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Build a Cisco PIX for 800 Australian Dollars
tallguy_wt writes: "Why fork out thousands of dollars to learn Cisco's PIX firewalling product when you can build your own for under 800 Australian Dollars, as shown in this article by Routermonkey."
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How much better is Cisco than the same system running Linux or *BSD?
If you want to build your own one, you could as well do the same using things available under open source so that visitors from Cisco do not have to call Yevgeni and Boris to teach beat you up. ;)
Well, I can understand that learning the PIX in detail might be a good and interesting reason to build it up, instead of spending $15 000 or more in it.
Details on how to do this surfaced on some cisco study boards 12-18 months ago. Most of the people on the board were interested in this to be able to add a Pix to thier home study lab. Groupstudy had a very long thread on this. They were dubbed the 'FrankenPix'
Cisco is very well represented on the board, and they never said a word to anybody about not doing this, and sort of allowed it to happen.
On the other hand, when FrankenPix's started appearing on eBay, they cracked down, hard and quick. But, to this day, they still haven't said anything during the discussions o the cisco study boards.
My view on this is they really don't care if people build FrankenPix's for home study, after all, that's just going to help sell more Pix in the long run. (Checkpoint, afterall, will gladly give you 30-day trail licenses for FireWall-1 for home study) But, if you try to build and sell these, they WILL get you. (And honestly, if you want to use these boxes in a professional enviorment for day-to-day usage, you are asking for trouble.)
--dirt
I guess there is a lot of people who have been playing with ipfw, iptables, ipchains etc
And would realy, sincerely, like to know:
What can I do with a Cisco PIX that I can't do with Linux and IPTables ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Look, there's plenty of reasons why a company would want to purchase a PIX from Cisco. Many have been outlined in postings already
A student wishing to practice configuring a PIX would benefit greatly from this information. They obviously wouldn't be able to afford a full PIX, so putting together a test box is their only choice.
As far as I'm concerned, this info can only benefit Cisco, as they get a whole bunch of people that know their product inside out. That then tips over into increased sales, as these people recommend using a PIX to their boss.
DeeK
Well yes, you can't indeed download a Porsche. The only resources you cost for downloading a file on the internet is some bandwidth from one of your warez peers (and granted, this bandwidth taken is also taken from other, legal users, but that's what Terms of Service exist for).
In the case of the Porsche however it cost resources paying the factory workers and the raw material entering the factory. The point is NOT the same.
Personally I only pay software that is reasonably priced - generally second hand games. Most of the software nowadays is 90 percent bloat, and after spending the most important part of my paycheck buying the hardware John Carmack and Bill Gates decided I had to have to run their software, I just can't afford their software anymore. Their fault. If they were to keep their software unbloated, I would have enough with a 486. Then I would be able to buy their software. Some time long gone, programming was an art, with limited resources so you really had to do your best to use the hardware properly. Now the software developers just write shitty code and waits for Intel to release the next stepping of their CPUs, leaving the low end users in the shit.
So the problem IMNSHO is between the hardware capitalists and the software capitalists. Either software is good, gets bought and hardware doesn't get upgraded, either hardware is good and software bloats.
And I can't afford both !
What got pirated, and where?
People with CCO access can test any of the software there.
Routermonkey provided no link to download any of the binaries mentioned (with the exception of the highly illegal rawrite.exe).
Mod yourself up a clue, slashflunky.
Except this guy didn't reverse engineer anything. Had he reverse engineered a Cisco PIX using commodity hardware *and* his own implementation of the software, things would be different.
All he did was build a hardware platform and blag the software from a (presumably illegal) PIX flash card.
There's no reverse engineering here, no more than building a PC and putting a warez copy of microsoft windows on it is reverse engineering windows *OR* the PC platform.
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
I work at Cisco, things are tough right now. The company is making money but did you know that they haven't given raises to their employees in two years? Did you know that plan on going at least one more before they give out a raise?
Did you know that they have cut promotions to 3% per year? I'll do that math for you. As a Cisco employee you can expect a promotion every 33 years. Not that it matters because if you do get promoted all you get are stock options with no raise.
Did you know that they have their "active management" guns blaring at full speed? This means that the managers are forced to cut 5% of their staff every quarter. (In fairness, they seem to actually cut less than that). However, they have certainly reduced their staff by over 20% in the past two years. There aren't any slackers left at the company.
Thank you for handing out information regarding how to steal our products.
Vanguard
--------------------
I understand that some of have it even worse. Some of you are not employed at all. I feel for you.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
Wrong, you can install any version on any PIX with 16MB of flash. When you purchase a PIX with a Support Contract, which Cisco pushes very hard, you get free software upgrades. And the licenses work in the new software.
Yeh cry me a river... Your CEO just got the 7 VCR's on his boat swapped out of DVD players..... Yes thats right 7. So things may be leen for you, but don't run around crying and pointing fingers at everyone.
I X- FLASH-16MB=.html
Anyway, this whole article is BS. That cisco 16 MB flash card (and this is an empty flash card, thats where the whole piracy thing comes in) costs between $700 and 800 USD!
http://www.ibuyernet.com/prod~id~500939~CISCO_P
So the title of the article should be "Build a Cisco PIX for $1,000"... $400 to play with something like that... Maby... $1000 hummmm....