No, firewalls are not sufficient to ensure a system is secure. If anything is going to get you, it's probably going to be coming in via port 80.

Anyway, from the looks of things, you're allowing Internet Printing Protocol as well as FTP. Both of those are not generally things you'd want to run on a remote server. mDNS is also of limited utility on a public cloud. Those are the three rules I'd probably remove from the RH-Firewall-1-INPUT chain.

CentOS 5.8 has been out since March 2012, I'd worry as much about keeping your security patches up-to-date as well as pruning your IPTABLES.

Yeah, I understand firewall is not the only solution. Would appreciate if you share with me other methods to secure the server. I cannot block Port 80 as it is a web application. Even SSL is configured to work through port 80.

I hope removing FTP, IP and mDNS won't disturb access to the website?

Thanks.

@hoopycat:

No, firewalls are not sufficient to ensure a system is secure. If anything is going to get you, it's probably going to be coming in via port 80.

Anyway, from the looks of things, you're allowing Internet Printing Protocol as well as FTP. Both of those are not generally things you'd want to run on a remote server. mDNS is also of limited utility on a public cloud. Those are the three rules I'd probably remove from the RH-Firewall-1-INPUT chain.

Yes you are right, keeping the OS updated will help.

@vonskippy:

CentOS 5.8 has been out since March 2012, I'd worry as much about keeping your security patches up-to-date as well as pruning your IPTABLES.

mDNS and IPP are not used for web hosting and are mostly "LAN" protocols used within controlled environments. FTP is also not generally used for web hosting, although it is a legacy protocol used for file transfer in many places it shouldn't be.

@Avinash.Rao:

Even SSL is configured to work through port 80.
Wait what? Why would HTTPS be on anything but port 443?

I am sorry that was typo. Please read that as 443.

@mnordhoff:

@Avinash.Rao:

Even SSL is configured to work through port 80.
Wait what? Why would HTTPS be on anything but port 443?

This mean I got to remove the mDNS, IPP and FTP.

Is there anything that I need to do?

Thanks for your time.

@hoopycat:

mDNS and IPP are not used for web hosting and are mostly "LAN" protocols used within controlled environments. FTP is also not generally used for web hosting, although it is a legacy protocol used for file transfer in many places it shouldn't be.

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