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The Sound of Your Firewall

Posted by michael on from the background-noise dept.

upside writes "It had to be done. Once The Spinning Cube of Potential Doom gave us a 3D visualization of a firewall, someone was bound to ask themselves 'What does your firewall sound like?'."

18 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Anthem / Midi? by CommanderData · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really like these concepts for alternate ways to visualize large amounts of data. Reminds me of Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently books. There was a character who wrote a program called Anthem that would interpret a company's stock data and vital statistics and play a tune based on that data.

    Rather than using a Wav. file, maybe this could be written to play a variety MIDI tones to account for all kinds of activity on your network!

    --
    Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
    1. Re:Anthem / Midi? by Trigun · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just pipe everything into /dev/sound. Easier, elegant in its simplicity, and will keep people out of your cubicle.

    2. Re:Anthem / Midi? by pcmanjon · · Score: 5, Funny

      Once a waterbottle fell over somehow and my router was douched in it.

      I got to find out what a router SMELLS like.

      You know that never-mistakable smell of electronics on fire?

      Yeah, thats what they smell like ;]

    3. Re:Anthem / Midi? by The_K4 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your NEVER supposed to let the blue smoke out of the electronic components, that's what makes them run! You know how hard it is to get that smoke in there in the fist place?!?!

  2. That's great, but... by th1ckasabr1ck · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's all well and good, but what I really, really am dying to know is what my firewall FEELS like...

    1. Re:That's great, but... by caston · · Score: 5, Funny
      That's all well and good, but what I really, really am dying to know is what my firewall FEELS like...

      That's easy... youre firewall feels like swiss cheese.

      --
      Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
    2. Re:That's great, but... by QuijiboIsAWord · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'd say probably just like my wife. Cold and completely inaccessible.

      --
      -Hmm...I got a G+ invite, better remember to remove the request from my sig...-
  3. Obligatory Quote by Aerk · · Score: 5, Funny

    This wall sounds like burning!

  4. I did that. by digitalsushi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been doing exactly this same thing for a while. I found that it got extrememly obnoxious, so I dumbed mine down to just play a wave file whenever I get pinged by someone pinging me from a command line ping. I don't know why the length is different than the crap pings that come in every 8 or 9 seconds, but with this swatch definition below, it seems to trigger only when I am pinged by hand.

    So, put this in your swatch file that watches your firewall log:

    watchfor /firewall-ping.*LEN=84/
    exec "/usr/local/site/bin/ping-wave.sh ping.wav"

    That script just locks the darned thing so it doesnt pop and crack if i get pinged twice:

    ping-wave.sh:
    if `grep OPEN /etc/pingwatch.lock 1>/dev/null`
    then (echo -n > /etc/pingwatch.lock) && (/usr/bin/play /usr/local/site/etc/soun
    ds/$1) && (echo OPEN > /etc/pingwatch.lock)
    fi

    And here's a link to my ping wave for you to use:

    ping .wav

    I also used the naturalvoices website to make a nerdy computer lady announcing new entries in my arp table. You can grab wave file too if you want. Here's the script I have for that:

    put this in your /etc/crontab or whatever:

    0-59 * * * * root /usr/local/site/bin/arp-watch

    and then make the above command contain this:

    #!/bin/bash

    for each in `arp -n |grep -v "Address"|grep -v "eth0"|awk '{print $3}'`
    do
    if grep $each /etc/arptable 1>/dev/null
    then :
    else /usr/bin/play /usr/local/site/etc/sounds/new.arp.entry.wav && echo $each >> /etc/arptable
    fi
    done

    if anyone can improve upon my bash, please, i have no ego. :D

    --
    slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
    1. Re:I did that. by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was curious about all the Sasser mutants and such trying to hit my port 445, so I whipped up a program to open the port and see if they were trying to say anything. (Boring, they want my end to say something first.) I used the text-to-speech to have it say "Poink!" when it opened the port and "Splat!" when it closed. When a few hit at the same time, it's "Poink! Poink! Poink! Splat! Splat! Splat!". Almost as entertaining as having a few beers out back listening to the bug-zapper. (It would be better if my end sent a buffer-overflow to crash attempted attacks, but too much work.)

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  5. Sounds like this by bludstone · · Score: 5, Funny

    Grrr.. ch ch ch.. grrrr. ch ch ch... grrrr.. ch ch ch..

    I need to replace the harddrive soon or im going to be without a firewall.

    --

    no .sig
  6. What does mine sound like? by FerretFrottage · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Ding Dong"..."No one's home"
    "Ding Dong"..."Not interested"
    "Ding Dong"..."Go away"
    "Ding Dong"..."Leave me alone"
    "Ding Dong"..."porn you say? well come right on in"

    --
    "Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
  7. I know what my network sounds like... by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 5, Funny

    It sounds like the screams of thousands of users, as I hit that red button marked: Power.

  8. My firewall? by CCIEwannabe · · Score: 5, Funny

    I use windows, so my firewall sounds something like this

    Holy Crap! Help me lord! Bleeep!

  9. Do you by BCW2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ever get the feeling that some people have entirely too much time on their hands?

    --
    Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
  10. Or like by Stevyn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sure, come on in.

    Hi, step right up.

    Wait, let me see your ID...okay...Sasser eh? Alright sounds good.

    Alright, I'm going on break now. Time for wifi to shut down

  11. Don't know about mine, but theirs sounds like... by Shoten · · Score: 5, Funny

    "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIEEEE! Too many hits!!!! F*#%ING Slashdot!"

    --

    For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
  12. Dobly Surround Sound Quality Firewall!!! by quadra23 · · Score: 5, Funny

    You need this kind of quality to accurately measure the warfare that your Firewall is waging against anything evil on the cyber-waves. That latest Windows virus? Nope got smacked down by your firewall and you heard it about a minute ago.

    Forget games(!?), just listen to your firewall wage glorious battle for the freedom and security of your PC and/or home network(!) in the comfort of your own home! All it would need then is a quality commentary...

    "Firewall detected malicious port scan and DOS (Denial of Service) attacks aimed towards IP 19.5.4.10 on port 70. Access denied, commence lockdown and vapourize all opposition!" Forget those war movies folks, you can experience it for yourself now!

    Or how about "Reinforcements (firewall updates) have just arrived deploying them as according to operating procedures".

    Man, that would be the life, at least now spending hours on your own PC won't be dull again! Only thing left would be to be figure out a way to salute to your firewall and give it medals of honour...Hmmmm, this will take some time to figure out, but at least we got this far ^_^