EMERGENCY - need to secure my server against an ongoing SPAMMER

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Bob Brennan wrote:

>> As a final thought, messing directly with your iptables setup is fun but
>> can become a distracting and wasteful time burner.  If you are, or can
>> get comfortable with any of the GUI based firewall setup tools on Fedora
>> I urge you use them.  They are not as flexible as direct manipulation
>> but they are less error prone and, unlike the advice I give above, they
>> are not based on someone else's iptables assumptions, which when unknown,
>> (as in this case), will eventually bite you.
>
> Thanks again for the great advice Jeff - I will read and re-read the
> link you sent until something sinks in. In the meantime I have been
> (not comfortably) using the iptables command but would rather use one
> of the "GUI based firewall setup tools on Fedora" you mention above. I
> did try all of the logical system-config-xxx commands I could find but
> none that show me a neat list of iptables. Tips-for-Dummies, or better
> links-for-dummies here would help. Dabblers in an area like this can
> do more damage than good - like someone who provides an open relay to
> the entire spam world without knowing it.....  :-(    ...for instance.

The FC3 tool to manage firewalls is system-config-securitylevel.  It's 
pretty primitive, though.  I have used fwbuilder (www.fwbuilder.org). 
It's quite general and powerful, but it takes a bit of practice to get 
handy with it.

>
> thanks,
> bob
>
>
>

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs