PenLUG meeting this Thursday, 11-Dec-2003

Tue Dec 9 01:58:44 PST 2003

The Peninsula Linux Users' Group is having its last meeting of 2003
this week, and you are invited.  Note: we will be switching back to
the 4th Thursday of each month starting next month, so our next
meeting after this will be January 22, 2004.

Here is the details about this meeting.  For more information or
directions go to
	http://www.penlug.org/

Our website is a TWiki; please feel free to create a user account and
modify the website if you have something to contribute.  Thanks!

Date:		Thursday, December 11, 2003
Time:		7:00 - 9:00 PM
Location:	100 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065
		Room 1op104

Agenda:

7:00 - 7:30 PM: Nuts & Bolts: "Security on the Desktop" by Gopi Ramamoorthy
7:30 - 8:30 PM: Keynote: Vadim Kurland, "Firewall Builder"
8:30 - 9:00 PM: App of the Month Club discussion: "Mozilla"
       9:00 PM: Adjourn to IHOP (US-101 & Whipple) for social & food time

Nuts & Bolts: "Security on the Desktop" by Gopi Ramamoorthy

Gopi will discuss things that ordinary Linux desktop users should do
to improve security and prevent break-ins.

    * Known Secuity Problems on Linux Desktops
    * Good Security Practices
    * Differences Between Linux of various vendors
    * Security Utilities
    * Other Resources

Keynote: Vadim Kurland, "Firewall Builder"

The variety of firewall platforms currently available on the market
creates problems for administrators who need to be proficient in many
configuration languages and tools. In addition to that, different
firewalls significantly deviate in their capabilities. This means
administrators not only have to know how to configure different
firewalls, but also should understand their differences very well in
order to avoid mistakes. Firewall Builder is an Open Source framework
and multi-platform firewall configuration tool that allows the
administrator to build a policy for an abstract firewall and then
translate it into the actual configuration language. Firewall Builder
consists of the GUI frontend, a set of the policy compilers that
produce code for different target firewalls, and the API
library. Firewall Builder uses object-oriented approach to building
firewall policy. Currently Firewall Builder can generate configuration
files and scripts for the Open Source firewalls based on iptables,
ipfilter, pf and ipfw. Vadim will discuss the abstract firewall model
supported by Firewall Builder, its properties and their mapping to
some target firewall implementations, as well as Firewall Builder's
design and implementation.

App of the Month: "Mozilla"

-- 
William R Ward            bill at wards.net          http://www.wards.net/~bill/
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           PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMER, CLOSED COURSE.  DO NOT ATTEMPT.