 Traffic Interception Based on iptables"><img class=element-to-stretch src=/v1.26/blog/2022/merbridge/1.png alt="Istio Sidecar Traffic Interception Based on iptables"></a></div><figcaption>Istio Sidecar Traffic Interception Based on iptables</figcaption></figure><p>When external traffic hits your application’s ports, it will be intercepted by a <code>PREROUTING</code> rule in iptables, forwarded to port 15006 of the sidecar container, and handed over to Envoy for processing. This is shown as steps 1-4 in 