mWall :: netfilter + ui for maemo

Something that certainly bothers me is the fact that i am always online independent of the network. I walk with my n900 in the pocket and sometimes I am using 3g, sometimes using wifi. I am jumping from trusted to untrusted wifi spots, and I have the strange feeling that maybe once (or more…) I will be part of a honeypot, malicious network or something like that.

As part of this type of network my device can be easily identified as an N900. (e.g. MAC address). Once the device is identified a person or a malicious software can start to guess passwords (rootme?) and can try to exploit softwares that are under development.

Avoiding been hacked on that situation I decided to write a small firewall UI for the n900 (netfilter/iptables back end), that allows me to block any incoming connection that is not authorized.

This is just a very first version of the firewall, a lot to be done yet. To install it on your device, check for mWall at my personal repository.

You can install my repository by clicking here: zimmerle’s repo.

I also provide in my repository: the iptables package and a kernel with support to iptables state match. The iptables binary was marked with the suid bit, allowing its execution by users without super powers. But this should be fixed in the next release.

Let me advise you that the firewall rules are not permanent, I mean, you need to run the firewall in every boot. It is under development.

The code is available at: http://git.zimmerle.org