Intrusion Detection Using PFSense Firewall

Recently I had the need to re visit IDS/IPS systems, mainly to refresh my knowledge and bring myself up-to date with new developments etc etc.

I decided to use this opportunity to build myself a ‘Proper’ firewall for my home network, and give my trusty Netgear DG 834 a well earned rest.

I already had an old Compaq PC to run this Firewall on, nothing special just an old desktop pc with a 2ghz Celeron CPU and 2gb RAM – small and quiet.

I had to get me an ADSL modem to allow me to use the PC as a Firewall, so I bought a Netgear DM111P ADSL 2+ Modem, this is just an ADSL bridge and connects to the WAN side of the Firewall.

Anyways I first had to find me a Firewall distro, after what seem like an age, trawling the net, downloading ISO’s an running them up on VirtualBox to check them out and if they had the required functionality – I found this absolute gem of a Firewall distro pfSense.