News

Subscribe

PacketFence 1.8.5 released! Monitor

The Inverse Team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of PacketFence 1.8.5. This is a maintenance release of PacketFence which focuses on stability and includes many bug fixes and several small enhancements.

=== What is PacketFence ? ===

PacketFence is an open-source network access control (NAC) system which provides an impressive list of supported features. Among them, there are:

* Registration using a captive portal
* Detection of abnormal network activities using Snort
* Proactive vulnerability scans using Nessus
* Isolation of problematic devices
* Remediation through a captive portal
* 802.1X for wired and wireless networks
* Wireless integration for all provided features
* DHCP fingerprinting and more!

A set of screenshots is available from http://www.packetfence.org/tour/screenshots.html and a set of videos is available from http://www.packetfence.org/tour/videos.html

=== Changes Since Previous Release ===

New Hardware Support
* Amer SS2R24i switch in linkUp/linkDown mode
* 3Com Switch 4200G and SuperStack 4500 in port-security mode
* Enterasys D2, Matrix N3 and SecureStack C3 in linkUp/linkDown and maclock (port-security)
* Extreme Networks Summit X250e in linkUp/linkDown mode

New Features
* Nessus integration with captive portal for scanning on registration
* PacketFence is now distributed as a yum repository (avoids having the installer pull a lot of cpan modules and jpgraph)
* normal/correct VLAN default behaviour changed (see UPGRADE for details)
* PacketFence is now able to automatically create static routes for routed registration and isolation VLANs
* significant performance improvement in 802.1X mode (wired and wireless) or in MAC authentication on wireless networks
* massive documentation update (how to configure hardware, new install method, new support packages and more...)
* blocking misbehaving user-agents on captive portal (avoid unnecessary load)
* logging priority (INFO, WARN, ERROR) shown in log files
* added a few utilities in addons/

Bugfix
* SECURITY: fixed sensitive information leak in admin login: When password were considered invalid they were displayed
* removed Hub violation that caused too many false positives (#793)
* whitelisting MAC addresses more consistent across violation types (#801)
* init script more robust (#805)
* using temporary redirects instead of permanent ones (#757)
* fixed crashes in corner cases (violations without triggers, config not upgraded, etc.)
* fixed SNMPv3 trap-handling for HP ProCurve
* fixed maclock (port-security) support on Enterasys
* added missing dependencies
* stability and error reporting fixes

... and more. See the ChangeLog file for the complete list of changes and the UPGRADE file for notes about upgrading. Both files are in the PacketFence distribution.

=== Getting PacketFence ===

PacketFence is free software and is distributed under the GNU GPL. As such, you are free to download and try it by either getting the new release from :

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/packetfence/packetfence-1.8.5.tar.gz?download

or by getting the sources from the official monotone server using the instructions at http://www.packetfence.org/development/source_code_repository.html

Documentation about the installation and configuration of PacketFence is available from :

http://www.packetfence.org/download/documentation.html

=== How Can I Help ? ===

PacketFence is a collaborative effort in order to create the best Free and Open Source NAC solution. There are multiple ways you can contribute to the project :

* Documentation reviews, enhancements and translations
* Feature requests or by sharing your ideas
* Participate in the discussion on mailing lists (http://www.packetfence.org/support/community.html)
* Patches for bugs or enhancements
* Provide new translations of remediation pages

=== Getting Support ===

For any questions, do not hesitate to contact us by writing to support@inverse.ca

You can also fill our online form (http://www.inverse.ca/about/contact.html) and a representative from Inverse will contact you.

Inverse offers professional services to organizations willing to secure their wired and wireless networks with the PacketFence solution.