applications internet access rules
 

Hi,
I'm about to switch completely to Suse. Windows simply doesn't do it for me anymore.
I was wondering though - and this might not be an issue under a linux environment but is/was very important to me under Windows - is there a Firewall or some kind of a software under linux that detects if an applications tries to connect to the internet so that I can decide if I will or will not restrict the connection.
For instance I had Sygate firewall under windows and I would get a message like " windows explorer (explorer.exe) tries to connect to the internet" and could select yes or no. I didn't find a tool for this yet (One thing a would also like to have under Mac OS X :) )
I'd be very grateful for any info/links about this matter

Thanks

There is a tool called iptables that lets you do that, although, you wont get a messagebox asking if you want to allow it or not.
But you only open ports for the applications that need it anyway, just block all other ports.
You can still surf the web as usual, it only blocks outcoming connections if you want.

Unfortunatly I have never really learned to use this tool so i cant help you with that, but there are lots of how to's on the web :)

There are also GUI's for this tool. One example is firestarter.

Thanks for your input Synt4x_3rr0r.
I thought about the iptables... the problem still remains when a software wants to update itself, in many cases it will use port 80.

Yes you can stop some software from sending packets to internet by defining its binary file with some group & set a SGID bit(2755) to it & further blocking the packets with
Hope this helps.

From what I read so far it seems that combining a hardware firewall with a tool like AppArmor would do the job. I'll miss the pop-up window of Sygate though :).