I am inside a linksys router with a fire wall. I'm going to be going live with ny website soon (hopfully ) and my question is do i need to set up iptables / chains on my websever machine. The only port open on my firewall is port 80 which points to that box. Do I risk getting hacked if I do not set up ipchains / tables on my box?

You don't necessarily need but it would serve as a good security fallback and wouldn't hurt having, just in case if there is some exploits that are unknown when using the Linksys router currently, etc.

the linksys router is just a standard NAT router.

if someone is good enough to bypass the NAT, then crack your web server odds are they will be good enough to crack iptables too.

yes it would not hurt, but unless your URL is a huge money maker id not stress to horrid much over it.

i do plan on putting up an apache server within the next 2 months and will be behind a NAT router. once i learn enough about coding i will work with iptables and configure that for ADDED backup, but thats all it will be. for now at least.

someday ill replace my routers with a linux box running iptables. until then im happy behind my little routers for now.

Cool, Thanks. I just want to get this site up already and i have only messed with iptables once so i figured I would be pulling my hair out for days trying to configure it. This site is defanatly NOT a money maker. lol