MANEKUTAU

TIPS: Bonus Firewall

Not complete it if a router is not equipped with additional security to ward off attacks that are likely to come from the Internet. Fortunately, Firestarter is designed to secure a PC connected to the Internet, including clients that are connected through the Internet Connection Sharing facility.

Actually, by default, Firestarter has worked as a firewall since it was first activated. But according to the default settings we still have a lot of holes that would otherwise be closed is not going to penetrate a cracker.

When security becomes your priority while surfing fun, there's no harm in following the simple steps below.

A. Against Attacks from Outside
1. Reopen the Preferences window in Firestarter. This time select "ICMP Filtering" and enable (check) the option "Enable ICMP Filtering". Ignore the other options under it if there's no other features of the ICMP protocol which allowed the PC received. Next, click the Accept button.


2. Back to the Firestarter main window, then select the tab "Policy". In Editing options, be sure to select "Inbound traffic policy" which means we will make rules about "who gets access to a PC or a port from the Internet". If no port that is accessible from the Internet, so be sure to list "Allow connection from host", "Allow service", and "Forward service" empty. Conversely, if you want to allow a host of the Internet is connected to the router, right-click an empty area on the list "Allow connection from host" and choose "Add rule". Then enter the IP address of hosts that are allowed to access the router. If you have, do not forget to click the "Add" and "Apply". The same way can be done to allow the port connection / service from the Internet, you just have to work on the list of "Allow service".

3. If so, try to test your PC with the help of your site's security auditing Gibson Research (www.grc.com). Compare the results before and after the configuration is done (see if you get a title of "Passed" on TruStealth Analysis or not).


B. Restricting Access Client URL

After successfully restrict access from the outside, now we will make restrictions on clients that will access the Internet. This is especially useful if you want to save bandwidth or to prevent underage users accessing inappropriate sites. Here's how to do it.

1. From the Firestarter main window, click the tab "Policy" and change the dropdown editing the "Outbound traffic policy". This option is used to restrict access to a local client to the Internet or the opposite of "Inbound traffic policy" that we discussed above.

2. Would appear that the two radio buttons each with the option "Permissive by default, traffic black list" and "restrictive by default, whitelist traffic". Permissive by default be used if you want to allow all data traffic from clients to the Internet and use the list to block policy address, host or service / specific port. Conversely, restrictive by default is used to block all traffic from the client to the Internet and using a list of policy to allow access to the address, host or service / specific port. If you want to block a specific address, select Permissive by default.

3. Firestarter ordered to block certain sites, do by right-clicking an empty area on the list of "Deny connection to host", then select "Add rule". Enter the IP address or domain name (without "http://") in the field "IP, host or network", then click Add. If you have, do not forget to click Apply at the top of the window Firestarter. Try to visit the address had been blocked using the browser.