BrickHouse 1.0.2
© Copyright 2000-2001, Brian R. Hill
3/28/2001

BrickHouse is a firewall configuration program for Mac OS X. 

It has received a fair amount of testing at this stage, and primarily relies on the operating system to do the important tasks, so I'm not expecting any problems.

However, if you wish, you may cause yourself numerous network difficulties by mucking with the Expert settings screen without understanding the ramifications of what you are doing.

If you wish to reset the firewall to it's default, installed state, you can erase all of the firewall filters that have been applied by clicking the 'Clear All Rules' button and starting over.

Uninstalling BrickHouse
If you wish to permanently remove BrickHouse and the firewall configuration you've set up with it, delete the /Library/StartupItems/Firewall folder and reboot. Your firewall will be restored to it's fully open, default state.

Other Notes
Savvy users will examine the expert configuration text and notice that I've hard-wired several ports to be open. These include the bootp port and icmp routing packets. While testing various firewall settings using a DHCP DSL connection, I discovered that without passing this traffic, I wouldn't be able to renew my DHCP lease, and would eventually need to reboot to restore network connectivity.

I also realized that people would lose their clock synchronization if NTP packets were denied.

Since none of these ports is on CERT's list of suggested filters, I hardcoded them to ALLOW in the configuration generation routine. If you would rather have them DENY, and you are sure that it won't cause any connectivity problems, feel free to edit them using the Expert configuration screen.

I am open to suggestions for better way to handle this sort of issue.

Registration
BrickHouse is a shareware product. The cost is $25 per machine. 
I'm of the opinion that people will either pay shareware fees, or they won't. 
You may use BrickHouse without registering it until you feel that it is worth $25 to you. 
Please visit <http://order.kagi.com/?5MG> to register BrickHouse.

Release Notes
1.0.2 4/12/2001
Improved generated firewall rules to properly allow outgoing traffic in restrictive configurations, added 'Remove Startup Script' option. Also added beginnings of a FAQ, and an important tip for PPPoE users.

1.0.1 3/28/2001
Fixed sporadic app crasher when zeroing monitor rule counts. Changed window title to indicate configuration mode, added iDisk label to AppleShare option. Added missing additional import filters. Added additional documentation.

1.0 Final 3/23/2001
Made numerous changes for compatibility with release version of OS X 1.0. New features include: Improved Monitor window, customizable toolbars, Security framework support, support for SMB/Samba port rules and the firewall denial log. Experimental support for dynamic NetInfo/NFS port rules.

1.0b4 1/01/20001
Fixed bug that surfaced when BrickHouse is launched by root and new startup file is installed. Changed internal 'su -c' command to fetch and use the username of gid 0 (via getpwgid(0)) rather than assume that administrative user is named 'root'. 

1.0b3 11/02/2000 
Removed rsh, rlogin and exec quick config options and replaced them with DNS, finger and talk since they're much more likely to be needed by regular people.  Unix savvy-users who need the removed options should be able to use the Expert settings screen to do so. Fixed a minor issue with the bootp and ntp rules and removed an overly-restrictive default rule that could prevent desired incoming connections in some cases. Fabulous new full-color icon!

1.0b2 10/22/2000 
I discovered a configuration issue with restricting the outgoing traffic in computer lab set ups, and a cosmetic issue with resizing the monitor window shortly after I released BrickHouse 1.0b1. Also found and fixed an application crasher while monitoring the firewall when logged into the computer as the root user.

1.0b1 10/19/2000
Initial release.

Comments, bug reports and criticism to:
Brian Hill
brianhill@mac.com
http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/
http://homepage.mac.com/brianhill/