How to Drop all packets destined for the firewall host from the outside?

Question

What's the proper way to drop all packets destined for the firewall host from the outside?

Something like this?

$IPT -A INPUT -i $INTERNET -s 0/0 -d $HOST_NAME -j DROP

Answer 1

The proper way is to have a your policy default to drop, then only accept things from the outside that you specifically want.

/sbin/iptables -t filter -A INPUT -j DROP  # set default deny policy
/sbin/iptables -t filter -A OUTPUT -j DROP
# Set rules to permit traffic
...