opnDossier - OPNsense and pfSense Configuration Processor#

Overview#

opnDossier is a command-line tool for network operators and security professionals working with OPNsense and pfSense firewalls. Transform complex XML configuration files into clear, readable documentation and identify security issues, misconfigurations, and optimization opportunities.

Built for offline operation in secure environments - no external dependencies, no telemetry, complete airgapped support.

What It Does#

• Security Analysis - Automatically detect vulnerabilities, insecure protocols, weak configurations
• Dead Rule Detection - Find unreachable firewall rules and unused interfaces
• Configuration Validation - Comprehensive checks for misconfigurations and best-practice issues
• Multi-Format Export - Convert to markdown documentation, JSON, or YAML for integration
• Offline Operation - Works completely offline, perfect for airgapped networks

Quick Start#

Installation#

Download pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, or Windows from releases, or install from source:

go install github.com/EvilBit-Labs/opnDossier@latest

Basic Usage#

# Generate configuration documentation
opnDossier convert config.xml -o report.md

# Run security audit (blue mode is default)
opnDossier audit config.xml

# Display config in terminal
opnDossier display config.xml

Example Output#

Markdown display output#

Convert to JSON for automation/integration#

Configuration diff#

Audit findings example#

Analysis & Security Features#

opnDossier automatically analyzes your OPNsense or pfSense configuration to identify security issues, misconfigurations, and optimization opportunities.

Security Vulnerability Detection#

Identifies common security issues in your firewall configuration:

• Insecure Protocols - Detects HTTP admin interfaces, Telnet, unencrypted SNMP
• Weak Configurations - Finds default community strings, overly permissive rules
• Certificate Issues - Identifies expired certificates, weak key sizes
• Credential Exposure - Detects plaintext passwords or weak authentication

Example output:

Dead Rule Detection#

Automatically identifies firewall rules that will never be reached:

• Rules positioned after "block all" rules on the same interface
• Duplicate rules with identical criteria (type, protocol, source, destination)

Example output:

DEAD RULES DETECTED:
- Rule #15: Rules after position 12 on interface lan are unreachable due to preceding block-all rule
- Rule #31: Rule at position 31 is duplicate of rule at position 28 on interface wan

Configuration Validation#

Comprehensive checks for structural and logical issues:

• Required Fields - Validates hostname, domain, network interfaces
• Data Types - Ensures IP addresses, subnets, ports are valid
• Cross-Field Validation - Checks relationships between configuration elements
• Network Topology - Validates gateway assignments, routing tables, VLAN configurations

Example validation report:

Unused Resource Detection#

Finds enabled resources not actively used:

• Interfaces enabled but not referenced in rules or services
• Aliases defined but never used in firewall rules
• VPN tunnels configured but disabled
• Services running without corresponding firewall rules

Compliance Checking#

Built-in validation against security and operational best practices.

• Industry-standard security baselines
• SANS security guidelines

Features#

Analysis & Reporting#

• Security vulnerability detection - Identify insecure protocols, weak configurations, credential exposure
• Dead rule detection - Find unreachable firewall rules and duplicate rules
• Unused resource analysis - Detect unused interfaces, aliases, and services
• Configuration validation - Comprehensive structural and logical validation
• Compliance checking - Industry-standard security baselines and best practices

Output & Export#

• Multi-format export - Generate markdown documentation, JSON, or YAML output
• Terminal display - Rich terminal output with syntax highlighting and theme support
• File export - Save processed configurations with overwrite protection
• Template-based reports - Customizable markdown templates (legacy, deprecated v3.0)
• International character support - UTF-8, US-ASCII, ISO-8859-1, and Windows-1252 input encodings

Performance & Architecture#

• Streaming processing - Memory-efficient handling of large configuration files
• Fast & lightweight - Built with Go for performance and reliability
• Offline operation - Works completely offline, perfect for airgapped environments
• Cross-platform - Native binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows

Security & Privacy#

• No external dependencies - Operates completely offline
• No telemetry - Zero data collection or external communication
• Secure by design - Input validation, sanitization, and SBOM generation throughout
• Vulnerability scanning - Automated dependency scanning and security checks in CI/CD

Installation#

Pre-built Binaries (Recommended)#

Download the latest release for your platform:

• Linux (amd64, arm64)
• macOS (Intel, Apple Silicon)
• Windows (amd64)

Extract and run:

tar -xzf opnDossier-*.tar.gz
./opnDossier --help

Install via Go#

Prerequisites: Go 1.26 or later

go install github.com/EvilBit-Labs/opnDossier@latest

Build from Source#

git clone https://github.com/EvilBit-Labs/opnDossier.git
cd opnDossier
go build -o opnDossier main.go

For development builds with additional tooling, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Usage Examples#

Security Analysis#

# Run blue team defensive audit (default mode)
opnDossier audit config.xml

# Blue team audit with specific compliance plugins
opnDossier audit config.xml --plugins stig,sans

# Red team attack surface analysis
opnDossier audit config.xml --mode red

# Export audit findings to JSON for automation/integration
opnDossier audit -f json config.xml -o findings.json

Configuration Documentation#

# Convert OPNsense or pfSense config to markdown documentation
opnDossier convert config.xml -o firewall-docs.md

# Generate YAML for configuration management tools
opnDossier convert -f yaml config.xml -o config.yaml

# Display in terminal with custom wrap width
opnDossier display --wrap 100 config.xml

Validation#

# Validate configuration file
opnDossier validate config.xml

# Validate before converting
opnDossier validate config.xml && opnDossier convert config.xml -o report.md

Advanced Options#

# Include system tunables in report
opnDossier convert config.xml -o comprehensive.md --include-tunables

# Verbose output for troubleshooting
opnDossier --verbose convert config.xml

# Quiet mode - only show errors
opnDossier --quiet convert config.xml -o output.md

Configuration#

opnDossier can be configured via command-line flags, environment variables, or a configuration file.

Configuration Options#

For a complete list of all configuration options, see the Configuration Reference.

Configuration File Example#

Create ~/.opnDossier.yaml:

# Logging
verbose: false
quiet: false

# File paths
input_file: /path/to/default/config.xml
output_file: ./output.md

Usage Examples#

# Using CLI flags
opnDossier --verbose convert config.xml

# Using environment variables
export OPNDOSSIER_VERBOSE=true
opnDossier convert config.xml

# Using config file (automatically loaded from ~/.opnDossier.yaml)
opnDossier convert config.xml

Output Formats#

opnDossier supports multiple output formats for different use cases:

• Markdown - Human-readable documentation with formatted tables and sections
• JSON - Machine-readable format for automation and integration
• YAML - Configuration management and structured data export
• Terminal Display - Rich syntax-highlighted output with theme support

Specify format with -f or --format flag:

opnDossier convert -f json config.xml -o output.json
opnDossier convert -f yaml config.xml -o output.yaml
opnDossier convert -f markdown config.xml -o output.md # default

GitHub Actions#

opnDossier is available as a GitHub Action backed by its Docker image. Use it to audit or document OPNsense and pfSense configurations automatically on every commit, PR, or scheduled run.

Quick Start#

name: Audit firewall configuration

on:
  push:
    paths:
      - config.xml
  schedule:
    - cron: 0 6 * * 1 # every Monday at 06:00 UTC

jobs:
  audit:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6

      - name: Audit OPNsense config
        # No release tags exist yet — use @main until v1 is tagged
        uses: EvilBit-Labs/opnDossier@main
        with:
          command: audit
          config-file: config.xml

Inputs#

Export findings to JSON#

  - name: Export audit findings
  # No release tags exist yet — use @main until v1 is tagged
    uses: EvilBit-Labs/opnDossier@main
    with:
      command: audit
      config-file: firewall/config.xml
      format: json
      output: findings.json

  - name: Upload findings
    uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
    with:
      name: audit-findings
      path: findings.json

Generate configuration documentation#

  - name: Generate firewall documentation
  # No release tags exist yet — use @main until v1 is tagged
    uses: EvilBit-Labs/opnDossier@main
    with:
      command: convert
      config-file: config.xml
      format: markdown
      output: docs/firewall.md

Using the Docker image directly#

The Docker image is published to the GitHub Container Registry alongside every release and can be used independently of the Action:

# Pull the latest release
docker pull ghcr.io/evilbit-labs/opndossier:latest

# Run an audit, mounting your config directory
# WORKDIR is /data, so use relative paths after the volume mount
docker run --rm \
  --volume "$(pwd):/data" \
  ghcr.io/evilbit-labs/opndossier:latest \
  audit config.xml

Documentation#

• User Guide - Installation, usage, and configuration
• Security Documentation - Vulnerability scanning and security features
• API Reference - Detailed API documentation
• Examples - Real-world usage examples

For developers:

• Contributing Guide - How to contribute to the project
• Architecture Documentation - System design and architecture

Support#

• Issues - GitHub Issues
• Discussions - GitHub Discussions
• Documentation - Full Documentation
• Contributing - Contributing Guide

Troubleshooting#

• If you see garbled characters, confirm the XML declaration encoding matches the file's actual encoding.
• Supported input encodings include UTF-8, US-ASCII, ISO-8859-1, and Windows-1252; convert legacy files to UTF-8 if needed.

Security#

opnDossier is designed with security as a first-class concern:

• No external dependencies - Operates completely offline
• No telemetry - No data collection or external communication
• Secure by design - Input validation, sanitization, and SBOM generation
• Automated scanning - Daily vulnerability scans and dependency audits in CI/CD

For security vulnerabilities, please see our security policy.

License#

Apache License 2.0 - see LICENSE file for details.

Contributors#

See CONTRIBUTORS.md for the full list of contributors.

Acknowledgements#

• Inspired by TKCERT/pfFocus for pfSense configurations
• Terminal UI powered by Charm - glamour, lipgloss, log, bubbles
• CLI framework by spf13/cobra and spf13/viper
• Markdown generation by nao1215/markdown
• Documentation built with MkDocs and Material for MkDocs

Built for network operators and security professionals.