Are there any firewall experts in the house

XFce · Jun 29, 2006

Is there a way to make Apples built in firewall more secure ?
I blocked UDP and enabled stealth mode that helps but I would like to go under advanced settings and make the firewall more secure then it already is. Maybe disable cretin ports or add some type of bsd script or apply some type of rule that would block ports that are enabled by default but are not not being used. any suggestions would be appreciated.

mac57 · Jun 29, 2006

Apple's firewall is what it is. You can't do much else with it. You will need to go commercial (Norton for example) to get more control... unless you can figure out if iptables lies at the heart of the Mac OS X firewall - I haven't delved into that yet, but it just might. Given your userid (XFce) you may have more than a passing familiarity with iptables?

hagen · Jul 2, 2006

XFce said:
Is there a way to make Apples built in firewall more secure ?
I blocked UDP and enabled stealth mode that helps but I would like to go under advanced settings and make the firewall more secure then it already is. Maybe disable cretin ports or add some type of bsd script or apply some type of rule that would block ports that are enabled by default but are not not being used. any suggestions would be appreciated.

Would this be of any use to you? http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/03/15/firewall.html

I haven't switched yet, so my knowledge is limited to what I've been able to find through Google and my experience with rule-based firewalls on Windows. It sounds like OS X has an excellent bi-directional firewall, one just has to write the rules directly.

Mr Bobbins · Jul 3, 2006

You may want to try out programs like 'Flying buttress' and 'sunshield' which beef up Mac OSX's internal firewall. So far as stand alone firewalls are concerned I'd recommend 'Net barrier'.

Here are some links:

http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/flyingbuttress.html
http://www.sunprotectingfactory.com/joomla/
http://www.intego.com/netbarrier/

baggss · Jul 3, 2006

XFce said:
Is there a way to make Apples built in firewall more secure ?
I blocked UDP and enabled stealth mode that helps but I would like to go under advanced settings and make the firewall more secure then it already is. Maybe disable cretin ports or add some type of bsd script or apply some type of rule that would block ports that are enabled by default but are not not being used. any suggestions would be appreciated.

As far as I know, all the ports in the OSX firewall are closed unless opened by a specific App (Mail, Safari etc) or manually opened by the user. They are all closed by default.

Mr Bobbins · Jul 4, 2006

baggss said:
As far as I know, all the ports in the OSX firewall are closed unless opened by a specific App (Mail, Safari etc) or manually opened by the user. They are all closed by default.

Yes, unlike with windows. He he :dummy:

Are there any firewall experts in the house

XFce

Guest

mac57

hagen

Mr Bobbins

baggss

Mr Bobbins

Shop Amazon