kindercontrol

A command-line tool that enables/disables pfSense rules.

Introduction

As any parent with young children these days knows, electronics and the Internet serve as an all-too-tempting distraction that can be hard to control.

To regain control, I wanted a way of quickly disabling Internet access on the kids devices.

There are of course several out-of-the-box solutions out there but they involve cost, extra hardware and some use 'hacker'-like techniques like ARP Poisoning.

I've been a fan of pfSense for years and so went looking for a way to control it remotely.

This script forms a part of the control mechanism. Using this script I can quickly enable and disable rules on pfSense that are set up to block my kid's devices. To run the scripts from my phone, I use the excellent Alfred (https://www.alfredapp.com) and it's companion iOS app.

Requirements

Script Host

The script is designed to run on a host separate to the firewall. It was developed on macOS Sierra with python3 installed via HomeBrew.

pfSense Firewall

Requires:

pfSense 2.3 or greater.
FauxAPI (https://github.com/ndejong/pfsense_fauxapi)

Usage

Examples of usage:

kinder-control.py firewall.mynetwork.com PFFAFirewallControl 84ru5oghego3hgwtwhf4oohgewronrlg3 gaming-pcs disable