FIREWALLS

As you begin to learn the essentials of computer and network security you will encounter many new terms: encryption, port, Trojan and more. Firewall will be a term that will appear again and again. So, what is a firewall?
A firewall is basically the first line of defense for your network. The basic purpose of a firewall is to keep uninvited guests from browsing your network. A firewall can be a hardware device or a software application and generally is placed at the perimeter of the network to act as the gatekeeper for all incoming and outgoing traffic.

A firewall allows you to establish certain rules to determine what traffic should be allowed in or out of your private network. Depending on the type of firewall implemented you could restrict access to only certain IP addresses or domain names, or you can block certain types of traffic by blocking the TCP/IP ports they use.

There are basically four mechanisms used by firewalls to restrict traffic. One device or application may use more than one of these in conjunction with each other to provide more in-depth protection. The four mechanisms are packet-filtering, circuit-level gateway, proxy server and application gateway.

A packet filter intercepts all traffic to and from the network and evaluates it against the rules you provide. Typically the packet filter can assess the source IP address, source port, destination IP address and destination port. It is these criteria that you can filter on- allowing or disallowing traffic from certain IP addresses or on certain ports.
A circuit-level gateway blocks all incoming traffic to any host but itself. Internally, the client machines run software to allow them to establish a connection with the circuit-level gateway machine. To the outside world it appears that all communication from your internal network is actually originating from the circuit-level gateway.

A proxy server is generally put in place to boost performance of the network, but can act as a sort of firewall as well. Proxy servers also hide your internal addresses as well so that all communications appear to originate from the proxy server itself. A proxy server will cache pages that have been requested. If User A goes to Yahoo.com the proxy server actually sends the request to Yahoo.com and retrieves the web page. If User B then connects to Yahoo.com the proxy server just sends the information it already retrieved for User A so it is returned much faster than having to get it from Yahoo.com again. You can configure a proxy server to block access to certain web sites and filter certain port traffic to protect your internal network.

An application gateway is essentially another sort of proxy server. The internal client first establishes a connection with the application gateway. The application gateway determines if the connection should be allowed or not and then establishes a connection with the destination computer. All communications go through two connections- client to application gateway and application gateway to destination. The application gateway monitors all traffic against its rules before deciding whether or not to forward it. As with the other proxy server types, the application gateway is the only address seen by the outside world so the internal network is protected.

Each of these mechanisms has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. The application gateway is considered to be a more advanced and secure firewall mechanism than the other three, but it uses more resources (memory and processor power) and can be slower. Packet filtering is generally faster and easier to implement, but is susceptible to attack from users faking their source IP address (IP spoofing)or source port to trick your firewall into thinking that the traffic should be allowed through.
To beef up packet filtering security, stateful inspection packet filtering, or stateful packet filtering (SPF) was introduced. Essentially, SPF performs the same as a packet filter, but with a couple of added measures. First, it looks at more details from each packet to determine what is contained within the packet rather than simply who and where it is from (or allegedly from). Second, it monitors communications between the two devices and compares the traffic not only to the rules it has been given, but also to the previous communications. If any communication seems out of context or out of the ordinary based on previous traffic the packet is rejected.

Many home routers come with built-in firewall capabilities. Generally, these tend to be simple packet filters. You can block all incoming connections on all ports if you are not acting as a server for anything. If you want to publish a web page from your computer, you would need to allow incoming traffic on Port 80 to get to your computer. If you want to be able to download files from your computer from outside using FTP, you would need to allow incoming connections on Port 21. A basic rule of security though is to start with the most restrictive and only open holes where it seems necessary.

In addition to the hardware firewall built into routers, there are also software applications called personal firewalls that you can run on your computer. These personal firewall applications monitor all incoming and outgoing communications on your computer as well as what services are trying to interact with what other services.

There are new vulnerabilities and flaws discovered everyday which could allow a hacker to break into your computer, take control of it for use in a denial-of-service attack or steal or destroy your data. Keeping your software patched and running updated antivirus software are very important pieces of the puzzle, but having a firewall block incoming connections in the first place is definitely a wise idea as well. No one security solution will solve everything. The more lines of defense you have in place, the harder it is for hackers to get in and the safer you will be.