Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker

From the Book: But after a time, as Frodo did not show any sign of writing a book on the spot, the hobbits returned to their questions about doings in the Shire. Lord of the Rings —J.R.R. TOLKIEN The first printing of the First Edition appeared at the Las Vegas Interop in May, 1994. At that same show appeared the first of many commercial firewall products. In many ways, the field has matured since then: You can buy a decent firewall off the shelf from many vendors. The problem of deploying that firewall in a secure and useful manner remains. We have studied many Internet access arrangements in which the only secure component was the firewall itself—it was easily bypassed by attackers going…