v0.2 • Leopard only • Universal Binary
ipfw Preference Pane (short ipfwPane) lets you control the ipfw(8) firewall again. With Leopard Apple did introduce the new application firewall. The former packet based firewall (which Mac OS X inherited from FreeBSD) does however still exist.
There is just no longer an UI available for it, as it was in 10.4. This is the problem ipfwPane solves — it provides nearly the same simple interface like the Sharing preference pane in the Tiger days did.
This gives you again a more fine-grained control over which ports you want to allow and which you want to block. And other than with Leopards application firewall you can now also block built-in applications and services if you want to.
News
First release available 05 Oct 2008
I am happy to announce the first public release of ipfwPane. The features include everything you could do with Tigers old firewall. You can create, edit and delete rules and modify UDP and TCP port ranges in a single rule.
There is also a list of predefined ports built into to app. This list is based on this article from Apple. But as this is the first public version some predefined rules might work. So if you find a bug, please tell me about it.
ipfwPane v0.2 is available for download here.
Screenshots
Installation
After you downloaded the disk image, mount it. In it you will find a file called "ipfwPane.prefPane". Just double click on this file and the Preference Pane will be installed.
To use ipfwPane, go into "System Preferences" (reachable from the menu) and then go into the "ipfw Firewall" category.
License
This application is open-source. You can use it under the terms of the 2-clause BSD license…
ipfwPane is distributed under the following terms: Copyright (C) 2008 Torsten Becker. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Source
The source code is hosted on GitHub. To get a recent copy, you just need Git and type this in a command prompt:
git clone git://github.com/torsten/ipfwpane.git
If you dont have Git, you can also download a tarball via GitHub.
Author
This wonderful application is brought to by Torsten Becker. If you have some feedback you are very welcome to drop me a line at torsten dot becker at gmail dot com.