All modern Operating Sytems today provide extensive logging facilities, and Linux on which Checkpoint products are based is no exception. I talk about the SSHD daemon, not Secure Rules, logs. The SSHD logs, located in /var/log/ are rotated by default every 4 logfiles. I found it very useful to …

Updated: 07 July 2020 This is a quick reference sheet of all usable options for the fw monitor tool .At the end I put a list of fw monitor examples. The previous experience with the tool is assumed, i'll just say that if you are serious about debugging Checkpoint products …

You can get mail lerts on SSH login to any Linux server using the script below. This script sends mail to predefined email address each time someone successfully logs in by SSH to the machine. I take advantage here of the built-in feature of the OpenSSH daemon – if you create …

Update 2022: This article was written for UTM-1 appliances, the first appliance offered by Checkpoint in 2009. It is no longer available, nor exists anywhere, to the best of my knowledge. The procedure of reinstalling a Checkpoint Appliance (new ones) has changed, and became much easier. So, see this article …

Funny case of WYSIWYG misleading the uninitiated. The case involved a seemingly normally functioning firewall Checkpoint which after a client created rule to allow FTP from any to his server in DMZ (no Nat involved) refused to allow connections though. The client being quite experienced himself entered SmartViewTracker did filter …

UTM or Power ? How do you know when logged in with ssh what type of machine you are working with ? I know 3 ways to find it: By the interfaces names , see the difference: UTM (output edited for conciseness) [Expert@Firewall]# ifconfig DMZ Link encap Ethernet HWaddr 00 90 FB …

Update 2022: Checkpoint has disabled changing Expert password with passwd altogether. When trying to run the command, no matter what you enter the result will be an error "bad credentials" and "Authentication token manipulation error". You can only change Expert password in Gaia, either in clish, or the WebUI. As …

Update 2022: On modern Check Point systems you don't have to run the script below (which still works) as they come with up-to-date iproute2 network tools. So, to clear all dynamic ARP entries learned on a specific interface, use ip neighbor flush dev interface-name. Yesterday my colleague asked how to …

Deleting IKE/IPsec security associations of established VPNs is inevitable part of any VPN related debug. The standard tool promoted by Checkpoint (take CCSA,CCSE etc.,) is vpn tu that neveretheless has always had a very annoying bug (feature?) - you can delete ALL VPN tunnels at a time and none …

It is no fun when in the middle of fw monitor / debug session you get abruptly disconnected on SSH session timeout. Here is how to prevent it in the Checkpoint firewall. The session timeout is defined in cat /etc/bashrc: # By default, log out the user after three minutes of …