxy-sso, web-proxy-useracl, postfix, rspamd, redis, iperf, arp-scan, zabbix-proxy, frr, node_exporter

Download links, an installation guide[2] and the checksums for the images can be found below as well.

Europe: https://opnsense.c0urier.net/releases/18.1/

US East Coast: http://mirrors.nycbug.org/pub/opnsense/releases/18.1/

US West Coast: https://mirror.sfo12.us.leaseweb.net/opnsense/releases/18.1/

South America: http://mirror.upb.edu.co/opnsense/releases/18.1/

South-East Asia: https://ftp.yzu.edu.tw/opnsense/releases/18.1/

Full mirror list: https://opnsense.org/download/

Here is the full list of changes against version 18.1.r2:

system: recover static version of PHP configuration files during boot

system: show warning dialog when editing web GUI listening interfaces

system: allow dots in certificate details

system: remove workaround for new 32 bit mmap disallow default (see below)

firewall: fix port range forward expansion

firewall: move alias directory to persistent memory

firewall: fix alias resolve during boot

firewall: revert VIP gateway option for PPPoE interfaces

interfaces: fix header link in list widget

interfaces: defer IP renewal during boot

installer: full password recovery mode enables user and sets local authentication

installer: prevent MFS transition on install media after import

network time: use all our time servers and prefer the first

ui: revert menu positioning improvements

plugins: os-freeradius 1.5.1 adds LDAP search filter (contributed by Michael Muenz)

plugins: os-haproxy 2.4[3] (contributed by Frank Wall)

plugins: os-node_exporter 1.0 (contributed by David Harrigan)

plugins: os-postfix 1.0 (contributed by Michael Muenz)

plugins: os-rspamd 1.0 (contributed by Fabian Franz)

plugins: os-telegraf 1.2 adds graphite and graylog output (contributed by Michael Muenz)

src: do not protect VLAN PCP write with the sysctl

src: enable numbered user class ID option in dhclient

src: set hardening.pax.disallow_map32bit.status=1 by default

ports: ca_root_nss 3.35

ports: libressl[4] 2.6.4

ports: php[5] 7.1.13

ports: sudo[6] 1.8.22

ports: unbound[7] 1.6.8

All images are provided with SHA-256 signatures, which can be verified against the distributed public key:

# openssl base64 -d -in image.bz2.sig -out /tmp/image.sig

# openssl dgst -sha256 -verify rsa.pub -signature /tmp/image.sig image.bz2

The public key for the 18.1 series is:

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----

MIICIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAg8AMIICCgKCAgEA5kMyxEWUoyY3y8JLlOnz

j2dE1QPYmWspn5Diqf1T6uSh0/HA8TwnRvI4m82dC2kgnafVB85zIS+rXQLiyJZI

JEqmBS5f54kVcyJPVORe7NepJq372amAMTcpPwH4b0SS9ZETebAOyuHjdG/lCjKD

yt5W5ZvaMiDMWLVuw1ZlTIxLgkRuCHsk66E1bdoiIMdZPoyk2Q9WQd3PynLRBVHC

iT32cJ/NlHiLEALp0wcNr+FllmFQXahQ5R1uBcsE/IXa7Tg0QXlW7s5+d6NTwQ/d

7NVnfZzH8IiO0A/9O5jbBsD6HLmity5nMI+RBwFQ9OQoBNxl5aakkusizT6diMYb

PG+zPZsWo/ADqsbg1U/MMLJXD8CDFjcerhIDrrWSIVlSmQKw97nMK/TdUsqnVl7N

uDLl0RHe+N6ndmNGTQGg5HbrTmYKSEGBdS4xFtO60JCxubzfpvnkDnPCIJtxWukf

TzhORJHj2vkGLDA5FocTSOY76lWUO4qJQBA2bB3GtGbCm/nM4TlHpL4Kbf10IUJk

j1tRFi8gXNOhrdplFAR+lV/yy58/+ZOg61Yz7UvYG/A9rxGkyVmIjzB/4S6Wstye

IA6vpfzHwHq82hMqafCSB2KJciuKVEgVO6DHLV03VLTPqkJVsCbWXHgNjK2fQCFX

JeXNX68TcObIJzqbiegZYo8CAwEAAQ==

-----END PUBLIC KEY-----

Stay safe,

Your OPNsense team