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Gibraltar Firewall 2.6, a Linux firewall distribution based on Debian, was launched yesterday as announced by Rene Mayrhofer. This will be the last release that will use the Linux kernel 2.4, as the next Gibraltar editions will use the 2.6 kernel. Among other things, this edition of Gibraltar offers improved traffic shaping performance (the iptables marking rules were re-ordered and the pre-defined traffic classes were improved), and allows SSL Explorer plugins to be installed.

Snort version 2.7.0, a NIPS (Network Intrusion Prevention System) and NIDS (Network Intrusion Detection System) solution, is now officially supported. Gibraltar also comes with full integration of the Puresight Enterprise edition for user-based authorization and reporting. Also, a web interface module was created to configure Snort as IDS. A brand new spamassassin module for language classification was added, and it can be configured through the web interface, just like the others.

Starting with Gibraltar 2.6, full WLAN access point functionality will be added gradually so the forthcoming releases will come with complete 802.1x support. Right now, Gibraltar supports Atheros-based cards, which can be configured through the web interface. Besides this, madwifi-tools were installed and the kernel modules were updated to version 0.9.4 to improve even more the access point capabilities.

Transparent virus scanning for the HTTP, FTP and POP3 protocols was added, and it works even without a hard disk. This can be done thanks to some modifications in config files and improved management of a temporary /var storage area. Gibraltar Firewall was created to verify and secure the network traffic, while it also protects an internal network against attackers.

About Gibraltar:
Dr. Rene Mayrhofer created Gibraltar in 1999 as an open source project and since 2003, it is developed by eSYS Information System GmbH and Dr. Rene Mayrhofer in Austria.

Download Gibraltar Firewall 2.6 right now from Softpedia.
By: Daniel Voicu, Linux Editor (http://news.softpedia.com)