At the place where I work we have this crappy Ugate router/gateway that really sucks. It is always screwing up and not giving IPs to PCs and crap.

So decided to put together a little Linux (Suse 9.2 pro) box and make it into a DHCP server, DNS server, Router and Firewall.

I have everything setup and it works great. I configured it so only ports 80,21 and a few others for POP3. SMTP and IM clients can be used to communicate out side the firewall. I also blocked every port ( by default ) for any incoming packets.

Since this is for work will not go live with it until I feel confident it is secure. So how would I go about seeing how secure it is?

The way the network is setup now is:

Cable modem -> Ugate firewall/router -> LAN1 -> Linux Box -> LAN2 ( for testing )

I was thinking that I would just use a PC on LAN1 to try and hack into the firewall. Or at the very least, use some app that would let me know how secure the firewall is.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Couldn't you set-up an ftp client on either end, and see which ports it let's thru? I'm not too familiar with firewalls and the such, if windows says it's working, I'll believe them... sadly enough.

GO TO grc.com and use ShieldsUp!
you will like the results!!

Thanks,

I had just found it and came here to report back.

isnt using SuSE 9.2 Pro a bit OTT and bloated for what you need. Did you look into smoothwall and IPCop? I have found IPCop to be a very good firewall/router OS

I used it because I have never used this distro before and I wanted to test it out.

Since this is only a small network it will be just fine. Sure i could cut the responce time of packets down .0025 MS but I will just hold off for a bit.

Nmap.

Set up intrusion detection and have your firewall computer alert you should anyone try to break in.