Firewall (computing)

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This article is about the network security device. For other uses, see Firewall.

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An illustration of where a firewall would be located in a network.

An example of a user interface for a firewall on Ubuntu (Gufw)

A firewall is a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized
access while permitting authorized communications. It is a device or set of devices that is
configured to permit or deny network transmissions based upon a set of rules and other
criteria.

Firewalls can be implemented in either hardware or software, or a combination of both.

Firewalls are frequently used to prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private
networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets. All messages entering or leaving the
intranet pass through the firewall, which inspects each message and blocks those that do not
meet the specified security criteria.

There are several types of firewall techniques:

1. Packet filter: Packet filtering inspects each packet passing through the network and
accepts or rejects it based on user-defined rules. Although difficult to configure, it is
fairly effective and mostly transparent to its users. It is susceptible to IP spoofing.
2. Application gateway: Applies security mechanisms to specific applications, such as
FTP and Telnet servers. This is very effective, but can impose a performance
degradation.
3. Circuit-level gateway: Applies security mechanisms when a TCP or UDP connection
is established. Once the connection has been made, packets can flow between the
hosts without further checking.
4. Proxy server: Intercepts all messages entering and leaving the network. The proxy
server effectively hides the true network addresses.

Contents
[hide]

 1 History
o 1.1 First generation: packet filters
o 1.2 Second generation: application layer
o 1.3 Third generation: "stateful" filters
o 1.4 Subsequent developments
 2 Types
o 2.1 Network layer and packet filters
o 2.2 Application-layer
o 2.3 Proxies
o 2.4 Network address translation
 3 See also
 4 References
 5 External links

[edit] History
The term firewall/fireblock originally meant a wall to confine a fire or potential fire within a
building; cf. firewall (construction). Later uses refer to similar structures, such as the metal
sheet separating the engine compartment of a vehicle or aircraft from the passenger
compartment.

 The Morris Worm spread itself through multiple vulnerabilities in the machines of the
time. Although it was not malicious in intent, the Morris Worm was the first large
scale attack on Internet security; the online community was neither expecting an
attack nor prepared to deal with one.[1]

[edit] First generation: packet filters

The first paper published on firewall technology was in 1988, when engineers from Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC) developed filter systems known as packet filter firewalls.
This fairly basic system was the first generation of what became a highly evolved and
technical internet security feature. At AT&T Bell Labs, Bill Cheswick and Steve Bellovin
were continuing their research in packet filtering and developed a working model for their
own company based on their original first generation architecture.

This type of packet filtering pays no attention to whether a packet is part of an existing
stream of traffic (i.e. it stores no information on connection "state"). Instead, it filters each
packet based only on information contained in the packet itself (most commonly using a
combination of the packet's source and destination address, its protocol, and, for TCP and
UDP traffic, the port number).

TCP and UDP protocols constitute most communication over the Internet, and because TCP
and UDP traffic by convention uses well known ports for particular types of traffic, a
"stateless" packet filter can distinguish between, and thus control, those types of traffic (such
as web browsing, remote printing, email transmission, file transfer), unless the machines on
each side of the packet filter are both using the same non-standard ports.

Packet filtering firewalls work on the first three layers of the OSI reference model, which
means all the work is done between the network and physical layers. When a packet
originates from the sender and filters through a firewall, the device checks for matches to any
of the packet filtering rules that are configured in the firewall and drops or rejects the packet
accordingly. When the packet passes through the firewall, it filters the packet on a
protocol/port number basis (GSS). For example, if a rule in the firewall exists to block telnet
access, then the firewall will block the IP protocol for port number 23.

[edit] Second generation: application layer

Main article: Application layer firewall

The key benefit of application layer filtering is that it can "understand" certain applications
and protocols (such as File Transfer Protocol, DNS, or web browsing), and it can detect if an
unwanted protocol is sneaking through on a non-standard port or if a protocol is being abused
in any harmful way.

An application firewall is much more secure and reliable compared to packet filter firewalls
because it works on all seven layers of the OSI reference model, from the application down to
the physical Layer. This is similar to a packet filter firewall but here we can also filter
information on the basis of content. The best example of an application firewall is ISA
(Internet Security and Acceleration) server. An application firewall can filter higher-layer
protocols such as FTP, Telnet, DNS, DHCP, HTTP, TCP, UDP and TFTP (GSS). For
example, if an organization wants to block all the information related to "foo" then content
filtering can be enabled on the firewall to block that particular word. Software-based firewalls
are thus much slower than stateful firewalls.

[edit] Third generation: "stateful" filters

Main article: Stateful firewall

From 1989-1990 three colleagues from AT&T Bell Laboratories, Dave Presetto, Janardan
Sharma, and Kshitij Nigam, developed the third generation of firewalls, calling them circuit
level firewalls.

Third-generation firewalls, in addition to what first- and second-generation look for, regard
placement of each individual packet within the packet series. This technology is generally
referred to as a stateful packet inspection as it maintains records of all connections passing
through the firewall and is able to determine whether a packet is the start of a new
connection, a part of an existing connection, or is an invalid packet. Though there is still a set
of static rules in such a firewall, the state of a connection can itself be one of the criteria
which trigger specific rules.

This type of firewall can actually be exploited by certain Denial-of-service attacks which can
fill the connection tables with illegitimate connections.

[edit] Subsequent developments

In 1992, Bob Braden and Annette DeSchon at the University of Southern California (USC)
were refining the concept of a firewall. The product known as "Visas" was the first system to
have a visual integration interface with colors and icons, which could be easily implemented
and accessed on a computer operating system such as Microsoft's Windows or Apple's
MacOS. In 1994 an Israeli company called Check Point Software Technologies built this into
readily available software known as FireWall-1.

The existing deep packet inspection functionality of modern firewalls can be shared by
Intrusion-prevention systems (IPS).

Currently, the Middlebox Communication Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) is working on standardizing protocols for managing firewalls and other
middleboxes.

Another axis of development is about integrating identity of users into Firewall rules. Many
firewalls provide such features by binding user identities to IP or MAC addresses, which is
very approximate and can be easily turned around. The NuFW firewall provides real identity-
based firewalling, by requesting the user's signature for each connection.

[edit] Types
There are several classifications of firewalls depending on where the communication is taking
place, where the communication is intercepted and the state that is being traced.

[edit] Network layer and packet filters

Network layer firewalls, also called packet filters, operate at a relatively low level of the
TCP/IP protocol stack, not allowing packets to pass through the firewall unless they match
the established rule set. The firewall administrator may define the rules; or default rules may
apply. The term "packet filter" originated in the context of BSD operating systems.

Network layer firewalls generally fall into two sub-categories, stateful and stateless. Stateful
firewalls maintain context about active sessions, and use that "state information" to speed
packet processing. Any existing network connection can be described by several properties,
including source and destination IP address, UDP or TCP ports, and the current stage of the
connection's lifetime (including session initiation, handshaking, data transfer, or completion
connection). If a packet does not match an existing connection, it will be evaluated according
to the ruleset for new connections. If a packet matches an existing connection based on
comparison with the firewall's state table, it will be allowed to pass without further
processing.

Stateless firewalls require less memory, and can be faster for simple filters that require less
time to filter than to look up a session. They may also be necessary for filtering stateless
network protocols that have no concept of a session. However, they cannot make more
complex decisions based on what stage communications between hosts have reached.

Modern firewalls can filter traffic based on many packet attributes like source IP address,
source port, destination IP address or port, destination service like WWW or FTP. They can
filter based on protocols, TTL values

, netblock of originator, of the source, and many other attributes.

Commonly used packet filters on various versions of Unix are ipf (various), ipfw
(FreeBSD/Mac OS X), pf (OpenBSD, and all other BSDs), iptables/ipchains (Linux).

[edit] Application-layer

Main article: Application layer firewall

Application-layer firewalls work on the application level of the TCP/IP stack (i.e., all browser
traffic, or all telnet or ftp traffic), and may intercept all packets traveling to or from an
application. They block other packets (usually dropping them without acknowledgment to the
sender). In principle, application firewalls can prevent all unwanted outside traffic from
reaching protected machines.

On inspecting all packets for improper content, firewalls can restrict or prevent outright the
spread of networked computer worms and trojans. The additional inspection criteria can add
extra latency to the forwarding of packets to their destination.

[edit] Proxies
Main article: Proxy server

A proxy device (running either on dedicated hardware or as software on a general-purpose

machine) may act as a firewall by responding to input packets (connection requests, for
example) in the manner of an application, whilst blocking other packets.

Proxies make tampering with an internal system from the external network more difficult and
misuse of one internal system would not necessarily cause a security breach exploitable from
outside the firewall (as long as the application proxy remains intact and properly configured).
Conversely, intruders may hijack a publicly-reachable system and use it as a proxy for their
own purposes; the proxy then masquerades as that system to other internal machines. While
use of internal address spaces enhances security, crackers may still employ methods such as
IP spoofing to attempt to pass packets to a target network.

[edit] Network address translation

Main article: Network address translation

Firewalls often have network address translation (NAT) functionality, and the hosts protected
behind a firewall commonly have addresses in the "private address range", as defined in RFC
1918. Firewalls often have such functionality to hide the true address of protected hosts.
Originally, the NAT function was developed to address the limited number of IPv4 routable
addresses that could be used or assigned to companies or individuals as well as reduce both
the amount and therefore cost of obtaining enough public addresses for every computer in an
organization. Hiding the addresses of protected devices has become an increasingly important
defense against network reconnaissance.

See also
 Access control list
 Amazingports
 Bastion host
 Circuit-level gateway
 Comparison of firewalls
 Computer security
 Egress filtering
 End-to-end connectivity
 Firewall pinhole
 Firewalls and Internet Security (book)
 Golden Shield Project (aka Great Firewall of China)
 List of Linux router or firewall distributions
 Mangled packet
 network reconnaissance
 Packet
 Personal firewall
 Sandbox (computer security)
 Screened-subnet firewall
 Stateful firewall
  Unified threat management
 Virtual firewall

[edit] References
1. ^ RFC 1135 The Helminthiasis of the Internet

[edit] External links