Building Internet Firewalls, 2nd Edition

Appendix B. Tools

This appendix describes some of the tools and packages available on the Internet that you might find useful in building and maintaining your firewall. Many of these tools are mentioned in this book. Although this software is freely available, some of it is restricted in various ways by the authors (e.g., it may not be permitted to be used for commercial purposes or be included on a CD-ROM, etc.) or by the U.S. government (e.g., if it contains cryptography, it can’t ordinarily be exported outside the United States). Carefully read the documentation files that are distributed with the packages.

Although we have used most of the software listed here, we can’t take responsibility for ensuring that the copy you get will work properly and won’t cause any damage to your system. As with any software, test it before you use it.

Many packages have verifiable digital signatures; the software supplier provides a cryptographic checksum for the package that has been encrypted with the supplier’s private key. You can verify that you have the correct package by decrypting the checksum with the supplier’s public key and calculating the checksum on the package yourself, and making sure that they match. We encourage you to take the trouble to use these signatures when you are dealing with security-sensitive software. Many people have distributed booby-trapped versions of popular software packages.

Authentication Tools

The tools in this category provide support for various types of authentication. ...