Still, it is a worthwhile endeavor that will give you peace of mind and inherently better security. Not impossible, and there are good tutorials out there, but it is a step or two above the abilities of most casual computer geeks. You need to make sure your hardware will accept it and unless you can get it pre-configured like with ProtectLI it is somewhat difficult to install and must be built from source. The Coreboot hardware compatibility list is far from all inclusive though. It is my considered tech-geek opinion that no one should be running a hardware firewall appliance that does NOT run Coreboot. I bought an appliance DIRECTLY FROM CHINA.
You can get firewall appliances for a fraction of the cost and install pfSense yourself. What’s the downside here? Not much except for COST. Netgate also allows you to run an Open Source BIOS called Coreboot. Netgate sells the hardware with the software installed.
I had a hardware firewall from a company called Netgate and it runs software called pfSense which is basically FreeBSD Unix. You can slick the OS, change the hard drive all you want but you are still compromised AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT. Major exploits such as HeartBleed (remember that scare a few years ago) live and breathe in the firmware. Also it can prevent you from installing a 3rd party device such as a battery, or charging brick. You run your Open Source OS which gets launched by a firmware (BIOS – Built In Operating System) which is PROPRIETARY!. There are a lot of Open Source Operating Systems such a Linux. With Open Source software you can view the code and see if any hanky panky is going on. They say it isn’t spying on you but you know that it is. In Proprietary software you don’t know really know what’s going on. I’m also a firm believer in Open Source software. I’m into computer security a little bit and always striving to learn more.
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