Malware FIRESTARTER warning

[nss0000]

Gents:

Running x64HH_8.04.1

Programs that upon nominal installation destroy nominal system function are by-definition MALWARE. The firewall FIRESTARTER meets that definition and should be so-marked in Ubuntu repositories. Something like:

DANGER: THE DEFAULT CONFIGURATION DOES NOTHING. INNOCUOUS CONFIGURATION MAY DESTROY ALL INTERNET CONNECTIONS.

There is currently no-such-warning. Fortunately Synaptic still worked and I removed the POS. My WWW connection returned. Perhaps the proggie is fit for howling-dawg Slackwarites. Good for them. All others should be warned-away.

[Titan8990]

Firestarter is an abandoned project and has been for a while. It is in no way malware.

Because you don't know how to properly configure an application does not make it malicous software.

Firestarter is nothing more than a GUI front-end for IP tables. Actually, every firewall, either CLI or GUI in Linux is a front-end for IPtables. Many commercial hardware firewalls use systems similar to IPtables.

Iptables is used to set up, maintain, and inspect the tables of IP packet filter rules in the Linux kernel. Several different tables may be defined. Each table contains a number of built-in chains and may also contain user-defined chains.
Each chain is a list of rules which can match a set of packets. Each rule specifies what to do with a packet that matches. This is called a
‘target’, which may be a jump to a user-defined chain in the same table.

The key word is "user-defined".

Did you by chance read the documentation on Firestarter or IPtables prior to making this post?

[bodhi.zazen]

Thread closed to prevent flame wars / trolling.

Firestarter is no longer maintained, and although it is in the Repositories, it certainly has issues.

Saying it is "Malware" however is a bit over the top.

Malware, a portmanteau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau) from the words malicious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malice_%28legal_term%29) and software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software), is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent). The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

In this case you installed it and you apparently did not understand how to configure it. Misconfiguration on the end users part is not in general considered malware, usually people say RTFM or PEBKC.

If you would like assistance with configuration of a firewall, Firestarter or otherwise, we would be happy to help.

I suggest UFW or GUFW.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to start a new thread, but keep in mind we are all volunteers and you may wish to refine your posting style.