FATONI UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
REPORT
FIREWALL
SUBMITTED BY:
 MR. SMAN MATLY (ID: 591431029)
 MR. MAN MUSLIM (ID: 591431032)
LECTURER: MR. MAFAISU CHEWAE
COURSE: INFORMATION SECURITY
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
2nd Semester in year 2019
ABSTRACT
A Firewall protects a network by securing the points of entry to it. The increasing
complexity of networks, and the need to make them more open due to the growing emphasis
on and attractiveness of the Internet as a medium for business transactions, mean that
networks are becoming more and more visible to attacks, both from without and from within.
The search is on for mechanisms and techniques for the protection of internal networks from
such attacks. One of the protective tools under serious consideration is the Firewall. Firewalls
are becoming more stylish by the day, and new features are constantly being added, so that, in
spite of the blames made of them and developmental trends threatening them, they are still a
powerful protective tool.
In this paper we present the different types of firewall technology, an example
implementation of firewall, its services such as access control monitoring of incoming and
outbound translations and main benefits of firewall security for the intranet from outside
world. Finally our conclusion about firewall technology.
I
INTRODUCTION
The Internet has made large amount of information available to the average computer
user at home, in business and education. For many people, having access to this information is
no longer just an advantage and it is necessary.
By connecting a privat e network to the Internet canexpo se cr it icalor confidentiald at
atomalicious attack from anywhere in the world. The intruders could gain access to your sites
private information or hinder with your use of your own systems.
Users who connect their computers to the Internet must be aware of these dangers,
their implications and how to protect their data and their critical systems. Therefore, security
of network is the main conditions here and firewalls provide this security.
The Internet firewalls keep the flames of Internet hell out of your network or to keep
the members of your LAN pure by denying them access the all the evil Internet temptations.
II
CONTENTS
Abstract ............................................................................................................. I
Introduction ....................................................................................................... II
Contents ............................................................................................................. III
1. What is Firewall ............................................................................................ 01
2. History of Firewall ........................................................................................ 01
3. How does Firewall work? ............................................................................. 03
4. Types of Firewall .......................................................................................... 06
5. Functionalities of Firewall ............................................................................ 09
6. A host-based firewall vs a network-based firewall ....................................... 10
7. Application firewall....................................................................................... 11
7. Advantages of Firewall ................................................................................. 11
8. Disadvantages of Firewal .............................................................................. 11
9. Firewalls Policies .......................................................................................... 12
10. Conclusion ................................................................................................... 13
11. References ................................................................................................... 13
III
COURSE: Information of Security
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
1. WHAT IS FIREWALL?
A Firewall is simply a program or hardware device that filters the information coming
through the internet connection into your private network or computer system.
 A computer firewall protects networked computers from intentional unauthorized
interruption which
are result in data corruption or denial of service.
 It is a network firewall sits at the junction point or gateway between the two networks,
usually a private network and a public network such as the Internet.
 It may be a hardware device or a software program running on a secure host computer.
2. History of Firewall
Open Door Networks shipped the first Macintosh firewall (for Mac OS 8.1) in 1998.
With the DoorStop X Firewall and the DoorStop X Security Suite, Open Door has gotten back
into the business that it helped get started.
Firewall
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Firewall technology first began to emerge in the late 1980s. Internet was still a fairly
new technology in terms of its global usage and connectivity. The original idea was
formed in response to a number of major internet security breaches, which occurred in the
late1980s.
In 1988 an employee at the NASA Ames Research Center in California sent a memo
by email to his colleagues that read, "We are currently under attack from an Internet
VIRUS! It has hit Berkeley, UC San Diego, Lawrence Livermore, Stanford, and NASA
Ames." This virus known as the Morris Worm was carried by e-mail and is now a common
nuisance for even the most innocuous domestic user.
The Morris Worm was the first large scale attack on Internet security, of which the
online community neither expected, nor were prepared for. The internet community made
it a top priority to combat any future attacks from happening and began to collaborate on
new ideas, systems and software to make the internet safe again.
The first paper published on firewall technology was in 1988, when Jeff Mogul
from Digital Equipment Corp. developed filter systems know as packet filter firewalls.
This fairly basic system was the first generation of what would become a highly evolved
and technical internet security feature. From 1980-1990 two colleagues from AT&T Bell
Laboratories, Dave Presetto and Howard Trickey, developed the second generation of
firewalls known as circuit level firewalls.
Publications by Gene Spafford of Purdue University, Bill Cheswick at AT&T
laboratories and Marcus Ranum described a third generation firewall known as application
layer firewall, also known as proxy-based firewalls. Marcus Ranum's work on the
Firewall
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
technology spearheaded the creation of the first commercial product. The product was
released by Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) who named it the SEAL product.
DEC’s first major sale was on June 13, 1991 to a chemical company based on the EastCoast of the USA.
At AT&T Bill Cheswick and Steve Bellovin were continuing their research in packet
filtering and developed a working model for their own company based upon their original
1st generation architecture. In 1992, Bob Braden and Annette DeSchon at the University
of Southern California were developing their own fourth generation packet filter firewall
system.
The product known as “Visas” was the first system to have a visual integration
interface with colours and icons, which could be easily implemented to and accessed on a
computer operating system such as Microsoft's Windows or Apple's Mac/OS. In 1994 an
Israeli company called Check Point Software Technologies built this in to readily
available software known as FireWall-1.
A second generation of proxy firewalls was based on Kernel Proxy technology. This
design is constantly evolving but its basic features and codes are currently in widespread
use in both commercial and domestic computer systems. Cisco, one of the largest internet
security companies in the world released the product to the public in 1997.
3. How does a firewall work?
I) Components of a Secured System:
A Firewall is a set of security mechanisms
that
an organization implements, both
logically and physically, to prevent unsecured access to an internal network. Firewall
configurations vary from organization to organization. Most often, the firewall consists of
several components, which can include a combination of the following:
 Routers
 Proxy Servers
 Host Computers
 Gateways
 Networks with appropriate security software
Firewall
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Very rarely is a firewall a single component, although a number of newer commercial
firewalls attempt to put all of the components into a single computer. The following
illustration shows a firewall configuration.
The firewall might respond as a host, resulting in a virtual computer, or pass on
packets bound for these hosts to assigned computers.
II) Basic Firewall Operation:
 There are two access denial methodologies
used
by
computer firewalls. A
Firewall may allow all traffic through unless it meets certain criteria, or it may deny all traffic
unless it meets certain criteria.
 The type of criteria used to determine whether
traffic should be allowed through
varies from one type of firewall to another.
 Computer Firewalls may be concerned with the type of traffic, or with source or
destination addresses and ports.
 They may also use complex rule bases that analyze the application data to determine if
the traffic should be allowed through. How a computer firewall determines what traffic to let
through depends on which network layer it operates at.
Firewall
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COURSE: Information of Security
III) How does a network firewall interact with OSI and TCP/IP Network models?
 Network architecture is designed around a seven layer model. Each layer has its own
set of responsibilities, and handles them in a well-defined manner. This enables networks to
mix and match network protocols and physical supports.
 In a given network, a single protocol can travel over more than one physical support
(layer one) because the physical layer has been dissociated from the protocol layers (layers
three to seven).
 Similarly, a single physical cable can carry more than one protocol. The TCP/IP model
is older than the OSI industry standard model which is why it does not comply in every
respect. The first four layers are so closely analogous to OSI layers however that
interoperability is a day to day reality.
 Network Firewalls operate at different layers to use different criteria to restrict traffic.
 The lowest layer at which a firewall can work is layer three. In the OSI model this is
the network layer. In TCP/IP it is the Internet Protocol layer.
 This layer is concerned with routing packets to their destination. At this layer a
firewall can determine whether a packet is from a trusted source, but cannot be concerned
with what it contains or what other packets it is associated with.
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 Firewalls that operate at the transport layer know a little more about a packet, and are
able to grant or deny access depending on more sophisticated criteria. At the application level,
firewalls know a great deal about what is going on and can be very selective in granting
access.

It would appear then, that
firewalls functioning at a higher level
in the stack must be superior in every
respect. This is not necessarily the
case, however.

The lower in the stack the
packet is intercepted, the more secure
the firewall. If the intruder cannot get
past level three, it is impossible to
gain control of the operating system.
4. Types of Firewalls:
Firewalls fall into four broad categories:
a) Packet filters
b) Circuit level gateway
c) Application level gateways
a) Packet Filtering:
 Packet filtering firewalls work at the network level of the OSI model, or the IP layer of
TCP/IP.
 They are usually part of a router firewall. A router is a device that receives packets
from one network and forwards them to another.
 In a packet filtering firewall, each packet is compared to a set of criteria before it is
forwarded. Depending on the packet and the criteria, the firewall can drop the packet, forward
it, or send a message to the originator.
 Filtering packets can limit or disable services such as NFS or telnet, restrict access to
and from specific systems or domains, and hide information about subnets.
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A firewall could filter the following fields within packets:

Packet type, such as IP, UDP, ICMP, or TCP;

Source IP address, the system from which the packet originated; • destination IP
address, the system for which the packet is destined

Destination TCP/UDP port, a number designating a service such as telnet, ftp, smtp,
nfs, etc.

Source TCP/UDP port, the port number of the service on the host originating the
connection.
Packet Filtering Firewall
Usually, the following services are
blocked at a firewall
 tftp, trivial ftp, used for booting
diskless workstations, terminal servers
and routers, can also be used to read any
file on the system if set up incorrectly;
 X
Windows,
Sun
Open
Windows, can leak information from X
window displays, such as all keystrokes;
 SunRPC, including NIS and NFS, which can be used to steal system information such
as passwords and read and write to files;
These services are inherently open to abuse and therefore should be blocked directly at the
firewall. Other services, whether inherently dangerous or not, is usually filtered and possibly
restricted to only those systems that need them.
These would include:

Telnet, ftp (often restricted to only certain systems.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) often restricted to a central e-mail server.

RIP (Routing Information Protocol) which can be spoofed to redirect packet routing to
the wrong place causing denial of service on the network, is often unnecessary if a
single default route exists.

DNS (Domain Names Service) zone transfers, contains names of hosts and
information about hosts that could be helpful to attackers.
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b) Circuit level Gateway:
 Circuit level gateways work at
the session layer of the OSI model, or
the TCP layer of TCP/IP.
 They
handshaking
monitor
between
TCP
packets
to
determine whether a requested session
is legitimate. Information passed to a
remote computer through a circuit
level
gateway
appears
to
have
originated from the gateway.
 The advantage of circuit level
gateways
is
useful
for
hiding
information about protected networks. Circuit level gateways are relatively inexpensive and
have the advantage of hiding information about the private network they protect.
 On the other hand, they do not filter individual packets.
 A typical use of circuitlevel gateways is situation in which the system administrator
trusts the internal users.
c) Application level Gateway:
 Application level gateways, also
called proxies, are similar to circuitlevel gateways except that they are
application specific.
 They can filter packets at the
application layer of the OSI model.
Incoming or outgoing packets cannot
access services for which there is no
proxy.
 In plain terms, an application
level gateway that is configured to be a
web proxy will not allow any ftp,
gopher, telnet or other traffic through. Because they examine packets at application layer, they
can filter application specific commands such as http: post and get, etc.
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 This cannot be accomplished with either packet filtering firewalls or circuit level
neither of which knows anything about the application level information.
 The advantage of Application level gateways is used to log user activity and logins.
They offer a high level of security.
 They have a significant impact on network performance. This is because of context
switches that slow down network access dramatically. They are not transparent to end users
and require manual configuration of each client computer.
5. Functionalities of Firewall:
 Firewall can be used to log all attempts to enter the private network and trigger alarms
when hostile or unauthorized entry is attempted.
 Firewalls can filter packets based on their source, destination addresses and port
numbers. This is known as address filtering. Firewalls can also filter specific types of network
traffic. This is also known as protocol filtering because the decision to forward or reject traffic
is dependant upon the protocol used, for example HTTP, ftp or telnet. Firewalls can also filter
traffic by packet attribute or state.
The following four general techniques are used to control access and enforce the site’s
security policy.
 Service control:
 To determine which services on internal hosts are accessible for external access and to
reject all other incoming service requests.
 Outgoing service requests and the responses to them may also be controlled.
 These filtering actions can be based on the contents of IP packets, TCP and UDP
requests and port number.
Ex: incoming HTTP requests may be rejected unless they are directed to an official
web server host.
 Behavior control:
 To prevent behavior that infringes the organization’s polices, is anti-social or has no
discernible legitimate purpose and is hence suspected of forming part of an attack.
 Some of these filtering actions may be applicable at the IP or TCP level, but others
may require interpretation of messages at a higher level.
Ex:
filtering of email ‘spam’ attacks may require examination of the sender’s email
address in message headers or even the message contents.
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 Direction control:
Determines the direction in which particular service requests may be initiated and
allowed the flow through the firewall.
 User control:
 The organization may wish to discriminate between its users, allowing some access to
external services but inhibiting others from doing so.
 It is applied to local users, external users.
Ex: User control that is perhaps more socially acceptable than some is to prevent the
acknowledging of software except to users who are members of the system administration
team.
6. A host-based firewall vs A network-based firewall:
 A host-based firewall is installed on an individual computer to protect it from activity
happening on its network.
 A network-based firewall is implemented at a specified point in the network path and
protects all computers on the “internal” side of the firewall from all computers on the
“external” side of the firewall.
Firewall
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
7. Application firewall:
 What is an application firewall?
 An application firewall is a special firewall that is specifically coded for the type of
traffic it is inspecting.
 The most widely developed application firewall is the web application firewall.
8. Advantages of Firewall:
 Firewalls protect private local area networks (LANs) from hostile or unfriendly
imposition from the Internet.
 Firewall protection allows many LANs to be connected to the Internet where Internet
connectivity would otherwise have been too great a risk or danger.
 Firewalls allow network administrators to offer access to specific types of Internet
services to selected LAN users. This selectivity is an important part of any information
management program, and involves not only protecting private information assets, but also
knowing who has access to what. Freedoms can be granted according to job description and
need rather than on an all-or-nothing basis.
9. Disadvantages of Firewall:
Is a firewall sufficient to secure my network?
 The firewall is an important part of any security
program, but it is not a security
program in and of itself.
 Security involves data truth (has it been changed?), service or application truth (is the
service available, and is it performing to spec?), data confidentiality (has anyone seen it?) and
authentication (are they really who they say they are?).
 The most clear being that positive types of network access may be hampered or even
blocked for some hosts, including telnet, ftp, X Windows, NFS, NIS, etc.
 It focuses security in one spot as opposed to distributing it among systems, so a
cooperation of the firewall could be terrible to other less-protected.
Firewall
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10. Firewall Policies
 Firewall policies allow you to block or allow certain types of network traffic not
specified in a policy exception. A policy also defines which firewall features get enabled or
disabled. Assign a policy to one or multiple firewall profiles.
 OfficeScan comes with a set of default policies, which you can modify or delete.
 With Active Directory integration and role-based administration, each user role,
depending on the permission, can create, configure, or delete policies for specific domains.
The default firewall policies are as follows:
Policy Name
Security
Level
Client
Settings
Exceptions
Recommended Use
All access
Low
Enable
firewall
None
Use to allow
clients unrestricted
access to the
network
Cisco Trust Agent for
Cisco NAC
Low
Enable
firewall
Allow incoming
and outgoing
UDP traffic
through port
21862
Use when clients
have a Cisco Trust
Agent (CTA)
installation
Communication Ports
for Trend Micro
Control Manager
Low
Enable
firewall
Allow all
incoming and
outgoing
TCP/UDP traffic
through ports 80
and 10319
Use when clients
have an MCP
agent installation
ScanMail for
Microsoft Exchange
console
Low
Enable
firewall
Allow all
incoming and
outgoing TCP
traffic through
port 16372
Use when clients
need to access the
ScanMail console
InterScan Messaging
Security Suite (IMSS)
console
Low
Enable
firewall
Allow all
incoming and
outgoing TCP
traffic through
port 80
Use when clients
need to access the
IMSS console
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11. Conclusion
Firewall is against network intrusion, and despite development styles that threaten
them, they are still a powerful protective tool, and will continue to play an important and
central role in the maintenance of network security for some years yet, and any organization
that ignores them does so at its risk or danger.
They continue to change and develop, and new features are regularly added as the
need arises. If developments follow the present style, they will continue to combine
configurable access control and authentication tools with their traditional functions, so
providing more powerful and flexible protection for networks to make them safe.
REFERENCE
1. Janorkar, P. (17 April 2018). Firewall. Retrieved from https://www.seminarstopics.com
2. Anicas, M. (20 August 2015).What is a Firewall and How Does It Work?. Retrieved from
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/what-is-a-firewall-and-how-does-itwork
3. Opendoor. A Short History of Macintosh Firewalls. Retrieved from
http://opendoor.biz/doorstop/doorstophistory.html
4. WHTOP. (04 January 2019). History of Firewal. Retrieved from
https://www.whtop.com/glossary/firewall
5. TrenMicro. Firewalls Policies. Retrieved from
http://docs.trendmicro.com/all/ent/officescan/v10.5/enus/osce_10.5_olhsrv/osceag/osceag-firewall/firewall_policies.htm
Firewall
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