Troubleshooting Linux Firewalls (Addison Wesley Professional)

Helps sys admins pinpoint the most often encountered problems with Linux firewalls and suggests causes and effective solutions.

• Security experts Stephen Northcutt and Ed Skoudis have confirmed that there is a gap in existing books as far as diagnostics are concerned--this book fills that gap.
• Shinn and Shinn are accomplished technologists and entrepreneurs with stellar credentials in security services--including positions at the White House.
• Covers Red Hat and SuSE distributions.

While Linux firewalls are inexpensive and quite reliable, they lack the support component of their commerical counterparts. As a result, most users of Linux firewalls have to resort to mailing lists to solve their problems. Our authors have scoured firewall mailing lists and have compiled a list of the most often encountered problems in Linux firewalling. This book takes a Chilton's manual diagnostic approach to solving these problems. The book begins by presenting the two most common Linux firewall configurations and demonstrates how to implement these configurations in an imperfect network environment, not in an ideal one. Then, the authors proceed to present a methodology for analyzing each problem at various network levels: cabling, hardware components, protocols, services, and applications. The authors include diagnostic scripts which the readers can use to analyze and solve their particular Linux firewall problems. The reference distributions are Red Hat and SuSE (for international market).