So, I'm slowly working on a proof of concept build inside a VM, but with luck, this project could turn out to be rather fruitful. In short, a fully-featured Linux Firewall/Router/WAP.
I'm currently in testing the basic features, the firewall/router portion, using a VM running on VMWare ESXi 5.0. As far as the filtering goes, it's working fine, but I haven't added any complex setup yet, like VPN support.
Here's a rundown of where it stands:
-= VM Specs =-
CPU: Single vCPU - Host is Intel Core i7 870 @ 2.93GHz
Memory: 384 MB Ram
Swap: Not enabled, but required for initial build when available memory is less than 512 MB.
Disk: 10 GB
Partitions:
- 128M /boot as EXT3
- Remainder as LVM with root volume as XFS
-= Build Details =-
* OS: Gentoo Hardened on kernel 3.0.4
* SELinux built and currently running in permissive, but when ready for production, will be enforcing.
* Traffic filtering currently with iptables.
* IPSec VPN Support with OpenSWAN
* File Integrity Monitoring with Tripwire
* Management front-end to be developed with Apache/ModSecurity
As should be obvious from the build details, this is a security focused build so that once it goes into a production environment, attacks directed against it are mitigated. I even ran into weirdness with the build of some packages as SELinux was in permissive mode, but 'emerge' behaved as if it was enforcing.
The ultimate goal of this build is to get a procedure in place to complete a build using a Soekris board much like this: http://soekris.com/products/net6501.html
My plan is to use an SSD for the install drive on this build to have the quickest boot time possible. This should ultimately be a near instant on, something most other firewalls/routers can't generally lay claim to. More to come as I get things working.
