LinuxWorld: Installing a firewall, Part 2 - Tips for configuring secure, lean mail and network services
Oct 17, 2000, 20:01 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Sam Mikes, Danielle Michaels)
"One of the major services formerly provided by
plains was mail service. In order to exchange mail
with hosts outside the network, the mail server must be in contact
with the external network. However, we didn't want to install a POP
server on the new firewall machine, or have user accounts on it. So
we decided to configure the mail server on wolf to
relay mail to and from plains. User accounts and the
POP server could then remain on plains, behind the
firewall, resulting in minimal disruption to the client's email
habits."
"The question was whether to use Sendmail on wolf
to relay mail, or to use something else. Sendmail is the most
common free mail transport agent. However, it has numerous security
and usability problems. First of all, it has only one daemon, which
runs as root. It does drop some privileges, but this has
historically been a pathway for system compromise. Sendmail is also
big, complicated, and difficult to configure, and it would detract
from the lightweight beauty of the newly configured Trustix system.
Finally, Sendmail is just more software than necessary to relay
mail from one server to another."
"Postfix is a relatively new, security-conscious mail
server. We use it internally, and it is small and easy to
configure. Furthermore, it comes with Trustix, and thus was
trivially easy to install. (Perhaps it would be better to say
that one of the reasons we selected Trustix is that it came with
Postfix)."
Complete Story
Related Stories:
- LinuxWorld: Installing a firewall, Part 1(Oct 11, 2000)
- LinuxWorld: Linux firewall survey, Part 1: Open source product roundup(Oct 10, 2000)
- Linux Journal: A Few Recipes for Easier Firewalls(Sep 17, 2000)
- Security Portal: Firewalls: What To Block(Sep 13, 2000)
- Security Portal: Firewalls - Common Configuration Problems(Sep 06, 2000)
- Security Portal: Firewalls - Overview(Aug 24, 2000)
- O'Reilly Network: 12 Tips on Building Firewalls(Jul 29, 2000)
- O'Reilly Network: Securing Your Home Network With the Edge Firewall(Jun 11, 2000)
- BSD Today: Running a BSD-based Firewall(May 29, 2000)
- SecurityFocus: Building a Linux Bunker: Basic Firewalling(May 09, 2000)
- RootPrompt.org: Auditing Your Firewall Setup(Apr 10, 2000)
- GBdirect: Firewalling with Linux(Apr 09, 2000)
- Linux Firewall and Security Site: Configuring an Internet Firewall and Home LAN With Linux(Apr 09, 2000)
- ZDNet: Linux Firewall On A 486: A Guard-Penguin For Your DSL Or Cable Modem... [Linux Router Proj.](Apr 05, 2000)
- Linux Journal: Transparent Firewalling(Oct 24, 1999)
- Linux.com: Deploying a Linux Firewall(Oct 09, 1999)
