[Techtalk] Personal firewalls: helpful?

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 12:43:22PM +0200, Lucia Sanchez wrote:
> Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> > Though I guess there's also two different kinds of "dedicated firewall"
> > machines: there's the "let's go buy a firewall" machine (which speaks to
> > point (1) above), and then there's the "oh, I'm a Linux hobbyist who has
> > lots of old computers lying around, here, I'll turn this one into a
> > firewall by installing Linux and just putting the minimal stuff on,
> > including my favourite firewall software" firewall machine.  That speaks
> > more to point (2) above.
> 
> What are the advantages to having a machine dedicated as a firewall?
> 
> It would seem logical that if the firewall's security is breached you're
> in the same amount of trouble whether it's a dedicated machine or
> not....  Of course assuming that the breach of security occurs because
> of a failure of the firewall itself, not security holes from other
> software running on that machine.

I think part of the idea is that, with a minimal amount of software
running on the firewall machine, there's less chances of there being
security holes from other software running on that machine.

But we've now reached the end of what little I know and conjecture.

Anyone else care to enlighten us?

Kathryn Andersen
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
BOFH Excuse #212:

Of course it doesn't work. We've performed a software upgrade.
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