A few comments:
1) Open "signatures" are about trust, if people have no idea why or how
and IDS is doing what it's doing then when the false positives
inevitably pop up the user has absolutely no clue what has happened. I
find that to be one of the most annoying things about using other
people's IDS technologies, their opaqueness drives a constant nagging
doubt that the system is configured and working properly. IMO that's
one of the reasons that Snort is as popular as it is, people know how
and why it does what it does (for better or worse) and the transparency
allows them a certain level of comfort that they're in control of and
can trust the system instead of the other way around.
2) If a "signature" is written properly then evading it will be
non-trivial. This all falls into the "writing the signature for the
vulnerability instead of the exploit" thing that we argue about around
here from time to time. I don't think knowing what someone is looking
for does a whole lot if there's no way to avoid tripping it in the
course of an exploit.
3) Snort has had 2 remote exploits (buffer overflow and integer
overflow leading to heap overflow on certain platforms) and a 2-3 DoSes
due to protocol handler mistakes in 6.5 years. ISS has had at least
that many over the years and a resultant worm to boot. Did being
closed really help them all that much? I think that developing in the
open forces us to be a little more careful than we might otherwise be,
but I think that over time being open leads to a more secure codebase
due to the exposure to the "elements" that it entails.
Anyway, just my $0.02, hope it was interesting.
-Marty
On Mar 12, 2005, at 8:54 AM, David W. Goodrum wrote:
I think it's interesting how this is an unwinnable argument for any
vendor. At NFR our signatures are openly readable by our customers,
but we've heard the exact opposite argument of what you are presenting
here: "A potential hacker can read how the signatures work, and use
that information to try to evade the IDS". So, if we appeased them,
we'd close our signature base, and then we'd be hearing it from the
other side of the house. This is a no-win situation for the vendor.
We've tried to appease both sides by not having our sigs "publicly"
available, but all a really determined hacker has to do is buy our
product to read the signatures.
So, before you ask ISS to release their codebase for their signature
set, you might want to think about what the full consequences of that
would be. Snort has had 2 or 3 remote exploits. The only reason this
was possible is because their entire product is totally open to the
world. I doubt ISS wants to open themselves up to that type of
publicity. :)
-dave
Jeff Boggie wrote:
No, the lack of visibility into ISS signature content is a major bone
of
contention in my shop.
-----Original Message-----
From: Brady, Rick [mailto:Rick.Brady@LibertyMutual.com] Sent:
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 5:08 PM
To: Melih Kirkgöz (Koç.net); Stephane; focus-ids@securityfocus.com
Subject: RE: How to choose an IDS/FW MSS provider
Melih,
I guess you must be special to ISS, from my experience the support
has been
sub-par. Also do you like the idea that ISS IDS signatures are not
known to
the customer and only ISS ?
Rick Brady
Liberty Mutual Group
I/S TSSS Engineering Network Access Control
mailto:rick.brady@libertymutual.com
(603) 245-4214 8-435-4214sdn
-----Original Message-----
From: Melih Kirkgöz (Koç.net) [mailto:melihk@koc.net] Sent: Tuesday,
March 08, 2005 2:22 AM
To: Stephane; focus-ids@securityfocus.com
Subject: RE: How to choose an IDS/FW MSS provider
Importance: High
Hello Stephane,
We have been using ISS since last two years.(50 Server Sensor,15
Network
Sensor,1 Proventia G 100 IPS),managed by SiteProtector. We tested
Netscreen,ISS,Radware,NAI Intrushield and Checkpoint during our
evaluation
period for intrusion detection/prevention systems. Strong level of
expertise
and good technical support was one of the big reasons choosing ISS.
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephane [mailto:stephane.d@ecologie.net] Sent: Monday, March
07, 2005 12:42 PM
To: focus-ids@securityfocus.com
Subject: How to choose an IDS/FW MSS provider
Dear All,
How do I choose an IDS/IPS provider if I need a strong level of
expertise
24x7x365 and a worldwide representaion? I need it on Netscreen, PIX,
CheckPoint and ISS Realsecure and Proventia.
Thank you,
S.
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Find out quickly and easily by testing it with real-world attacks
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Go to
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Find out quickly and easily by testing it with real-world attacks
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David W. Goodrum
Senior Systems Engineer
NFR Security
703.731.3765
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Martin Roesch - Founder/CTO, Sourcefire Inc. - +1-410-290-1616
Sourcefire - Discover. Determine. Defend. - http://www.sourcefire.com
Snort: Open Source Intrusion Detection and Prevention -
http://www.snort.org
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