[HN Gopher] Snort - Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention S...
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       Snort - Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention System
        
       Author : pmoriarty
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2022-05-27 20:11 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.snort.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.snort.org)
        
       | smashed wrote:
       | How relevant is a rule based IDS in today's environment?
       | 
       | With most everything fully encrypted, what's left for the rules
       | to detect? If I remember correctly, one of the first performance
       | optimization recommended by snort/suricata is to detect and skip
       | encrypted traffic, to not waste cpu cycles on random bits.
       | 
       | If a malware wants to exfiltrate data or receive commands from a
       | remote command and control, won't they simply masquerade their
       | traffic as regular outgoing https requests and bypass the IDS
       | easily?
        
         | xvector wrote:
         | Ban outgoing encrypted traffic. Terminate TLS at the load
         | balancer.
        
       | midislack wrote:
       | I used to run snort but I don't like the "buying rules" thing
       | they do.
        
       | floatinglotus wrote:
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | bikingbismuth wrote:
         | As much as I love IDS, I am wondering the same.
        
           | saul_goodman wrote:
           | "I've heard of it, therefore everyone has heard of it"
        
         | pmoriarty wrote:
         | From HN's Guidelines[1]:
         | 
         |  _" On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
         | interesting."_
         | 
         | Also:
         | 
         |  _" Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate.
         | If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it."_
         | 
         | [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
         | GordonS wrote:
         | Pretty sure I was using Snort literally about 20 years ago.
         | Very strange.
        
         | linsomniac wrote:
         | Snort releasing 3.0 seems like news to me...
        
           | teh_klev wrote:
           | Snort 3 was released in January 2021:
           | 
           | https://blog.snort.org/2021/01/snort-3-officially-
           | released.h...
        
             | fnordpiglet wrote:
             | Even as a someone who has used snort and have been aware if
             | it for a long time I was surprised to read about the new
             | release. Even if it's stale a lot of folks I guess are just
             | being made aware! Btw, the blog you linked is a lot more
             | informative than OPs post.
        
       | graycat wrote:
       | > Snort is the foremost Open Source Intrusion Prevention System
       | (IPS) in the world. Snort IPS uses a series of rules that help
       | define malicious network activity and uses those rules to find
       | packets that match against them and generates alerts for users.
       | 
       | At IBM's Watson lab, I tried _rules_ and was not thrilled.
       | 
       | E.g., there was no way to know what the false alarm rate was or
       | to adjust it or know what change in the false alarm rate an
       | particular adjustment would make.
       | 
       | And the rate of missed detections was also a problem. For that,
       | for the highest possible detection rate, there is the Neyman-
       | Pearson result, and we should at least try to do something
       | similar in practice!
       | 
       | And to write the rules, it appeared needed an _expert_ in the
       | system being monitored.
       | 
       | So I worked up some solutions, responses to these issues, with
       | some math, and published.
       | 
       | But the people using _rules_ are correct! Rules are what the
       | market wants!
        
         | tptacek wrote:
         | This is one of the oldest problems in network security. Rule-
         | based detection systems converge on antivirus's effectiveness
         | (or lack thereof). But anomaly systems have almost universally
         | failed in practice, no matter what the anomaly model is, and
         | people have come up with lots of them. I can rattle off reasons
         | why model-based systems are hard to operationalize.
        
       | bikingbismuth wrote:
       | The first major piece of software I ever wrote and pushed to
       | production was a rules manager/updated for Suricata (essentially
       | open source Snort). As someone who didn't have a CS background
       | and was self taught, it felt momentous.
       | 
       | I have since left that position so I can't see the code, but I am
       | sure it was appalling. Even with that, I will also have a warm
       | and fuzzy spot for Snort/Suricata.
        
         | tssva wrote:
         | I don't know that I would describe Suricata as "essentially
         | open source Snort" since Snort itself is licensed under the
         | GPLv2.
        
           | 6502nerdface wrote:
           | GP was probably referring to the closed rulesets:
           | https://www.snort.org/products
        
       | wswope wrote:
       | Is Snort useful at all on a home network level? E.g. for
       | detecting if some insecure embedded device on the network has
       | been hacked and is spamming all the other devices with spray-and-
       | prays?
       | 
       | If not, is there a lighter IDS that would be? Curious to know
       | what the SOTA options are for non-enterprise network security.
        
       | kristianpaul wrote:
       | Did you know that Luca Deri NTOP project was intended first as a
       | NIDS?
        
         | tptacek wrote:
         | I don't know that it started out that way, but it definitely
         | was (and still is) a network security tool for people, and was
         | part of a mid-aughts zeitgeist of flow-based detection tools.
        
       | nonane wrote:
       | Does anyone know of a good snort alternative? Any recommendations
       | for a company that runs mainly off AWS?
        
         | iamtheworstdev wrote:
         | AWS network firewall loaded with suricata rules?
        
       | linsomniac wrote:
       | Please change title to "Snort 3.0 - Network Intrusion Detection
       | and Prevention System" to make it clear there has been a new
       | release.
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-27 23:00 UTC)