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Captain Crunch's New Boxes, Part II
micsaund writes: "It looks like the infamous Captain Crunch has been toiling away for 3 years on a firewall now known as the Crunchbox. It runs OpenBSD and is administered via a web-based interface. Steve Wozniak is quoted as saying it's 'next to un-crackable.' Check it out at ShopIP. The Register also has an article on it. As an aside, since the Linux Router Project (LRP) appears to have been sold-out and GnatBox is a tad expensive, is anyone aware of some kind of 'packaged' firewall with a slick interface available for free?" We mentioned Draper's venture into firewalls last year, but there's been some progress since then.
...but a solid firewall.
http://www.fwtk.org/main.html
There's still a lot of support and I believe an active mailing list.
I put one together 5 years ago, and the company I work for still uses it for their mailing host.
Interface? There is none. But it works pretty damned good if you're willing to spend 1 day understanding how it works.
Not a bad deal.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The FAQ devotes 32 of 88 pages to how to correctly interact with the community, with such topics as "On Not Reacting Like a Loser" and "RTFM and STFW: How to tell you've seriously screwed up."
Furthermore, the remaining 56 pages are liberally sprinkled with the same: "Asking this question on the mailing list or IRC will inevitably result in the verbal equivalent of being hit round the head with a baseball bat. The answer is NO."
While I appreciate the sentiment of these statements, devoting nearly half of the document to this topic might be a little overboard.
It's always interesting to see people so quick to attack an author of security-related software when they ask how to essentially "de-secure" the product!
I mean, honestly, it's probably a little "over the top" to ban your IP over the question -- but looking at it from the author's side for a minute; You're basically trying to modify the package to suit your specific needs. If you do this, you run a risk of introducing new code that's untested as to the level of security inherent in it. If the author helps you do these modifications, and then your box gets hacked later, how do you think that reflects on his original product?
Richard Morrell may have his share of attitude problems, but I don't think this is really a fair one to use against him. Firewalls are *not* supposed to run other services. People keep trying to add ftp, printing and Samba file sharing services to Smoothwall, among other things - and it's just a BAD idea.