I recently started a new job as ICT Manager for a medium sized international company. At the core of our network here, we’ve got Cisco PIX boxen. As the need for being able of punching a hole in the firewall arises at times, I’ve got to get my head around the proparitary cisco os it’s running (nope, it’s not IOS).
The Cisco PIX product line was introduced in 1994 as a “call-center for your internets”, the abbreviation meaning “Private Internet eXchange” (playing on familiar need for a PBX (Private Branch eXchange) for telephone systems). The products have since then gone through several redesigns and iterations, before getting the final blow this January when the end-of-sales and end-of-life dates announced by Cisco. Cisco ASA (Adaptive Security Appliance) is the successor of PIX (IDP 4.2k and vpn 3k concentrators) and it’s using PIX OS 7.0 (Finesse), and later in 8.0 moves over to a linux kernel with proparitary tools and programs.
For starters, I’ve found a PIX system emulator called GNS3 that’ll let you fetch binary images and run them locally, to test out commands and configurations before taking down the corp network. There are a few tutorials out there, this one presumably covers the basics: How to configure Cisco PIX firewall. When you’ve tried that without any luck, you could even move on to The official documentation (Basic Firewall Configuration, Managing Network Access and Use, Basic VPN Configuration, PIX Firewall System Management, Using PIX Firewall Failover, Upgrading PIX Firewall Software, Firewall Configuration Form Also as pdf’s:12345678). Oh, and then you have this nsfw step-by-step guide. This one, on the other hand, is safe for work