Leopard’s second firewall

Recently, I upgraded to Leopard on my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, it contains a firewall that is not based on port numbers but on the name of the executable application. For me as a Java guy, this means that I can only grant access to Java programs as a whole, not access to a particular port number (e.g. 8080 for JBoss or so). As I do not want to allow all Java programs to access all ports, I searched for a different solution.

Looking for an alternative, I came across this: Leopard contains a second firewall called IPFW. It is an open source program frequently found in the Unix world. There is a graphical frontend for it called WaterRoof (not “waterproof”!).

WaterRoof is an IPFW firewall frontend for Mac OS X with a easy interface and many options. Features include dynamic rules, bandwidth management, NAT configuration and port redirection, pre-defined rule sets and a wizard for easy configuration.
Nice little thing – makes IPFW administration quite simple.

Apple, could you please throw away your current firewall UI and replace it by something for adult IT people? Thanks!

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