Gufw

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wulf
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Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:56 am

Gufw

#1 Post by wulf »

Just wondering if it's possible to make the Gufw desk panel icon change colour when the firewall is deactivated?. I flipped my panel and Gufw lives at the bottom below the clock. I noticed that the icon remains unchanged whether the firewall is set to on or off. I'm only asking from a security point of view. In the event that malicious code got run on a system, or it got infected with a trojan type virus, often, they surreptitiously deactivate firewalls as a matter of course. A visual indication would give a heads-up that there is a problem or that a machine might have been compromised.

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Mauser
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Re: Gufw

#2 Post by Mauser »

Linux is not like Windows. The very few viruses for Linux. No virus can run on Linux unless you make it run. When it does run it will only affect the one program, not your whole computer like Windows. Also there is no way a virus can disable the firewall because the doesn't have your password. Also in the 2+ years of using Linux I never had a Linux virus.
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Jerry3904
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Re: Gufw

#3 Post by Jerry3904 »

Gufw is not our package, and I see nothing in the help documentation that suggests that can be changed.
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wulf
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Re: Gufw

#4 Post by wulf »

That's great to know Mauser. Thanks for the clear explanation.
Jerry3904...I looked through the Gufw website and also found nothing that related to the question, hence the reason I figured I'd ask in the forum. Thanks to both of you for the replies. It's cleared up the issue for me.

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Stevo
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Re: Gufw

#5 Post by Stevo »

There haven't been any virus epidemics in the wild for desktop Linux users, but that doesn't mean it's invulnerable. Privilege-escalation exploits (run code as root without the password) have been demonstrated in the past, and there may be avenues of attack that nobody has even conceived of. Witness the Meltdown and Spectre furors for novel attack vectors that fours different research teams discovered independently at the same time.

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k_sz
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Re: Gufw

#6 Post by k_sz »

Mauser wrote:Linux is not like Windows. The very few viruses for Linux. No virus can run on Linux unless you make it run. When it does run it will only affect the one program, not your whole computer like Windows. Also there is no way a virus can disable the firewall because the doesn't have your password. Also in the 2+ years of using Linux I never had a Linux virus.
IMHO, Gufw being a gui for a firewall (ufw), its task isn't to stop viruses or simply alert the user - when well confgured, Cisco's very respectable antivirus clamav would do that after you'd ask it to. The main purpose of a firewall is to prevent the potential flows of undesirable data to reach your machine, by closing most of the ~65k open doors that lead to your computer (it also prevents your computer to dialog with the outside without your consent). And i surely won't trust the firewalls preinstalled in modems/routers by ISPs, especially since i'm using laptops, often connected to internet via unstrustable wifi boxes.

So, a firewall helps to prevent intrusiveness, flood, DDoS, spoofing attacks (all of these aren't viruses) and other games that some people do enjoy, also including malwares vicious installation - and this is true for any installed distro on any computer connectable to the wild outside. The Microsoft OS case is only proeminent because it has been propagated... like a virus ;) GNU/Linux OS becoming more and more installed, no doubt that coding dedicated xxxxxxx is gonna grow accordingly.
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Stevo
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Re: Gufw

#7 Post by Stevo »

ISPs don't install a firewall in a router; the router works as a firewall right out of the box just by the very nature of its design. Those are probably going to be better than software firewalls in any case.

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k_sz
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Re: Gufw

#8 Post by k_sz »

Yes. But my -very mainstream - french ISP seems to be a particular case, since they does have installed a firewall software in my router (they call it a "box") which has been updated recently, along with the firmware itself and the global admin interface.

(it's the very reason why i have troubles with modifying ports, even the most usual ones, eg. FTP - cf. inxi topic).
> Desktop : AMD 64 bits (unknowned monocore model :P looking for an AM2+ 4cores Phenom) | RAM 4Go DDR2 | MX@daily updates, sudo apt dist-upgrade
> Laptop x2 : WIP obsolescence and "old" batteries prices have killed my project

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KoO
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Re: Gufw

#9 Post by KoO »

Sorry wrong Linux system
Last edited by KoO on Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Stevo
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Re: Gufw

#10 Post by Stevo »

KoO wrote:sudo systemctl start ufw (This command with active your firewall at startup)without rebooting your computer..

check the status of ufw:

sudo ufw status
Note that this command requires that you boot with systemd, which is not the default in MX, just an option.

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