Netfilter maintainer Patrick McHardy recently announced a first alpha-release of nftables, slated to eventually replace iptables as the standard Linux packet filtering engine. Nftables aims to simplify the kernel ABI, reduce code duplication, improve error reporting, and provide more efficient execution, storage and updates of filtering rules.

This article continues the series of articles on Fireall Builder, a graphical firewall configuration and management tool that supports many Open Source firewall platforms as well as Cisco IOS access lists and Cisco ASA (PIX).

Like all Linux distributions, Ubuntu 10.10, aka, Maverick Meerkat, the latest version of the popular Linux distribution, ships with a firewall installed. The firewall is actually embedded in the kernel. In Ubuntu, the firewall’s original command line interface has been replaced by ufw, a more user-friendly command line script.

ufw, the Uncomplicated FireWall, is Ubuntu’s user-friendly, command line frontend to IPTables, the command line utility for managing Netfilter, the firewall application built into the Linux kernel. It is installed not just on Ubuntu, but also on all Ubuntu-based distributions. As simple to use as ufw is, a graphical interface is even better, especially for new users.

The UFW has a GUI front end that you can add to it to provide an “easier” method of working with the firewall. You will see that it will be installed and available using System/Adminstration/Firewall administration. The interface is set up for several different options.

Fwbuilder is a powerful firewall creation tool that works by adding objects to build a customized firewall. An object can be just about anything from a firewall, a library, a host, interface, address, DNS name, etc.

"If, like many people, you've started to experiment with enabling, configuring, and using, IPv6 it might not have crossed your mind to update your firewall. This could lead to surprises if you're unlucky. Read on for a simple overview. The standard userspace firewall tool upon Debian GNU/Linux is iptables.

Have you ever wanted to configure a personal firewall for your GNU/Linux box, but were scared of the complexity of iptables? Well, I might not be able to make you a security expert, but I can show you a tool that will help you to configure your personal firewall the easy way. The secret? Firewall Builder (also known as fwbuilder for short).

On Fedora 18, the new firewall application is called FirewallD. It has its own command-line and graphical utility, but the graphical firewall tool installed belongs to the old firewall application which it replaced.