With yesterdays +release of Debian +12 Bookworm, I am happy to know the +the interactive +application firewall OpenSnitch is available for a wider audience. +I have been running it for a few weeks now, and have been surprised +about some of the programs connecting to the Internet. Some programs +are obviously calling out from my machine, like the NTP network based +clock adjusting system and Tor to reach other Tor clients, but others +were more dubious. For example, the KDE Window manager try to look up +the host name in DNS, for no apparent reason, but if this lookup is +blocked the KDE desktop get periodically stuck when I use it. Another +surprise was how much Firefox call home directly to mozilla.com, +mozilla.net and googleapis.com, to mention a few, when I visit other +web pages. This direct connection happen even if I told Firefox to +always use a proxy, and the proxy setting is ignored for this traffic. +Other surprising connections come from audacity and dirmngr (I do not +use Gnome). It took some trial and error to get a good default set of +permissions. Without it, I would get popups asking for permissions at +any time, also the most inconvenient ones where I am in the middle of +a time sensitive gaming session.
+ +I suspect some application developers should rethink when then need +to use network connections or DNS lookups, and recommend testing +OpenSnitch (only apt install opensnitch away in Debian +Bookworm) to locate and report any surprising Internet connections on +your desktop machine.
+ +At the moment the upstream developer and Debian package maintainer +is working on making the system more reliable in Debian, by enabling +the eBPF kernel module to track processes and connections instead of +depending in content in /proc/. This should enter unstable fairly +soon.
+ +As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my +activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
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