[lug] Why Do I Need a Firewall?

[Zan Lynx]

On Wed, 2007-10-03 at 18:24 -0600, Bill Thoen wrote:
[snip]
> But in this particular case, how necessary is a firewall? I've only got
> services listening on 3-4 ports for incoming requests. Otherwise, it's a
> single-user machine so there's no danger that there will be rogue requests
> from some ignorant or disgruntled employee. It's basically a workstation
> with a couple of Internet-accessable servers running on it. I guess what
> I'm wondering is, in this case, if I didn't have a firewall at all, what
> could somebody from the outside do to mess with this machine? With such a
> simple set up, why do I need a firewall and what should I set it to filter? 

It's a belt and suspenders thing, for the day when you accidentally turn
on tftp or CUPS with world access.
-- 
Zan Lynx <zlynx at acm.org>
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