Campus Firewall Rules Update

04 February 2008

Currently, the Texas A&M campus firewall blocks incoming TCP traffic by default, and permits most UDP traffic. With more protocols and malware utilizing UDP for communication, we have begun the process of examining which software uses UDP, to evaluate the possibility of blocking inbound UDP traffic by default in the long term.

As with TCP, we would have a process such that host owners may request that we permit UDP traffic to reach their hosts.

We'd also like to take the opportunity to remind administrators that you may request that we block incoming UDP to your hosts/networks now, by sending mail to firewall@tamu.edu or by using our self-service request page at https://scan.tamu.edu/.

You may view the current firewall configuration for your hosts by logging in with your netid to https://firewall.tamu.edu/.

As always, please let us know if you have any concerns, questions or comments concerning this change. These can be sent to security@net.tamu.edu.

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