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Re: [Alug] Firewall Rulesets Are Available
by Ricardo Campos 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

> Find a really dodgy IRC channel and say something like "I bet no one > can break into my box!", sit back and watch your logs fill 8). > Maybe I'll see Earl there... ;) lol (joke, mate) Can you imagine the paranoia... (is he a Fed?). I could troll as a 13 year old scriptkiddy.... > Failing that, get a mate to run nmap or nessus (which uses nmap) on your > IP address. If you let me know what it is, I'll do it for you. (Ma ha > ha ha) I'll try and lock it down a bit more, and I'll do just that! My ISP is demon so I always have the same IP anyway. Maybe if I can get my laptop's pcmcia network card working, I could do it from there, or even failing that, put the card in my housemates' Win98 laptop and run some poor quality scanners! ;) Ricardo ------------------ I must be a geek- I think TCP/IP is actually very interesting. -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

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Re: [Alug] UK Govnmt Consultation on Free/Open software
by Ricardo Campos 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

> Please, before you reply, take note of the arguments put forward at > http://www.alex.uklinux.net/Documents/ > > The author is willing to accept improvemnts and I think this may form the > basis for a combined response. Interesting... I had to read this in Moz rather than IE5.5. lol. Back to the point though... I think that to a certain extent his points are somewhat academic. I work in the public sector so perhaps parts of the document have a little more meaning (QinetiQ implies certain things without explicitly mentioning- it is a public document after all). Yes, they have somewhat missed the point of Free Software, but in all, it is an encouraging report. BELIEVE me. I've been trying to persuade these guys from the inside that licensing costs are going up and do not provide better software, that we need to think of different solutions, etc. To have a report, that although conservative is mostly favourable (and you're can't convince *me* that Linux is a suitable desktop solution YET-but let's not get into that one again) -it's a great advantage to us. Certainly my take on the report is not to criticise it (lest we bore them with nitpicking over licensing etc), but to say "what it fails to mention is this;" and also selling it... let's not get too idealistic (I mean it's only a socialist <cough splutter> govt after all ;) ), but rather talk in their terms which is: 1) Money, and 2) Money (Oh, and if it works, it's a bonus) lol The TCO would plummet amazingly; licensing costs are huge, support will stay the same. It's just not true that *nix people get more money than MCSE's etc (I'm currently 'surveying the job market' and typically people are asking for NT, M$ 2K AND UNIX/Linux experience for an equivalent wage to mine). Hardware, these days, is possibly the cheapest part of the TCO, so overall the TCO WILL go down. Also, I can site an example where a major proprietary application caused one hell of a problem when the software company went belly up and didn't release source code... (eventually they did, for megabuck$!) My two pence.... Ricardo "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

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Re: [Alug] UK Govnmt Consultation on Free/Open software
by MJ Ray 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

John: > The papers on this matter can be found at : > http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/rfc/rfc_document.asp?docnum=429 > http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/egif_document.asp?docnum=430 > those members who have an opinion on this mater now have an opportunity to > make it known to the UK government. Please, before you reply, take note of the arguments put forward at http://www.alex.uklinux.net/Documents/ The author is willing to accept improvemnts and I think this may form the basis for a combined response. The QinetQ report is badly flawed and misses the point of Free Software. It's not very surprising that the proposed policy carries these flaws through. Although it calls it Open Source, please remember: there is very little difference between the Open Source Initiative definition and the Debian Free Software Definition. Many of us prefer the less ambiguous term "Free Software", while we wish to see the original idea behind both implemented. -- MJR

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Re: [Alug] Firewall Rulesets Are Available
by Ricardo Campos 02 Jan '02

02 Jan '02

> Hi All, > for anyone who gets security-focus you will have seen this - for others it > may be of use. > If you're having phun getting your firewalling working or making sure you > have a sensible ruleset(s) then this should give you some extra input/fff. > Handy! I think I need to spend an evening sifting through these and the iptables man pages.... Does anyone know of a good way to test a home system? Everything works for me (i.e. I can do everything I could do before), but that doesn't mean that the firewall actually works (i.e. blocking nasty portscanners on the internet)... I tried the online portscanner at www.grc.com but somehow I don't trust it, as it's targeted at Windows. It did show up my SMTP port as open, and I use my ISP's SMTP server, so I'll have to look at that..... Ricardo "There are several codes, and I know several of them." -Mr. Precise. http://www.rscampos.net -- Get your free email from www.linuxmail.org Powered by Outblaze

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Firewall Rulesets Are Available
by Earl Brannigan 02 Jan '02

02 Jan '02

Hi All, for anyone who gets security-focus you will have seen this - for others it may be of use. If you're having phun getting your firewalling working or making sure you have a sensible ruleset(s) then this should give you some extra input/fff. Cheers Earl [earl.brannigan(a)lindenhouse.co.uk] www.lindenhouse.co.uk Intellectual : Someone who can spend a whole day locked in a room with a tea cosy without once thinking of trying it on. Highbrow : Someone who can listen to the entire William Tell Overture without once thinking of the Lone Ranger. > -----Original Message----- > From: Hal Flynn [mailto:flynn@securityfocus.com] > Sent: Tuesday 25 December 2001 06:24 > To: focus-linux(a)securityfocus.com > Subject: Firewall Rulesets Are Available > > > Hi again, folks! > > After some delay, and a bit of wrangling to get them up, the firewall > rulesets contributed by Focus-Linux members are now available! > > For anybody that's forgotten, a few months ago we had a discussion about > firewall rulesets. During that time, a number of members contributed > their firewall rulesets to the list for the benefit of everybody. These > folks were so kind as to give me their permission to post them in the > Focus Area for everybody's browsing, analysis, and use. They're now > available in the Unix Focus Area. > > I'd like to personally thank Ross Vandegrift, Jem Berkes, Matthew Sachs, > skylinux, vogt, and dewt for all taking time out of their busy schedules > to share with us all. Thanks guys. You rock! > > The UNIX Focus Area can be accessed at http://www.securityfocus.com/unix. > > The firewall rulesets are at URL > http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/unix_topics.pl?topic=fwrules. > > > Hal Flynn > UNIX Focus Area Manager > SecurityFocus > > "Semper Fidelis"

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Embedded Linux
by Peter Bassill 02 Jan '02

02 Jan '02

Hi All. - Happy New Year Does anyone have any experiance in running linux from an M-SYS disk on chip system? And does anyone have any ideas on the better OS for embedding with? I await your replies with baited breath, Pete Bassill "Historically speaking, the presence of wheels in Unix has never precluded their reinvention."

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irc meeting reminder
by abower＠thebowery.co.uk 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

hi people, don't know what has happened to the irc meeting reminders but however there should be (if you are not all out drinking etc. etc. tonight) an irc meeting in #alug on uk.openprojects.net starting at 8'ish i guess, erm the full announce message will be somewhere in the archives if you want to (or need) to know more. I guess the archives url should be appended at the bottom of this message. Anyhow happy new year to you all... don't get too drunk =) Adam

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Re: Gateway problems
by Jenny Hopkins 30 Dec '01

30 Dec '01

Hi Barry - I usually hesitate in replying as I tend to get it mostly wrong, but just in case it helps: I have a win98 computer using a linux box as a gateway, and not only did I have to set the gateway etc settings, but in the properties for my browser ( Internet Explorer) I selected connections, "never dial a connection", then in LAN settings put the linux box Ip in the proxy server using port 80 (also selected "bypass proxy for local addresses"). Jenny.

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ipchains replacement
by Ian Douglas 30 Dec '01

30 Dec '01

Hi Folks, I am a newbie home based Linux user with dial-up access to the internet. Up until now, because of the small, infrequent, amount of time I am actually connected to the internet, I have simply been ensuring that I always log on as a normal user (rather than root) to protect my PC, however I have recently been wondering whether it would be wise to install some kind of protection for my PC. Looking in my little Linux text book it would appear that "ipchains" would probably be sufficient for my needs (rather than setting up a dedicated firewall), however, when I try to use ipchains I get the error message: ipchains: Incompatible with this kernel. The kernel I am using is 2.4.10 and I am wondering if this error message is hinting that ipchains has now been superseded. Is there a modern replacement for ipchains? If so then what is it and where could I find some info on setting it up to protect my PC? Thanks, Ian.

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Gateway problems
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 30 Dec '01

30 Dec '01

I have a machine running Debian 2.2 which can be connected to the internet via a modem. This is part of a small network. One of the other machines on the network can use the above machine as a gateway and connect successfully to web sites using a browser when running Linux. If the same (secondary) machine is running Windows 95 it cannot connect to any web sites via the Linux gateway machine although the gateway address is set correctly in the network configuration on the secondary machine. Can anyone please offer any pointers? Barry Samuels

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