Yoggie Makes USB Stick Firewall Open Source

Yoggie's products are hardware firewalls in the form of USB sticks that include complete Linux processors. The small devices contain an XScale PXA270 processor from Intel along with a 128-Mbyte Flash and 128-Mbyte SDRAM. They serve as protection for Windows and Mac OS X systems.

The company now makes the technology available for developers. The Open Firewall Pico (for a single computer's USB port) and Open Firewall SOHO (for two Ethernet ports) allow access to the firewall's Linux via SSH. Developers can execute commands, upload data and install Debian packages on the device. Yoggie provides an SDK and a developer's website that includes download instructions.

Yoggie hadn't revealed much about licensing for its open source offering, even in their developer forum. A glance at the SDK shows a Linux system with a lot of GPL software. In fact, the newest word from Yoggie is that the open code is indeed GPL licensed.

Yoggie offers a three-month reduced price for their devices. Open Firewall Pico goes for about $50, while the SOHO variant is priced at $80.

In July 2008, Linux Magazine's Jörg Fritsch wrote an article on Yoggie's related Gatekeeper Pico
1.3.8 product. Earlier, in testing the product, he had reported a security
flaw to Yoggie, details of which he included in a May article. Yoggie quickly
responded with a 1.3.9 update to Gatekeeper Pico.