A major version that includes updated packages, new features

May 28, 2015 22:51 GMT  ·  By

The IPFire team has had the pleasure of announcing earlier today, May 28, the immediate availability for download of IPFire 2.17 Core Update 90, a major version that brings a number of new features, updated packages, a new kernel, and various security enhancements.

According to the release notes, one of IPFire 2.17 Core Update 90's most prominent features is GeoIP-based blocking, which makes sure that attackers are being stopped from scanning your network. The GeoIP filter can be enabled in the GeoIP Configuration section of the administration panel.

With GeoIP-based blocking, you can do great things for your network if IPFire is installed as the main firewall. For example, you can block malware from reaching computers on your network, allow country-specific remote administration, as well as create all sorts of firewall rules.

IPFire 2.17 Core Update 90 disables the SSLv3 and SSLv2 protocols by default, enhances the performance of ciphers, updates OpenSSL to version 1.0.2a, updates strongSwan to version 5.3.0 for better IPsec VPN connections, removes support for older OpenSSL versions from the 0.9.x branch, and improves the selection of ciphers on the web interface.

IPFire 2.17 is now powered by Linux kernel 3.14.43 LTS

With this update, IPFire 2.17 gets an updated Linux kernel from the 3.14 series, version 3.14.43, which is an LTS (Long Term Support) release supported with security updates for a few more years than regular kernels. The included Linux kernel 3.14.43 has been patched to support legacy versions of Microsoft Hyper-V.

Numerous other core components and essential packages have been updated in this new release of IPFire 2.17, including TOR 0.2.5.12, Apache 2.2.29, cURL 7.40.0, OpenSSH 6.8p1, Asterisk 11.17.1, DHCP 4.3.1, Squid 3.4.13, Monit 5.12.1, QEMU 2.3.0, XZ 5.2.1, and wpa_supplicant 2.4. Download IPFire 2.17 Core Update 90 right now from Softpedia.