The PIX was originally developed as a “Network Translation, Inc.” box (translation.com <http://translation.com/>). (John Mayes, Brantley Coile, Johnson Wu)
Cisco continued the PIX name for many years and through some major changes to the operating system. A later round of major changes had it renamed to ASA. Up through PIX 7 the PIX and ASA ran the same code releases. With PIX 8, PIX continued on the Finesse OS line, but ASA went to a Linux kernel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_PIX <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_PIX> Owen Cisco bought that and renamed it PIX > On Feb 19, 2015, at 5:59 AM, Darden, Patrick <patrick.dar...@p66.com> wrote: > > I believe the ASA was first developed as the PIX on Plan 9. The OS that came > out of that was originally called Finesse OS, but was later renamed as PIX > OS. After Cisco purchased the PIX and renamed it to the ASA, they began > using a Linux kernel around PIX OS V8. > > --p > > -----Original Message----- > From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces+patrick.darden=p66....@nanog.org] On Behalf > Of Justin M. Streiner > Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2015 3:28 AM > To: nanog@nanog.org > Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: Intrusion Detection recommendations > > On Fri, 13 Feb 2015, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > >> On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 02:45:46PM -0600, Rafael Possamai wrote: >>> I am a huge fan of FreeBSD, but for a medium/large business I'd >>> definitely use a fairly well tested security appliance like Cisco's ASA. >> >> Closed-source software is faith-based security. > > The ASA, like so many network/security appliances anymore, runs Linux (or > *BSD) under the hood, however I don't know how old or horribly mangled it is. > > jms
