Basic HTML version of Foils prepared May 19 99

Foil 17 Firewalls and Gateways - I

From Remarks on Internet and Java Security Basic Information Track Computational Science Course CPS616 -- Spring Semester 1999. by Geoffrey Fox, Mehmet Sen


1 A firewall is a computer that sits between an institutional network and the potentially dangerous insecure Internet/Outside network.
2 Firewalls can be taught to filter information by address or by content
  • e.g. it could only allow inside-->outside messaging or messages to or from certain sites (this can be fooled by forging network addresses)
  • e.g. it can prevent file transfer but accept email
  • However email is actually a common file transfer mechanism and postscript (for instance) can easily hide rogue programs
  • Often firewalls are highly inconvenient and in mysterious ways handicap legitimate traffic when in fact nobody realizes firewall exists!

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