Firewalls

[MrNewbie]

I have a few questions about firewalls.
How important are they? What is the best firewall program? Why, if there is firewall support in the kernel with that ipchains thingy, are there a need for other firewall programs? Are there any firewalls that are easy to setup something like the windows ones?
Thank you
MrNewbie

[MkIII_Supra]

It's amazing what a little effort to look will produce... (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/013520.html)

search: Firewalls Linux @ Google! (http://www.google.com)

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The Dragon is swift and powerful. Beware his wrath...
Honor your family and yourself. Speak not out of passion but out of wisdom and temper the fires of war that reside in you, and you shall then reach your full measure as a man of Honor, Courage and Integrity.
http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/MkIIISupra/ (http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/MkIIISupra)

[guitarlyn]

>I have a few questions about firewalls.
How important are they?

Depends on whether you want someone messing with your stuff.

>What is the best firewall program?

For Linux, I like PMFirewall, downloadable at http://www.pointman.org

>Why, if there is firewall support in the kernel with that ipchains thingy, are there a need for other firewall programs?

PMFirewall sets up an ipchains firewall without requiring you to script anything.

>Are there any firewalls that are easy to setup something like the windows ones?

It pretty much is, you just need to know which interface is internal and external and if you want to let any ip#'s through (probably not).

Hope this helps,
~Guitarlynn

[binaryDigit]

just to throw in my two cents.

Firestarter is a good program for firewall newbies.
http://firestarter.sourceforge.net

i think that's what the link is.


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http://home.earthlink.net/~pebice/philLinux.html (http://home.earthlink.net/~pebice)

[mdwatts]

A couple of clicks, a few keystrokes and you can find all the info you can.

Have a look at the NHF's here (I know I always suggest the same, but that's what they are there for) on Security and Networking.

Lots of free books available on the web. Just use the search facilities of your browser and you will be overwelmed by what you find.
www.linuxdocs.org (http://www.linuxdocs.org) has all the HOW-TO's, FAQ's on just about every subject you can think of on Linux. Read the Security docs there and they will give you a good idea of what you need.

Hope this helps some.

[Mikenell]

I just tried PMFirewall yesterday. The setup for it is cool but when my computer is starting it gave loads of errors about ichains stuff, you should still try it incase it works for you but I'm gonna have to find out about making the ipchains rules myself.
Mikenell

[Mountainman]

I have had the same prob as MIKENELL with pmfirewall, but I did my own firewall ipchain and came up with the same errors. I am not exactly sure as to the cause. I do know that it works though. I ran it through www.grc.com (http://www.grc.com) with just portsentry running and it came back with several openings. I ran it through www.hackerwhacker.com (http://www.hackerwhacker.com) and it reported port 80 open, but when it swithed to udp it was shut down. Layers of protection is the main idea. I might setup snort also.

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---Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art but a snack, and tasty with ketchup---
Http://www.geocities.com/mountainmancentral

[Mikenell]

I also had to guess if my ip was assigned via DHCP because no one on irc could tell me how i find out, but i tried it both ways after uninstalling and reinstalling and i get the same error each time. This lots of times down the screen:

Try '/sbin/ipchains -h' or '/sbin/ipchains --help' for more information.
/sbin/ipchains: invalid mask '' specified
Done!
External: ppp0

Still can't get it working no matter what i choose.
Mikenell

[MrNewbie]

I get that exact same error! The only service i said i used was a webserver on post 80 and i said only 127.0.0.1 has access.
Does anyone here know what is the problem?
MrNewbie