Book Image

Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source

Book Image

Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source

Overview of this book

IPCop is a powerful, open source, Linux based firewall distribution for primarily Small Office Or Home (SOHO) networks, although it can be used in larger networks. It provides most of the features that you would expect a modern firewall to have, and what is most important is that it sets this all up for you in a highly automated and simplified way. This book is an easy introduction to this popular application. After introducing and explaining the foundations of firewalling and networking and why they're important, the book moves on to cover using IPCop, from installing it, through configuring it, to more advanced features, such as configuring IPCop to work as an IDS, VPN and using it for bandwidth management. While providing necessary theoretical background, the book takes a practical approach, presenting sample configurations for home users, small businesses, and large businesses. The book contains plenty of illustrative examples.

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Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source
Oct, 2006 | 244 pages
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Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Configuring IPCop Firewalls
Configuring IPCop Firewalls
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction to Firewalls
Introduction to Firewalls
An Introduction to (TCP/IP) Networking
The Purpose of Firewalls
The OSI Model
How Networks are Structured
Traffic Filtering
Other Services Sometimes Run on Firewalls
Summary
2
Introduction to IPCop
Introduction to IPCop
Free and Open Source Software
The Purpose of IPCop
The Benefits of Building on Stable Components
The Gap IPCop Fills
Features of IPCop
Virtual Private Networking
Why IPCop?
Summary
3
Deploying IPCop and Designing a Network
Deploying IPCop and Designing a Network
Trust Relationships between the Interfaces
Altering IPCop Functionality
Topology One: NAT Firewall
Topology Two: NAT Firewall with DMZ
Topology Three: NAT Firewall with DMZ and Wireless
Planning Site-To-Site VPN Topologies
Summary
4
Installing IPCop
Installing IPCop
Hardware Requirements
Other Hardware Considerations
The Installation Procedure
Green Interface Configuration
First Boot
Summary
5
Basic IPCop Usage
Basic IPCop Usage
The System Menu
Checking the Status of Our IPCop Firewall
Network Status
Services
Firewall Functionality
Summary
6
Intrusion Detection with IPCop
Intrusion Detection with IPCop
Introduction to IDS
Introduction to Snort
Do We Need an IDS?
How Does an IDS Work?
Using Snort with IPCop
Monitoring the Logs
Log Analysis Options
What to Do Next?
Summary
7
Virtual Private Networks
Virtual Private Networks
What is a VPN?
Summary
8
Managing Bandwidth with IPCop
Managing Bandwidth with IPCop
The Bandwidth Problem
The HTTP Problem
The Solutions: Proxying and Caching
Introduction to Squid
Configuring Squid
Cache Management
Managing Bandwidth without a Cache
Summary
9
Customizing IPCop
Customizing IPCop
Addons
Firewall Addons Server
Common Addons
Summary
10
Testing, Auditing, and Hardening IPCop
Testing, Auditing, and Hardening IPCop
Security and Patch Management
Basic Firewall Hardening
Advanced Hardening
Logfiles and Monitoring Usage
Usage and Denial of Service
Where to Go Next?
Summary
11
IPCop Support
IPCop Support
Support
Summary

Summary

We have covered three common configuration scenarios for the IPCop firewall and IPSec VPNs. Although we have not covered the entire topic end to end, we have hopefully provided enough for you to understand how VPNs work and get your feet wet configuring (hopefully successfully) your IPCop hosts for certificate and Pre-Shared Key-based VPNs. There are many good books written on IPSec, including several volumes on building VPNs with Linux by the publishers of this book (such as http://www.packtpub.com/openswan/book, written by the developers of Openswan).

IPSec VPNs, although widely supported, are by no means the easiest to configure. SSL-based VPNs, using the same encryption technology as HTTPS, such as OpenVPN, are quickly becoming popular due to the relative ease of configuration, as well as the simpler nature of the protocol; IPSec, even in conjunction with a protocol such as L2TP, is complex and often broken by firewalls and Network Address Translation.

OpenVPN, in addition to being...

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