F21 System Wide Change: Workstation: Disable firewall

[Russell Doty]

On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 15:04 -0400, Simo Sorce wrote:
> On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 14:41 -0400, Russell Doty wrote:
> > On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 14:23 -0400, Simo Sorce wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 13:22 -0400, Russell Doty wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2014-04-22 at 19:01 +0200, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
> > > > > 2014-04-22 13:40 GMT+02:00 Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh at redhat.com>:
> > > > >         3) Recovery and auditing are more important than prevention.
> > > > > 
> > > > > This is only true for large managed enterprises, where recovery is
> > > > > possible in the first place (how many people don't have good
> > > > > backups?), and prevention is bordering on impossible (with the high
> > > > > number of systems and administrators).  For individual users auditing
> > > > > is completely pointless, recovery is either impossible or a huge
> > > > > hassle, and prevention the only option.
> > > > Well, the presentation was focused on enterprise systems...
> > > > 
> > > > But there were some underlying themes:
> > > > 
> > > > * Users will work around anything, including security features, that
> > > > interfere with them doing their job.
> > > > 
> > > > * It is impossible to completely secure a system. A prevention only
> > > > approach doesn't work well.
> > > > 
> > > > * An effective security model is built around Deter, Detect, Delay,
> > > > Respond, Remediate.
> > > > 
> > > > * Security is one of multiple threats to system integrity. 
> > > 
> > > All very true, but you do not remove the Deterrent, just because you
> > > have the other 4 layers (which we do *not* have very much in Fedora when
> > > it is used as a simple workstation).
> > Absolutely true - the foundation of the stack is Deter. The point is
> > that we can't harden a system enough for Deter alone to be fully
> > effective, so we need to have the complete security model.
> > 
> > And you are right. We have a real opportunity to look at an overall
> > "people centric" approach to security in Fedora. Look at the traditional
> > threat models, look at the people issues, and look at an overall
> > approach to maintaining system integrity.
> > 
> > I'd like to see us exploring system integrity in greater depth.
> > > 
> > > This is why people say we need to improve the Firewall experience not
> > > raise white flag and disable it.
> > Agree. Unfortunately, the easy way out is to punch so many holes in the
> > default firewall that it doesn't offer much protection...
> 
> not really true, having the default one allow access only from the local
> lan at most is a huge improvement rather than no firewall.
> 
> All you need is a button that lets you select between 3 zones when you
> join a new network and you have a much better system already, nothing
> fancy, and the 3 zones correspond to the concepts of:
> open to everyone (effectively disables any protection)
> open to the local lan only (what you would select at home/work/trusted
> network)
> closed (what you would select in a public place on an untrusted network)
This sounds a lot like the Network Manager model.

Could this basic firewall configuration be integrated with the Network
Manager interface? So that a user sets their "security profile" one
place, and all related system settings and configurations are updated?
> 
> It is quite simple to describe even to a non expert user what these
> means in general terms.
> 
> Of course it won't be perfect, but much better than nothing, and much,
> much friendlier than what we have now.
A combination of this and having all commonly used applications
configure the firewall when installed/uninstalled looks like a good
start, especially from a usability perspective.
> 
> Simo.
> 
> -- 
> Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York
>