On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 4:32 PM, Charles Bailey
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks for the replies!
>
> As for documentation... What would have helped me immensely would have been
> a complete, start-to-finish walkthrough installing OSSEC on something
> common, like Ubuntu, and configuring with Windows. I modified the Config
> file based on guesses, without a great deal of confidence, and I suspect
> it's not complete, or done right. I did find some things documented, but it
> was spread throughout the Internet. I'm assuming this is to encourage
> purchasing the book, but I wanted to actually see OSSEC before investing in
> anything. Also, the book is for an older version.
>

I couldn't care less about book sales (sorry Daniel ;)). I just don't
think walk-throughs teach enough to be worth it.

> As for the 404 error, someone keeps trying to access files that don't exist.
> Some are weird, like
> www.mywebsite.com/best-practices-in-european-countries.html, and some are
> obvious attempts at finding installed programs with vulnerabilities. After
> seeing a ton of these, I decided to start looking for an IDS. I'm concerned
> that, even though I still these probes for installed programs, OSSEC isn't
> doing anything, other than reporting a 400 error.
>

Create a rule to make it alert on 404s specifically.

Using a basic 404 log message:
http://ossec.net/doc/syntax/head_ossec_config.active-response.html

Run it through ossec-logtest:
# /var/ossec/bin/ossec-logtest
2013/02/12 09:22:00 ossec-testrule: INFO: Reading local decoder file.
2013/02/12 09:22:01 ossec-testrule: INFO: Started (pid: 21409).
ossec-testrule: Type one log per line.

127.0.0.1 - - [07/Feb/2013:13:22:22 -0500] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 217


**Phase 1: Completed pre-decoding.
       full event: '127.0.0.1 - - [07/Feb/2013:13:22:22 -0500] "GET
/favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 217'
       hostname: 'arrakis'
       program_name: '(null)'
       log: '127.0.0.1 - - [07/Feb/2013:13:22:22 -0500] "GET
/favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 217'

**Phase 2: Completed decoding.
       decoder: 'web-accesslog'
       srcip: '127.0.0.1'
       url: '/favicon.ico'
       id: '404'

**Phase 3: Completed filtering (rules).
       Rule id: '31102'
       Level: '0'
       Description: 'Ignored extensions on 400 error codes.'



Create a basic rule to make 404s alert level higher (add it to
/var/ossec/rules/local_rules.xml):
<rule id="200201" level="10>
  <if_sid>31102</if_sid>
  <id>404</id>
  <description>four oh four</description>
</rule>

Find out I didn't have the closing double quote around the level:
# /var/ossec/bin/ossec-logtest
2013/02/12 09:24:17 ossec-testrule: INFO: Reading local decoder file.
2013/02/12 09:24:17 ossec-analysisd(1226): ERROR: Error reading XML
file 'rules//local_rules.xml': XMLERR: Attribute 'level' not closed.
(line 119).
2013/02/12 09:24:17 ossec-testrule(1220): ERROR: Error loading the
rules: 'local_rules.xml'.

Fix it, and rerun ossec-logtest:
# /var/ossec/bin/ossec-logtest
2013/02/12 09:25:19 ossec-testrule: INFO: Reading local decoder file.
2013/02/12 09:25:19 ossec-testrule: INFO: Started (pid: 21334).
ossec-testrule: Type one log per line.

127.0.0.1 - - [07/Feb/2013:13:22:22 -0500] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 217


**Phase 1: Completed pre-decoding.
       full event: '127.0.0.1 - - [07/Feb/2013:13:22:22 -0500] "GET
/favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 217'
       hostname: 'arrakis'
       program_name: '(null)'
       log: '127.0.0.1 - - [07/Feb/2013:13:22:22 -0500] "GET
/favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 217'

**Phase 2: Completed decoding.
       decoder: 'web-accesslog'
       srcip: '127.0.0.1'
       url: '/favicon.ico'
       id: '404'

**Phase 3: Completed filtering (rules).
       Rule id: '200201'
       Level: '10'
       Description: 'four oh four'
**Alert to be generated.


> As for Active Response, all I could find was a website that told me how to
> enable it. No other configuration. How/where would I find out how to
> configure it?
>

This is a starting place:
http://ossec.net/doc/syntax/head_ossec_config.active-response.html

I don't do much with Windows, so this is speculation:
<active-response>
  <command>route-null.cmd</command> <!-- I don't know what this should be -->
  <location>local</location>
  <rules_id>200201</rules_id>
</active-response>

This could potentially null route every host committing an act of 404
on the server.

> Although it would be ideal, I wasn't able to fix the PHP errors. They were
> minor warnings.  I looked inside local_rules.xml, and was completely
> confused. Where can I find documentation on how to configure it to ignore
> PHP errors?
>

Provide samples of the alerts and I can do your work for you.

> Thanks again!
>
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, February 11, 2013 12:50:10 PM UTC-5, Charles Bailey wrote:
>>
>> I wanted the 'Best' IDS for my Windows Apache server, and after a lot of
>> looking around I chose OSSEC. Documentation was pretty sparse, and I'm a
>> Linux newbie, but somehow I managed to install Ubuntu, OSSEC, and the Web
>> interface, and I have the client running on my Windows server. I put in a
>> number of log files in the config file to monitor, and it seems to be
>> working. I've got a number of questions:
>>
>> 1) How does it block hack attempts? Windows Firewall? Some other
>> mechanism?
>>
>> 2) This might be the expected result, but when I get a 404, OSSEC shows it
>> as a 400 error.
>>
>> 3) When someone tries to access a page repeatedly that's not on my server,
>> OSSEC doesn't block them. Actually, I haven't seen ANY blocks. Do they show
>> up in the log?
>>
>> 4) Does OSSEC go by a set of rules to detect hack attempts? How would I
>> update them? How can I tell if they need updating?
>>
>> 5) I keep getting minor PHP config errors logged, almost every minute. How
>> can I disable those from being logged?
>>
>> 6) What files should be monitored? I mainly have just the Apache log and
>> error files monitored.
>>
>>
>> Thanks for any help you can offer!
>>
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