"/dev/rob0" <rob0@gmx.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrnbqr05r.f57.rob0@linuxbox.linux.box...
> In article <S6drb.2521$6c3.2393@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink. net>,
> Adams-Blake Co. wrote:
> > Would some kind soul list the names of some packages that will install a
> > firewall for 9.1.
>
> You need the iptables package installed. That's the only optional Slack
> package involved.

no tng plug?

--
!christian

Thanks for all the good links. I have a 4 day weekend so I will spend some
time reading them.

What I'm finding out (correct me if wrong) is that you don't really install
a "stand-alone" program on Linux for a firewall like you do on Windows.
Instead you "configure" the built in one (via iptables) to give you
whatever level of protection you wish.

I seem to remember that with Mandrake they had something called Bastille,
but I never used it.

I connect via dial-up (often for 12 to 15 hours straight) and as this is my
home machine I don't keep anything on it that is confidential etc. But I'm
curious. Just how vulnerable is a Slack/Linux box to your basic hacker? Am
I wrong it to thinking all they could get would be stuff in my home
directory.... ie. anything that is world-readable? What's the worst thing
they could get on my box? A copy of lilo.conf? Letters sent to my mother?

I wonder if there isn't just a wee-bit of hype about the potential for
internet hacking against the average Linux home computer.

Of course, I've been on this box on the net without a firewall for three
weeks so maybe I've been hacked. I don't know. I went with Mandrake for
over a year and never had a problem (that I knew about). But I'm going to
get cable or DSL so I figure I need to know something about firewalls and
security.

My motto is never keep anything on any computer that you fear might get in
the wrong hands. And the only thing I can see would be a SSN, a bank
number, perhpas a driver license number, or, of course credit card
numbers... none of which I keep on any of my boxen.

Thanks again. Lots of studying to do.

Al

/dev/rob0 wrote:

> BTW Al, thanks for the link you posted to the explanation of your
> company name. That was a very nice story. I'm glad you managed to avoid
> being in-spected, in-jected, nee-glected and see-lected.
>
http://www.adams-blake.com/item.asp?...fault=itemlist

I think they are still looking for me! Somewhere there is a Selective
Service bureaucrat who's sole job description is to find me and send me to
Iraq! If so, I'll just go in, sing a few bars of Alice's Restaurant and
walk out. ("You can get anything you want... at Alice's Restaurant
('ceptin' Alice) .. at Alice's Restaurant.)
Al

Adams-Blake Co. wrote:
> What I'm finding out (correct me if wrong) is that you don't really install
> a "stand-alone" program on Linux for a firewall like you do on Windows.
> Instead you "configure" the built in one (via iptables) to give you
> whatever level of protection you wish.

yup, that's basically it. although a purist might say it's wrong to think
of 'netfilter' as a firewall, because it can do more than simple
firewalling.

> I connect via dial-up (often for 12 to 15 hours straight) and as this is my
> home machine I don't keep anything on it that is confidential etc. But I'm
> curious. Just how vulnerable is a Slack/Linux box to your basic hacker? Am
> I wrong it to thinking all they could get would be stuff in my home
> directory.... ie. anything that is world-readable?

oh yes, you're wrong to think that. basically a computer is only
interesting to a cracker if they have root access. so that is what they'll
try to get.

> What's the worst thing
> they could get on my box? A copy of lilo.conf? Letters sent to my mother?

the worst they could get is whatever you put on there. but you should know
that crackers, when they get into home computers, aren't after whatever
files you have on your machine. in 99.99% of the cases that's pretty
uninteresting anyway. (letters to you mom, and all that. ;-) what they're
after is a computer from which they can mount another attack, either to
cover their tracks (and maybe have the tracks lead to you) or to mount a
concerted attack.

> I wonder if there isn't just a wee-bit of hype about the potential for
> internet hacking against the average Linux home computer.

i don't see it hyped, really. it is something that happens. every now and
then you will see a message on a newsgroup from someone reporting strange
behaviour. usually such threads end with a message saying "ok, i ran
chrootkit, and i've been hacked. taking my machine off-li..."

--
Joost Kremers
since when is vi an editor? a discussion on vi belongs in
comp.tools.unusable or something... ;-)

/dev/rob0 wrote:
> I wouldn't ask any Ph.D.'s in CS to install a firewall. The only Ph.D. I
> know whom I'd trust with a firewall is Joost.[1]

heh. you're putting an awful lot of trust in me. ;-) i did some very simple
NAT-ing a long time ago, but for a while now all my firewalling needs are
pretty much covered by:

# Generated by iptables-save v1.2.7a on Sun Nov 9 02:02:05 2003
*filter
:INPUT DROP [484:138252]
:FORWARD DROP [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [15519:1732064]
-A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
COMMIT
# Completed on Sun Nov 9 02:02:05 2003

although if i'd *have* to do more, i'd know where to look for the info...

--
Joost Kremers
since when is vi an editor? a discussion on vi belongs in
comp.tools.unusable or something... ;-)

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 21:20:50 +0000, Adams-Blake Co. wrote:

> Would some kind soul list the names of some packages that will install a
> firewall for 9.1.

Sure! Been done already!
google a.o.l.s with "setting linux home gateway"

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 00:38:37 GMT, Adams-Blake Co.
<atakeoutcanton@adams-blaketakeout.com> wrote:
> Thanks for all the good links. I have a 4 day weekend so I will spend some
> time reading them.
>
> What I'm finding out (correct me if wrong) is that you don't really install
> a "stand-alone" program on Linux for a firewall like you do on Windows.
> Instead you "configure" the built in one (via iptables) to give you
> whatever level of protection you wish.

That's exactly right.

> I connect via dial-up (often for 12 to 15 hours straight) and as this is my
> home machine I don't keep anything on it that is confidential etc. But I'm
> curious. Just how vulnerable is a Slack/Linux box to your basic hacker? Am
> I wrong it to thinking all they could get would be stuff in my home
> directory.... ie. anything that is world-readable? What's the worst thing
> they could get on my box? A copy of lilo.conf? Letters sent to my mother?

Confidential information getting into the wrong hands is only one of
the problems that come with having an inadequately protected machine.
For the home user, of much more importance is the fact that someone
mailcious could then use your machine to either break into other
machines or launch attacks on other machines; in either of these cases,
you would then have to prove that your machine was broken into and that
it wasn't you that committed the crime.

> I wonder if there isn't just a wee-bit of hype about the potential for
> internet hacking against the average Linux home computer.

As a writer, I'm sure you'd like to know about the two words you've
misused in this sentence.

The first word is 'hacking'. This word is widely misused in the media
nowadays, so you can be forgiven for not knowing its true meaning.
This will give you an insight into what the word really means and also
the correct term: <URL:http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html>
& <URL:http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cracker.html>.

The other isn't really a problem of using the wrong word; it's merely a
punctuation/capitalisation problem. The word 'internet' is used to
refer to a large network made up of lots of smaller networks. When
talking about the largest public internet, it should be written as
'Internet'.

> Of course, I've been on this box on the net without a firewall for three
> weeks so maybe I've been hacked.

You might like to look into programs such as chrootkit, which will
check to see if someone has installed a rootkit on your machine (a lot
of script kiddies[0] do, nowadays).

[0] a script kiddie is someone who uses scripts or software written by
someone else to break into a machine; they are crackers without the
intellectual capability to crack
--
Simon <simon@no-dns-yet.org.uk> **** GPG: F4A23C69
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty."
- Douglas Adams

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
NotDashEscaped: You need GnuPG to verify this message

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 00:38:37 GMT, Adams-Blake Co. <atakeoutcanton@adams-blaketakeout.com> wrote:
> What I'm finding out (correct me if wrong) is that you don't really install
> a "stand-alone" program on Linux for a firewall like you do on Windows.
> Instead you "configure" the built in one (via iptables) to give you
> whatever level of protection you wish.

That's exactly it. IPTables is then the application that allows you to
access the firewalling features of Linux.

The same is true, I believe, in Windows, you just have more people
figuring out different ways to get in and set the firewall where they
want it, block this, that or, whatever.

> curious. Just how vulnerable is a Slack/Linux box to your basic hacker? Am
<snip>
> I wonder if there isn't just a wee-bit of hype about the potential for
> internet hacking against the average Linux home computer.
>
> Of course, I've been on this box on the net without a firewall for three
> weeks so maybe I've been hacked. I don't know. I went with Mandrake for

Ok, sorry... I wouldn't normally say anything, but you say you are a
journalist, more or less, writing articles and papers to appeal to the
technical community at large. As such, I think you have an ethical and
moral responsibility to get things right as often as possible. :-)

*I* am a hacker. Most everybody posting here is a hacker. I'd say even
*you* are a bit of a hacker.

Do you ever look at something and say to yourself, "Hmmm... I wonder how
that works?" then proceed to disassemble it, figure out how it worked,
then reassemble it to do its job better, or maybe additional jobs? If
so... congratulations, you're a hacker.

Hackers think outside the box to do whatever they need to get done.

A person who spends their time trying to break in to home computers to
DDoS the world, spread their icky windoze virus, or take control over
the CIA... is a script kiddie, or, as I like to call 'em... a whacker.

They don't think outside the box. They rarely are very original. They
just read on some website how somebody else did it, download that
somebody else's tools, and go to work. They don't spend any amount of
time trying to break in to a single box. They just scan the great
internet for vulnerable boxes and attack those, specifically.

Somebody who might pick a single box and try and crack it, is a cracker.
There are many reasons they may be trying to do this, but they are not
the same thing as a hacker (although I would imagine most crackers *are*
hackers). But yanno what? A cracker doesn't give a damn about your
box. There's *nothing* on it worth the time it would take them to
figure out how to get in to your box. Even if you stored your credit
card number on there, they probably don't care.

As folks are my LUG meeting were saying... we need to take back the word
Hacker. Hacking is a *good* thing, we should be proud to be hackers,
not shamed for using such a 'bad' word. The only way to take back the
word is to stop using it improperly, correct others when they use it
improperly, and use it correctly ourselves! :-)

--
Rob | If not safe,
Email and Jabber: | one can never be free.
athlonrob at axpr dot net |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/rbirhm6KEoOOAe0RArXOAKCBcDm9pCgAa9D/reHM8TeHxEbeZgCgz0BO
A6jd6WtVlI1f9fEMokdvmqc=
=FHGj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

AthlonRob <junkmail@axpr.net> says...

>http://www.samspade.org/d/persfire.html
>http://www.samspade.org/d/firewalls.html

These are well worth reading.

Adams-Blake Co. <atakeoutcanton@adams-blaketakeout.com> says...

>What I'm finding out (correct me if wrong) is that you don't really install
>a "stand-alone" program on Linux for a firewall like you do on Windows.
>Instead you "configure" the built in one (via iptables) to give you
>whatever level of protection you wish.

....or you use something like Freesco or Slackware configured as a
stand-alone firewall on an old 486 you have laying around or pick
up for $20. This has significant advantages.

>Just how vulnerable is a Slack/Linux box to your basic hacker?

Not very.

>Am I wrong it to thinking all they could get would be stuff
>in my home directory.... ie. anything that is world-readable?
>What's the worst thing they could get on my box? A copy of
>lilo.conf? Letters sent to my mother?

The worst that could happen is a program that causes your box
to spam, send threatening letters to the Pope, or connect you
to a 900 number or an overseas area code while making it look
as if you are still making a local call to your present ISP.

>I wonder if there isn't just a wee-bit of hype about the potential for
>internet hacking against the average Linux home computer.

I was having lunch with Bill Gates the other day, and he seems
to want *everybody* to be worried about Linux security...

--
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer and Project Manager. Remember
Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you have a
"challenging" engineering project that only an expert like Doc
Brown can solve? See my resume at [ http://www.guymacon.com ].