Customer Reviews

Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF, 2nd edition

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was an early buyer of the first edition of 'Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF' (BFWOAP), but I am confident my opinion applies to the second edition as well. BFWOAP is the perfect book for anyone looking to build an firewall with Pf. Since Pf is now part of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and DragonFly BSD, this book will be helpful to anyone looking to use Pf on those platforms.

I like the direct approach taken by author Jacek Artymiak. With few exceptions he ensures the reader is provided enough descriptions and working examples to implement Pf in an operational environment. Too often authors discuss important topics but fail to follow through on implementation. I was able to follow the author's instructions and build a variety of Pf firewalls. I found sections describing packet normalization, packet redirection and forwarding (via 'dup-to'), and prioritization to be most helpful.

The author's blog indicates he is working on a new firewall book that expands beyond OpenBSD and Pf. I hope he is working with an established publisher to ensure his next book has a wider audience.

If you're mainly interested in creating firewalls using Pf, this book is for you. If you want to know more about OpenBSD, I recommend Michael Lucas' 'Absolute OpenBSD' or 'Secure Architectures with OpenBSD' by Brandon Palmer and Jose Nazario.

Indispensable book for building invisible firewalls (bridges), packet filtering, NAT and routing devices. Rock solid guide! Includes the basics for beginners such as hardening the OS, (though with OpenBSD it's a short list) and avoiding gateway IP configuration mistakes. Saved me DAYS scouring the manual pages or web. Covers advanced topics such as firewall/network designs, packet filtering, allowing FTP, patching, secure levels, creating maintenance users, anti-spoofing, automated firewalls, bandwidth shaping and load balancing, logging and analysis, authpf, firewall testing and management AND did I mention using spamd to filter spam? Obviously this book has not had any bench time in my office. Simply the best way to get up and running on OpenBSD networking. Note, you can support OpenBSD and still purchase from Amazon by going through the link: http://www.openbsd.org/books.html

First - I like the book and I think anyone wishing to get a better grasp on OpenBSD administration should have it, and should have Absolute OpenBSD and Secure Architectures with OpenBSD as well.
The portions directly about building firewalls and about configuring pf are great, but the book suffers from its attempt to be all things to all people. Chapter 2 is a truncated version of something from "Building Internet Firewalls" by Zwicky, et. al. Chapter 3 and most of Chapter 4 could have been left to a more general administration guide. The rest is dynamite. There is in-depth coverage of NAT, CBQ and bandwidth shaping, and authpf. If you are building a firewall of any complexity, this book is a must have.

Jacek Artymiak is well known in the community for his series of excellent online articles about pf and OpenBSD security in general.

This book is, simply, the best and most comprehensive source of information about pf. Whether you are just considering using pf or are already an experienced user, this book is a great introduction, tutorial and reference. I enjoyed reading it very much.

The second edition covers all the new features introduced with OpenBSD 3.4.

I looked all over for pf NAT rule info I needed to attach a
subnet to the internet through my desktop computer. This book
had the exact pf NAT rule I needed, plus an example of the next
NAT rule I will need when I have more than one subnet connected
to my desktop and I want the subnets to be able to communicate
with each other. If you need to use NAT rules with pf, this is
your best source of information.

This is a good start to get familiar with PF. Apart from being a bit pricey, I found the examples in the back of the book severely lacking, as they don't take into account more advanced scenarios. There are a few spelling and grammatical errors that could be corrected in the next edition as well. I hope the next edition has a better expansion with real-world examples that would be useful to the IT professional: VoIP queues, dealing with advanced topics NAT->$ext_if, issues with RDR, etc.

I had recently started to use OpenBSD and was interested in learning more about PF, so I consulted Amazon. This was the only book that came up so I decided to buy it. Surprisingly, it was an easy read; completed in 4 days. The book does a good job of first going through installing obsd and then explaining some basic firewall setups. Following the first couple chapters, Artymiak goes into detail on all the nifty tricks PF can pull off. It was a good stepping stone for me in building my own firewall. The appendix was quite usefull as well; which included basic pf.conf setups to get you off the ground. Artymiak is also involved in the obsd comunity as well, which is great. The only thing I wished he had talked about was CARP. Maby in a future Edition?

Overall a great book for a PF beginner with some unix experience

I have used PFCTL for a couple of years, but have needed a book for reference that was easy to understand. I found this book to be exactly that. I recommend this book to anyone that needs a good reference on pfctl firewall. I had some holes in my knowledge/understanding of pfctl that this book readily filled. Much appreciated, and will be used a lot.

Dan

this is a great book for anyone interested in a free, functional firewall. PF is an awesome firewall, OpenBSD a rock solid platform. If you want to make the most of pf on obsd, you are going to want this book. A brief introduction to installation of obsd, then onward to configuring packet forwarding & filtering. Alot of shortcuts exist that can save you time. Queueing is discussed and working examples of pf.conf files are in the back of the book. A DEFINTE 'must have'.

Well - I teach firewalling for the Social European Fund courses, and I decided that, for a lot of reason, PF was the ultimate firewall to teach.

This book is the one i chose to suggest to my students: the subject is analized in depth, clearly and with practical examples that help the reader.

It's a must have, as long as you want to use PF for firewalling.