The Firewall: A Fine Internet Business Idea For High School Students

Christmas is coming around and internet hackers are buying expensive electronics,
injecting malicious software into them, and selling them online where companies don't care to verify their authenticity

Focusing on expensive electronics,
is a way of filtering out people that can't afford them.

An infected device will will try to hack into other devices on the network,
in hopes of escalating privileges.

People discover various flaws in all kinds of devices all the time,
so if a way to gain access into android phones connected to a local network becomes available in June...

The device that was introduced six months before, will be commanded to hack the phones,
though there is plenty of bugs and out dated devices as is.

What I describe here is a problem that people have,
that is the first step in building a business.

Second step is creating something that fixes that problem,
and note that big companies are blocked from fixing this problem, as they just want to sell, sell, sell.

So as long as it is not illegal for them,
companies don't care about Human Rights, you, your privacy, or anything else, they only care about profit, profit, profit.

At this point I would like to ask you,
to pretend not to care if your robotic vacuum cleaner is hacking your phone and sniffing to all you network traffic.

Because a problem that you don't care about,
is a problem that you shouldn't be trying to fix.

The reason for this is failure,
a number of strategy, research, development, even marketing failures are coming your way.

And if you don't care about what you are trying to fix,
these failures will make you tired, they will make you bored, and they will trick you into thinking you have failed.

A person who is passionate about a problem, feeds on failure,
they perceive failure as a step towards success.

More than that, people who are passionate about fixing a problem,
will continuously ask themselves at each step "what if this fails?", "what if this fails?", "what if this fails?".

Caring about failure will have a CEO, create smaller failure points, often without thinking,
they may take a longer more cautious road, rather than the shorter that appears to lead directly to success.

Being passionate about a problem,
will cautiously connect a CEO to the solution.

I hope you are passionate about your privacy,
because here comes the solution worthy of a Wold Class CEO.

A Firewall.

There is already a firewall in your wireless router, or even your phone,
but this is a new kind of a firewall.

It is designed to show your customers all the outgoing connections,
when their phone is getting updates, when their robotic vacuum cleaner is talking to servers in China, when their WiFi app controlled light bulb, calls home.

This firewall will block everything by default,
that is to say it will stop network communications making all the devices think the internet is down.

Then, a partner website, where all customers can contribute a possible description of what is talking,
will provide explanation for all the traffic.

A lot will be talking to Amazon and Google,
this is the same problem that Russia had with Signal.

This firewall, however, will also feature device fingerprinting,
the firewall will see more than an outgoing connection to a random Amazon or Google server.

It will see that it is the Device identified as the vacuum cleaner,
the fingerprinting is only available on the customer's local network.

So this is a firewall that can block google or amazon, or an amazon device from accessing Amazon,
the big companies that sell your profile will not be competing against you.

More than that, just as soon as list of data breaches on Wikipedia becomes more popular, so will your product,
it does not matter how many firewall products there are.

Many people can't afford expensive routers, so they will use a DIY product similar to Pi-hole for example,
but those who do not wish to mess with networks will pay for the convenience, some a lot some a little.

Let us go over best of all worlds configuration which is sold as a computer,
but there is a free version, that installs exactly like Pi-hole and requires an existing desktop computer.

The nicest possible device, is a computer, router, and touch screen monitor in one,
this way upon purchase, a person hooks this up to their WIFI or Ethernet, and it becomes a new secure WIFI hotspot, to which all the devices need to be reconnected.

The screen will instantly go wild, preventing browsers from reporting health, phones from sending nearby WIFI device names to google,
and perhaps even lying to the vacuum cleaner that there are no updates.

This kind of a firewall needs a normal CPU, a desktop CPU,
there maybe content rewriting, domain masquerading, video caching, and maybe even serving privacy conscious versions of intent websites.

It is possible to pre-fetch internet news and then serve it without the noise,
pre-fetching makes it so that Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit will only see the downloading all the news and not what the customer is doing with it.

This will make the news faster and snappier,
and makes it available when the internet goes down.

You can see that here Google will not compete against you,
you will control it.

Some years into it a company like Amazon will notice profit loss, and turn their creepy eyes at your company,
this may mean that devices will search for the firewall and refuse to work.

In most cases, these devices will be returnable and under warranty, as your customers will own your firewall for a much longer period of time,
but you must also produce a heath or privacy report for a device - simply to prevent its purchase in the first place.

Seeing how much traffic has been blocked, and even experiencing the occasional averted hack, or leak, or theft,
nobody!... will be interested in purchasing a device that bypasses their firewall, their safety net.

And here where social media is usually used against the consumers, by manipulating them; even if just into some purchase,
it will serve as a way to advertise your product, which will also feature a free software based version.

Instant global audience, friction less adoption of the free software version,
and a perfectly reasonable offer of the easy to configure all in one firewall computer.

When apple started, all they were selling is computation, little later they were selling optional apps,
it doesn't matter what program you use to type up your text.

Even today Apple sells a Phone, that while giving, also takes away,
your Firewall, is strictly a Positive Contribution to The Modern Household, it only gives, and never takes away.

As to the very approach you should take,
you are the CEO, and all you should be concerned with is CEO-ing.

You will approach investors stating that you will merge The Interactive Little Snitch Firewall Experience with the Household Wide Pi-hole Approach To Traffic Filtering,
if that is something that you are passionate about, you will no doubt receive a small research grant.

The Pi-hole approach to installation has really nailed everything about the installation down,
I would only suggest allowing your users to download a Debian based distribution, with your firewall pre-installed, then your users can boot from a USB stick, or a LiveCD.

Once ready to ship your Hardware, all you are doing is branding it,
and re-using the operating system that is already available as a free download.

Your job as a CEO is not to know HOWTO customize Debain into your own Operating System brand,
your job is to find a company, or hire a team member, that will do it for you.

Nor should you concern yourself with Hardware, or greatly customizing it,
you just need a company that will brand all-in-one computers for you, and put the operating system image on the hard drive.

I am certain there are companies out there that will allow you to choose the case color,
choose gold and purple, and few people will complain that ti is just a stock computer.

The computers that you will eventually ship are special,
as those are the computers you will always test your Operating System on first.

And they will change, when you are forced to pay too much for the 2030 model,
then you switch to another company and focus on supporting that computer with your OS.

As we talk about the Operating System,
you can see why being passionate about stopping the damn vacuum cleaner is critical.

It will take many years of research and development,
and no matter how much money there is to be made, you will become tired.

In closing,
everyone who owns a phone is in desperate need of your product.

Everything on their network is always talking,
this is unsettling even with devices that have not yet been hacked.

It may seem like your GPS coordinates and nearby WIFI networks are not a big deal to be send to google,
but your private information will eventually leak to the intent, maybe even on old hard drives that have not been properly destroyed to save money that year.

A lot of your information has already been beached, the last ting you need is to continue adding to that,
as that information will make it easier to associate your medical records, private emails, location history, DNS/browsing history, and even your earnings as the case was on Twitch.

Remember that your cheap vacuum cleaner has an open SSH port on a modern IPv6 network,
and inside your unprotected robotic vacuum cleaner is a picture the entire layout of your house with 5 centimeter precision.

It is not possible to take leaked information back, it will permanently stay on the internet,
the only thing that will work, is to stop leaking information, in the first place.

There is a website where you can see if your email address or phone is associated with a breach,
visit https://haveibeenpwned.com (where the word owned has the hacker spelling of pwned), enter the email address of either alice or bob at gmail dot com, to get an idea what it means to get hacked.

The world needs your firewall,
you can do this - but only if you are passionate about it.