Icon Labs announces its Floodgate-Packet Filter-- an embedded firewall filtering packets before an embedded device processes them.
Floodgate provides threshold-based filtering (protection against DDOS attacks, broadcast storms and other conditions involving floods of unwanted packets) and rules-based filtering (white- and black-listing based on criteria like port number, protocol or source IP address).
Icon Labs says small dedicated devices (like industrial control or medical devices) are increasingly internet-connected-- and subject to the security threats as PCs in corporate environments.
It is designed for use in embedded systems-- with operating systems like VxWorks, Linux, QNX or eCos as well as systems without an OS.
Floodgate comes as a portable source library and integrates easily into an embedded device, at any IP stack layer. It also includes sample applications showing its use at Layer 2 (protecting against broadcast storms) and Layer 3 (protecting against packet floods).