On 12/06/2010 10:07 AM, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
Richard W.M. Jones píše v Po 06. 12. 2010 v 18:04 +0000:
> On Mon, Dec 06, 2010 at 11:04:39AM -0500, Matt McCutchen wrote:
>> On Mon, 2010-12-06 at 10:54 +0100, Michał Piotrowski wrote:
>>> On most desktop systems firewall is not needed. Many users do not even
>>> know how to configure it. In fact I disable it in most of my systems,
>>> because there is no real use for it. So I asked a simple question
>>> whether there is a need to install iptables by default?
>>>
>>> Your answer is not satisfactory for me - because not configured
>>> firewall has nothing to do with security. In fact, it can only bring
>>> false sense of security.
>>
>> I believe the default is to block incoming connections except for a few
>> services. This is good if you are running a sloppily written
>> single-user server that binds to the wildcard address. The Haskell
>> Scion server fell in this category as of August 2009; I didn't look to
>> see what a remote user might be able to do to me by connecting to it.
>> Yes, the proper way to avoid problems is to bind to localhost, but the
>> firewall can be nice.
>
> It would be nice if the firewall automatically followed services that
> I have enabled and disabled. eg. If I explicitly enable the
> webserver, it should open the corresponding port(s).
Just disable the firewall and you'll get pretty much equivalent
functionality.
Mirek
Right, I always struggle with this. If you allow services that bind to
a port once enabled to have the port open, then what good does it do to
have the port closed?
I really wonder what real purpose a firewall serves on these machines.
Once you get past the "ZOMG WE NEED A FIREWALL"....
I can somewhat see a firewall trying to protect a system from a user
process that got launched without the user being aware and binding to a
high port for nefarious reasons, but how do you balance that with the
legitimate applications that bind to high ports?
--
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca:
http://identi.ca/jkeating