No firewall, whether software, hardware, or both is just asking for trouble.

It's an open invite to anyone who can operate a hacking script. Speaking of which...If he wants his system to be tested...I suggest he leave his IP. I have plenty of friends who can put on a white hat for a day.

It's an open invite to anyone who can operate a hacking script. Speaking of which...If he wants his system to be tested...I suggest he leave his IP. I have plenty of friends who can put on a white hat for a day.

Edit***** I apologize drummer boy if this thread took another direction, but bb's are not finite. Here is a more advanced link to your live distros. http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

I would like to start by saying that,Some people should not mistake me for a " know it all in the UN*X forums" , I work in a highly formal environment (with significant resources) and I know that this isn't for everyone. I don't expect everyone to follow those ideals.(TKS/TheORGE) I just want people to be aware of them & not ignorantly reject them because of your level of education.
If you respond intelligently, I am not rude... but when people post things that are just so blatantly wrong, the very attempt on their part as a novice to try to argue that with me is insulting. many of my posts are downright friendly, I just have zero tolerance for uneducated people that spread misinformation. And without people like me... god imagine where we'd be then? If bad information just stood as truth! Like I've seen on this board.

I am not here to be liked and I am not seeking friends, but people that know me are aware that I know my shit and that I will also give not only straight answers but high assurance documents for further reading and they find that valuable.
Applying this to me,how do you reconcile this? Or am I misunderstanding you, and you believe that you are more knowledgable on security than the authors of those books above? that is really the only way I can see that your arguments would be logical. (Do you have any exposure to trusted systems? The argument you are making lead me to think no, and if that is the case I can provide some more reading if you are interested,after you have picked up the books above.)

Firewalls are no means an end all security solution, and frequently not needed for security at all.
However, I will take the time to correct you, "Physical Firewall" like "Hardware Firewall" are incorrect terminology, the proper term is "Dedicated Firewall" that is a system that does nothing but act as a firewall. Frequently these run on minimalistic systems with operating systems not seen beyond this niche if not specifically created for it.

Basically all firewalls are software. (with the possible exception of some very
targeted/research projects, we wont get into that)
Again a firewall is not the only "real" way to protect a system, in fact a good number of high security systems run no firewall at all. Heck, all my systems run without firewalls, like I said above it's all in the config. But you probably think extra firewalls means extra security.
Look, the last thing I need is some skiddi3 trying to explain how he & his skiddie friends are going to attempt an attack(correct terminology ) on my TOS.............let me provide more reading material so you can comsume the terminology & apply it next time!..................................After having a bit of drama at my work resulting in way too many email memos being sent and a project being delayed over a misunderstanding of a security related term I decided to hunt
down a copy of RFC2828, which one of the parties in question had neverseen.
Having done this it also occured to me how many debates here and other forums are over simple semantics... and since I happend to have it on hand now...This document is the Internet Security Glossary and is really the closest thing to an offical IS security disctionary.
attached below.

But if your going to run a firewall because you don't know how to configure properly.
http://www.fwtk.org/
It's free, it will do what you need it to. You can filter by ports,content,typing,
protocols, whatever. heck you can even interface it with various modules floating around that actually look at content content... as in: 'what is the jpeg is of?', or 'what is the document is about?'

More reading, http://www.radium.ncsc.mil/tpep/libr...bow/index.html
Heck I'll just post all of my personal bookmarks maybe both of you will learn somthing. I have selected my IS related ones and have pasted them below for both of you.
Organizations:
http://www.acm.org/ (Association of Computing Machinery)
http://www.ieee.org/ (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
http://www.bcs.org.uk/ (British Computer Society)
http://www.acs.org.au/ (Australian Computer Society)
Certifications:
http://www.isaca.org/ (CISA/CISM ceritifications)
http://www.isc2.org/ (CISSP certitification)
Standards:
http://csrc.nist.gov/ (The Computer Security Resource Center at the National Institute of Standards and Technology)
http://www.radium.ncsc.mil/ (Trusted Product Evaluation Program + Network Rating Model)
http://www.commoncriteria.org/ (The Common Criteria/ISO 15408)
http://www.iso17799.net/ (ISO17799/BS7799 + BS15000-1, BS7858, and BS8220)
http://babysealkiller.cannabisinfo.org/BS7799/ (BS7799 overview)
http://www.comp.mq.edu.au/units/ite.../RiskManage.pdf (AS/NZS4360 overview)
http://stinet.dtic.mil/str/dodiss4_fields.html (DOD specifications and standards)
http://www.dsp.dla.mil/ (Defense Standardizations Program)
http://www.dscc.dla.mil/Programs/MilSpec/ (MIL specifications and drawings)
http://www.kolacki.com/standards_status.htm (Status of IEEE, ISO, ANSI, and SAE standards w/ SPAWAR, FAA, ILI. IHS, & DOD links)
Education:
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm/ (Capability Maturity Models)
http://www.cs.tcd.ie/courses/baict/...t11/Coursework/ (Trinity Advanced Computer Security coursework)
http://seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu/ (UC Davis Computer Security Lab)
Vendor Security:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/ (Microsoft security)
http://www-3.ibm.com/security/ (IBM security)
www.hp.com/security/ (HP security)
Security Vendors:
http://www.argus-systems.com/ (Argus Systems/Pitbull systems)
http://www.bodacion.com/ (Bodacion Technologies/HYDRA systems)
http://www.eeye.com/ (eEye Digital Security)