Securing My Debian Box

[dr1v3r]

Hi i was wondering if anyone here could help me in securing my box, I DONT have a clue about linux firewalls and ports and what does what only ever widows interface setup, where its installed and everything is blocked unless i think it needs access lol. The box is being accessed via SSH only and i do not have hands on access to the box at all, so everything can only be done via SSH.

I was told to try ipquicktables but i cant seam to figure out how to install it. I am not to bad with installing things on linux, but when it comes to the damn firewall I really do not have any ideas.

What i need is a firewall that any newb, idiot, thick person like myself can understand

I hope this is enough information for someone to help me out.

Thank You
Mick

[brianstorm]

Hi,

I'm pretty new to this too but installing webmin may well help with general configuration. As far as firewalls go, iptables is part of linux and can be configured using webmin.... you really need to do a bit of reading though....

http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_iptables_sarge

is a basic tutorial, there's loads more on the net too.... a good tip (learnt the hard way) is to use the "at" scheduler to turn off iptables 15minutes (or so) after any changes as it is quite easy to lock yourself out....if all is well cancel the command before it runs....

there are a number of gui interfaces for iptables but the basics are not that difficult... you can test your configuration using the nmap scanner package too...


hope this helps

[kavalakala]

Shorewall (http://www.shorewall.net/) is a worth of trying.
Don't fail, because then you lose the access to SSH and you have to get physical access to the box to fix this (reseting iptables to wrong settings may cause that) and don't forget to stop all daemons you don't need!

[farslayer]

You can use Firewall Builder to generate the firewall configuration file. when you are sure you have it correct you can scp the config file over to your Debian box and make it active..

http://www.networkuptime.com/tools/f...l_builder.html

http://www.fwbuilder.org/