Re: Firewalls

From: Bit Twister (BitTwister_at_localhost.localdomain)
Date: 10/15/03 

Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 15:24:36 GMT

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 14:31:43 GMT, WeeBit wrote:
> Ok this is the problem. I have this one person who is saying I don't need
> a firewall on Linux on another newsgroup. alt.os.Linux.mandrake I guess
> this is pick on WeeBit day because this person swears I don't need one. I
> say I do need one. I DON'T want to be lazy, and not get the upgrades for
> the security patches, or to disable the daemons that I don't need. But I
> want the firewall as a added measure of protection because I will be a
> newbie on Linux. Plus to protect against threats that no one knows about
> yet. Do I need a firewall or not? Please explain why either way .

For the newbie, put in the firewall. If nothing else it will let you
drop the virus/worm attempts and help prevent a Denial Of Service (DOS)
attack from taking your box to it's knees.

It also helps meet your requirement
"I DON'T want to disable the daemons that I don't need"
and still gives a level of security.

The argument given to you is based on the fact that if you have no
programs/daemons talking to the outside world, the outside world
cannot get into your system. Same argument can be given for not
wearing seat belts, no wreck, no need for it.

Now as you turn on a deamon to respond to a connection on a port that
service becomes a target for the crackers to play with.

If you opened the port, say for a connection from work, you can tell
the firewall to allow connections from work and reject everyone else
making that more secure that letting anyone connect to the service.

The recomendation is to have multiple levels of security to improve
your odds of not being cracked.

If you would like to read some security links Look here
     http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search

google_tag_cracked_4_next_time in the first box
alt.os.linux in the Newsgroup box, pick English

Scroll down for the links.

People can be pretty head strong on some things. For example
take some time to see some comments on telnet
   http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
Xns93FD6FED9472jbuserspc9org@130.179.16.24 in the message id box

and view complete thread.

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