The Freefire Bulletin #2 (1998-06-05)

[lists () LINA INKA DE (Bernd Eckenfels)]

  The Freefire Bulletin #2 (1998-06-05) Monthly Newsletter


The Freefire Project tries to help Developers in building Firewall and
IT-Security Solutions based on Free Tools. You can find additional
information about the Project at the Homepage

     <URL:http://www.inka.de/sites/lina/freefire-l/index_en.html>


0  Executive Info (Ec)
---------------------
1 Changes to the Web Pages (Ec)
  A new outfit and new content on the Freefire Web Pages

2 The DBD::pNET Perl Database Proxy (JW)
  is a proxy server for Perl DBI Databases with access control

3 FCT - Firewall Configuration Tool (JHF)
  generates executable scripts to setup a screening router

4 OpenBSD - A free and secure OS (Ec)
  OpenBSD emphasis on correctness, security and cryptography

5 Call for Authors
  If you want to participate in this bulletin, just drop me a note


1  Changes to the Web Pages (Ec)
--------------------------------
The Web Pages of the Freefire Project has changes a bit. Now all the Pages
are available in english (only the main-page is available in german, too).
The lists of resources and tools will be stored in a database, since
maintaining and checking the links tends to be hard work. Search and Rating
will be added.
You can find the pages at: <URL:http://www.inka.de/sites/lina/freefire-l/>
(sorry about the typo in some of the last bulletins)


2  The DBD::pNET Perl Database Proxy (JW)
-----------------------------------------
is a proxy server for Perl based applications that want to access
a database engine behind a firewall or an engine without network
support. On the client side the module acts as a usual Perl DBI
driver, on the server side it uses the same DBI for accessing the
engine.

The driver offers a host and user based authorization scheme and
strong query restrictions: You can define a set of queries and
restrict the outside user (typically a WWW server) to those. The
package is available from any CPAN mirror, for example

<URL:ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/authors/id/JWIED>


3  FCT - Firewall Configuration Tool (JHF)
-----------------------------------------
generates executable scripts to setup a firewall for nearly all possible
configurations (single host, routing host, screened subnet, ...).
It actually supports the syntax for ipfwadm, ipchains and IPFilter. It offers
a HTML-CGI interface for configuration in any Browser. Also, it can fully be
administrered in a shell.

<URL:http://www.fen.baynet.de/~ft114>


4  OpenBSD - A free and secure OS (Ec)
--------------------------------------
OpenBSD 2.3 is about to ship. It is one of the free BSD operating systems.
The OpenBSD Project is very successfull in keeping an eye on security. Quite
a few Bugs in OpenBSDs version of programs have been fixed before they
got announced in public.

> From IPFilter, securelevel, kerberos, MD5 passwords to tcpd and modified
(secured) versions of standard daemons (Bind) you get an operating sys-
tem which is constantly audited since 1996.

<URL:http://www.openbsd.org/>


5  Call for Authors (Ec)
------------------------
Since this Bulletin is trying to be a monthly resource of good information
the Project is always seeking for authors. Please drop me a mail if you
want to write about something dealing with IT Security and free information
or solutions.


Authors of the current issue
----------------------------
  Ec  - Bernd 'eckes' Eckenfels    <ecki () lina inka de>
  JW  - Jochen Wiedmann            <joe () ispsoft de>
  JHF - Jens Hellmerichs-Friedrich <ft114 () fen baynet de>

(c) Copyright 1998 Bernd Eckenfels and others
Bernd Eckenfels <ecki () lina inka de>, GERMANY