Hi,

I am running Slackware 10, with an ADSL connection. I keep my security patches up to date, and run no unnecessary services. When I do an "netstat -l" as root I get this:

I'm still new to this, but I think that means nothing is listening to the outside. So in a case like this, does a firewall make any difference?

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but I'm going in circles with the documentation.

yeah, you're right, there are no services running, no ports open etc... the bootpc that you see is for addressing etc... I wouldn't worry about a firewall right now, but it can never hurt. Of course it also depends on what purpose this system will serve. If you will have any important and sensitive information on this server, you definately should have a firewall installed. Just block packets with the syn flag set, and that way you can still do business with the outside world, but nobody can connect to you.

Mike.

P.S.
I'm not a firewall expert, but this is similar to my thinking over the years and it's been successful for me.

I would probably still run a firewall on it for the simple fact that if someone does gain access to the box, they'll have to root it to make use of it as an FTP server or anything like that (assuming you have a default deny policy on outbound traffic as well).

in this situation, i would still run a simple firewall( simple iptables script will do) and logs any incoming packets so that i can know what's the attacker are up to. It is OK if there's no firewall as long as you dont have any open ports or when you dont need NAT or Masq. Cheers!

Thanks a lot for the advice everyone. I think I will add a basic firewall, better to be safe...

good call.