Re: Stupid question

From: Martin (nowone@nowhere.com)
Date: 05/05/02 

From: "Martin" <nowone@nowhere.com>
Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 11:34:58 +0100

"William Barwell" <wbarwell@starbase.neosoft.com> wrote in message
news:9110392082F355D7.27A92F0634CBD68A.E80F9ACCB1F88477@lp.airnews.net...
> I am soon going to be upgrading to a new machine. My old
> PII 450 machine will be delegated to a dedicated firewall
> and I plan to get some sort of broadband connection, DLS
> or cable, whatever. I am using a shell account now.
>
> Reading how easy it is to get hacked seems to mean some
> sort of firewall nowadays is a necessity. Even then though,
> it seems easy enough for somebody to find an crack in
> the system to exploit.
>
> What I was considering was trying to get a basic minimum
> system going, no services, no X system, run firewall
> software, SSH ect, and then, load it all as much as
> possible to run from a CD-rom. Logs and other services
> would need a hard disk, but basic binaries and scripts
> on a CD would be a hard nut for a script kiddie to crack.
>
> Does any firewall suite do this, or is this gonna
> be a roll-yer-own project for me?
>
> Of course administration would be a bit of a bitch,
> copy a file to a scratch directory, edit it, copy
> to disk image, burnt to CD-R-W, load to CD-rom,
> restart. But after things settle down, it shouldn't
> need much attention.
> My wants are simple, e-mail, IRC, web browser, usenet
> news reader, so I should be able to get a basic system
> on a CD easily.
>
> Anybody know of such a firewall system that does this?
> I know next to zip about firewalls, I have loaded
> Mandrake and played with it a bit, but that's about it.
>
> It seems this would be a good way to go to keep a system
> uncompromised, if you can't write to the system CD, you can't
> hack it. For a 'hard disk', I could use an old Fujitsu
> 230 meg Magneto-optical disk, with an old 128 meg disk.
> good enough for logs and similar small files, too small
> for hacking tools and suites and logs ect. Or buy a
> 100 meg Zip disk.
>
> Cheerful Charlie
>

Hi Charlie,
    take a look at http://lrp.steinkuehler.net/, this is the home of the
linux router project, and they do several pre-built routers / firewalls that
run from floppy (ie. the floppy can be write protected). If nothing else,
it would be a starting point for your project.

Also, checkout http://cd-linux.org/overview.htm, they are building a
customisable linux system and tools to move the system to CD.

    Martin

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Instant Messenger
    ... Locate all of the software (the installation media - CDs, ... application, Disk copier, etc.) You'll be glad to know that if you have ... using Windows XP "prettifications". ... Why you should use a computer firewall.. ...
    (microsoft.public.security)
  • Stupid question
    ... PII 450 machine will be delegated to a dedicated firewall ... Logs and other services ... would need a hard disk, ... For a 'hard disk', I could use an old Fujitsu ...
    (comp.os.linux.security)
  • Re: Stupid question
    ... I use Mandrake 8.2 and I must say... ... My Mandrake firewall has a default runlevel of 5 ... Keeping the 'hard disk' small so you have a swap file, ... Logs and other services ...
    (comp.os.linux.security)
  • Re: xxcopy
    ... XXCopy to work for a full backup of a normal install of XP is slim - ... Symantec Ghost or a similar disk imaging application. ... Why you should use a computer firewall.. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: tracking down disk spinups.
    ... I was curious why my firewall box never spins down its disk. ... Given it rarely writes stuff to logs, ...
    (Linux-Kernel)