14 DAY TRIAL // Today, September 20, 2016, IPFire's Michael Tremer announced the release of yet another Core Update to the IPFire 2.19 stable Linux-based firewall distribution and system.
IPFire 2.19 Core Update 104 appears to be a big release with many interesting changes, starting with the latest version of Linux 3.14 kernel, build 3.14.79, and continuing with a brand new Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) called Guardian, and all the latest software updates and security patches. But first, we should warn you that the Linux kernel 3.14 series reached end of life last week, and users are urged to move to Linux 4.4 LTS.
As for the new Guardian IPS features, it looks like it's much faster and efficient than previous implementations, it's integrated with the Snort IDS (Intrusion Detection System), and its main goal is to automatically block access to systems from where malicious traffic was detected. Guardian is also more reliable and makes IPFire a dynamic firewall.
"Guardian is an Intrusion-Prevention-System that is hooked into Snort, the Intrusion Detection System. It reacts on reported events by blocking access for hosts where malicious traffic was detected to originate from," explain the devs. "That enables IPFire to be a dynamic firewall and block any abuse or other unwanted behavior automatically."
Dynamic DNS updates, latest package versions
Also new in IPFire 2.19 Core Update 104 is Snort 2.9.8.2, OpenSSH 7.3p1, cURL 7.49.1, GNU wget 1.18, PCRE 8.39, NTP 4.2.8p8, ACL 2.2.52, Shadow 4.2.1, which 2.21, popt 1.16, acpid 2.0.26, iputils s20160308, and the libarchive 3.2.1, libcap 2.25, and libtiff 4.0.6 libraries. Among the updated add-ons, we can notice Htop 2.0.2, nano 2.6.1, nginx 1.8.1, and the latest p7zip release.
Two new packages have been added in IPFire 2.19 Core Update 104, namely the libvirt virtualization library, implemented as an add-on, and the FreeRADIUS popular RADIUS server, but only the console configuration is available for now. The Dynamic DNS feature was updated as well with support for DuckDNS and spdyn improvements. Download IPFire 2.19 Core Update 104 right now via our website.