LinuxLock.org: Interview with Rick Johnson of PMFirewall

[ Thanks to Christopher J Carella for this link. ]

"A few months ago when I was asked to design a firewalling strategy for a local consulting company, I proposed that I would use Linux to create a low cost firewalling solution. Everyone loved the idea from the Techs who understood the power of linux, to the business men who saw the bottom dollar to the clients who loved to hear that buzzword "Linux". So, I set out and studied all I could about IPCHAINS and firewalling in the 2.2x Kernel. After writing some custom firewalling rules over and over again, I came across PMFirewall. PMFirewall is a script that asks you what services you need and which ones you want blocked out; it then uses your selections to create an ipchains ruleset. This was the perfect firewalling solution because it was easy to adapt the firewall rules to different networks. PMFirewall is a script that creates a ruleset for IPCHAINS for dual nic machines. The following is an email interview I conducted with Rick Johnson, the creator of PMFirewall."

"LinuxLock: What were you goals with PMFirewall? Why did you make it?
Rick: A while back I had a friend whose server was compromised. Had their been a firewall in place it never would have happened. When asked about the lack of protection the response was "firewalls are too confusing, I could never get it to work correctly". From that point forward, I was writing firewalls for anyone who needed them. I felt no one should be unprotected simply because they lacked the understanding. This eventually led to the creation of PMFirewall. "

"LinuxLock: How many developers were involved with PMFIREWALL? And was there beta testers or people submitting bugs?
Rick: Currently I'm the only developer aside from Warren Yopp, my resident code Nazi. He makes sure the code stays clean and consistent. Plus, I receive quite a few contributions from the members of the pmfirewall mailing list. I have a few beta testers, but the best by far is Raul Gallegos. He checks every aspect of the program and catches even the smallest error. I'm hoping to expand the testing and development teams as we get further into the 2.x series of PMFirewall."

Complete Story

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