On 12/1/11 6:25 PM, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

I have a fairly restrictive ipfw setup on a FBSD 8.2-STABLE machine.
Pings were not getting through so I added this near the top
of the rule set:

#####
# Allow icmp
#####

${FWCMD} add allow icmp from any to any


It does work but, two questions:

1) Is there a better way?

Consider allowing only the ICMP that does things you want to do. Google something like "icmp types to allow" for some hints and opinions. Just as an example, you can independently control being able to ping others and others being able to ping you.

2) Will this cause harm or otherwise expose the server to some
vulnerability?

Well, if you allow all ICMP types, it's possible to make your little packets go places you didn't really want them to go, and similar network breakage. You can also find those who feel strongly that allowing others to ping your machines gives them way too much information about what you have at which IP address. On the other hand, working ping and traceroute can be very handy to figure out what's wrong when the network breaks. But do you open up access on your server?---well not so much, though having said that I'm ready for somebody to remind me of some obscure attack that uses ICMP for more than information gathering. :-)

--Jon Radel
j...@radel.com
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