Astaro Hosts International Netfilter Developer Workshop

Leading Linux developers meet in Karlsruhe, 11 – 14 September, to further develop Linux firewall capabilities.

Karlsruhe (Germany), (13th September 2007) – Astaro Corporation (www.astaro.co.uk), specialist in delivering Unified Threat Management (UTM) security appliances, today announced it is hosting the fifth International Netfilter Developer Workshop. Developers from 11 countries have converged on Karlsruhe, to ensure Linux-based network security systems are steeled against the latest hacker attacks. The primary focus of the workshop, which takes place from 11th to 14th September, is to share ideas as well as code, and to make decisions affecting the future of firewalling in the Linux kernel ("netfilter").

The workshop itself is split into two parts. Tuesday and Wednesday is taken up with lectures and discussions on new technologies, developments and ideas. Topics include “High Availability for stateful firewalls”, “SIP tracking and its problems”, and “A userspace API for netfilter control”. Linux experts involved in any third party Netfilter related project have the chance to come and show their project during the workshop days. Throughout Thursday and Friday, interested kernel hackers are invited to join a two-day hacking session, coding new features and use parts of Astaro’s QA infrastructure to run performance tests.

Chairman of the workshop is Patrick McHardy, an active Kernel developer and author of HFSC (Hierarchical Fair Service Curve) Linux implementation. Other participants include, Harald Welte, head of the netfilter core team, and David S. Miller, Linux Net-Subsystem Maintainer

Astaro sponsors numerous open source projects, assisting in the development of security tools and promoting general awareness of security issues and available solutions. Online magazine Linux Weekly News reported in February 2007 that Astaro is among the top three contributors to Kernel 2.6.20, the company contributing 15,306 lines of code.

Astaro has financed a number of developer workshops bringing together the open source community from all over the world, speeding up the development process. Previous netfilter developer workshops have taken place in 2001 (Enschede, NL), 2003 (Budapest, HU), 2004 (Erlangen, GE) and 2005 (Seville, Spain). In 2007, Astaro has sponsored travel costs, accommodation, taken care of event organization, and provided QA equipment for security and benchmarking tests.

Netfilter is software providing the packet filtering framework for the Linux kernel inside the Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernel series, currently used in the Astaro Security Gateway. Astaro sponsors two full-time developers on the netfilter core team and makes monetary contributions to the project.

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About Astaro
Astaro Corporation is headquartered in Burlington, Mass. and Karlsruhe, Germany. The Astaro Security Gateway, simplifying Email, Web & Network Security, has won numerous industry awards and is protecting over 30,000 networks in 60 countries. Astaro products are distributed by a worldwide network of more than 1,000 solution partners who offer local support and services. For more information, please visit www.astaro.co.uk.

Contact
James Farquharson / Emily Monsell
Goode International
+44 (0) 1491 873 323
http://www.goode.co.uk
PR_EMEA@astaro.com