Firestarter

[Jim Kielman]

On 10-08-31 05:42 PM, Robert Holtzman wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 05:09:55PM -0700, Jim Kielman wrote:
>>
>> are more then adequate for the average user that is running any
>> services. To answer your questions as to why they have to use a
>> firewall, they don't, it's just something they did when they ran
>> Windows, and they can't believe they can be safe on the internet without
>> one. Personally I don't run one at home, and only enable the firewall
>> when I'm out with my netbook.
>
> When I'm not hooked up to the router which has it's own firewall I
> routinely see a large number of blocked access attempts, quite a few
> from China, listed on Firestarter's events tab. I'll use a firewall if
> it's all the same to you.
>
>

If you are using Firestarter to watch the firewall logs, you're doing it 
wrong. Firestarter needs to be run as root which is a security risk, it 
is only meant to be run to set the firewall rules and then shut down. 
The firewall rules don't disappear once Firestarter is shut down.

Personally I don't care where access attempts come from as long as they 
are blocked. Watching blocked attempts just makes me paranoid, so I 
don't bother.

All blocked access attempts are logged to /var/log/auth.log, you can 
view the log via the Log File Viewer, if you are really curious.