To add to (or take away) from this thread, I would further
mention that IDS/IPS regardless of make or implimentation,
will only see the past, not the future. I personally do
not care what people use to detect, even though I have
been able to get snort to match performance of commercial
products. Some exploits are too late to stop by the time
your devices see them.
My focus has always been instead to see into the future,
such as running continuous network and host based audits
and staying on top of the latest 0 day exploits, latest
patches and so on. It is not fullproof, but reduces the
probability that a malicious packet will do its job. :)
I only consider IDS/IPS to be documenting devices so that
I may later have evidence, in the rare and highly
improbable circumstance that someone is actually caught.
The people we should be concerned with will not show up
in an IDS however.
--Aarön
On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 08:54:49 -0700
"Andrew Plato" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Number of rules does not equal quality of IDS/IPS
technology.
Or in other words, just because a IDS/IPS has a zillion
rules doesn't
mean those rules are any good. Or that implementing or
using that
technology is good.
Your 500 number is wrong. When you get into the leading
commercial IPSs
(TippingPoint, ISS, Juniper, McAfee) these products on
average have
2000-3000 signatures. However, in some technologies, one
signature
handles an entire class of vulnerabilities. Where Snort
needs multiple
signatures for the same vulnerability, ISS can protect
against the
vulnerability with 1 signature. TP is the same. I don't
know Juniper and
McAfee as well, but I suspect they are similar.
Snort also has a lot of unique signatures that people
have designed for
highly specialized purposes. That is definitely a
benefit to some
organizations. But, those signatures are only useful in
those unique
situations. And all the commercial products support
custom signatures -
so you can do the same thing for your TP or ISS box.
Furthermore, Snort rules are developed by volunteers (or
Sourcefire). As
such, SNORT is usually behind the curve on new
signatures. ISS, for
example, does their own independent security research an
has signatures
to protect against things that Snort people don't even
know about. Other
vendors buy exploits from the hacker market - again
giving them access
to vulnerabilities long before it hits the public and
subsequently the
people who develop SNORT signatures.
The 90% thing you're coming up with is just false.
You're assuming that
all those signatures represent a serious attack. And
you're also
assuming that quantity of signatures is the measure of
effectiveness.
A poorly maintained, tuned or implemented Snort sensor
is just as
useless as a poorly maintained, tuned, or implemented
ISS sensor.
Now, I realize I sound like a ISS or TippingPoint sales
person. And yes,
I have a vested interest in such products because my
company sells them.
But, I also know that I've seen more than a few
organizations throw away
Snort-based protections because the administration and
management of
them was too resource intensive. And merely having 5000
signatures
available does not translate to effective security.
-----------------------------------------------
Andrew Plato, CISSP, CISM
President/Principal Consultant
Anitian Enterprise Security
-----------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: Basgen, Brian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 10:44 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: IDS vs. IPS deployment feedback
I'm new to the list, but this flame war is a bit odd.
This is an IDS
list, yet the usefulness of IDS is being dismissed?
This debate could generate some interesting data. In
snort, for
example, there are around 5,759 rules (3/31/2006,
non-subscription rule
base). I don't have the metrics on hand of how many
rules commercial
IPS's deploy on by default (and how many total can be
turned on), but
I'd guess it is around 500. I'd be interested to know
those numbers, if
someone has them. A vendor comparison of rules could
also be
interesting.
What I draw from this ratio is that some 90% of attacks
can get through
an IPS solution. That doesn't invalidate the IPS anymore
than the IPS
invalidates a firewall, but it does indicate to me that
IDS plays an
essential role.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brian Basgen
IT Security Architect
Pima Community College
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