Re: Network hardware IPS

[Ravi Kumar <ravivsn () roc co in>]

Hi Alvin,
Setting up a complete security with all the currently available tools
IMHO,the set up can look like this

  INTERNET------- Security Gateway device -----CORPORATE network

Security gateway device should have
        - A stateful pakcet inspection Firewall
          - content filtering and Antivirus
          - and above all Inline IPS. I stress it should be working in 
hand with firewall

Deploying IDS can only alert you about incoming attacks and by the time we 
react the damage is
happened. To get good understanding of the entire traffic coming from 
Internet, the correct tap point is
the gateway of the network. Not to miss a single packet we need 
to  process  packets inline
That suggests us for a Inline IDS.Even though security is not completely 
achieved.After we identify the attacks the correct mechanism could be 
blocking them there itself.

Take the example of snort_inline.
        -Takes the packets from iptables
          - uses snort to detect and
          - blocks the connection by sending TCP resets.
snort_inline uses libipq to queue the packets to user space. I agree that 
moving packets from user space and back to kernel space consumes lots 
of  processing time. The solution could be

         - Inline IPS that works in the Kernel space
  Lots of Inline IDS tools that are available to public works in user 
space. Hogwash, snort_inline etc takes the packets to user space for 
processing.
Hogwash differs  from the snort_inline in the way it takes packets to user 
space. It also uses the same snort engine for processing.

If any differ please point out, Iptables and snort_inline may not be a 
complete solution. As I said earlier,
the box requires more than IPtables.


Regards,
Ravi




At 04:30 PM 9/29/03 +0800, Alvin Wong wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm interested to find out if anyone can share their experiences or
> recommend a network hardware IPS that is deployed in front of the
> gateway which is able to detect attack signatures and at the same time,
> actively blocking out these attacks, alerting me in the process.
>
> This would be different from a passive IDS which depends on correlating
> the logs every time an alert pops up. An ideal solution would be to be
> able to detect the patterns and prevent them automatically, can a
> network IPS do this?
>
> I understand that it is possible in some IDS to do a TCP reset after one
> had confirmed that the connection is not acceptable, can anyone explain
> whether an IDS that can do this be actually "active" as opposed to
> passive?
>
> It would also be interesting if there could be some amount of trend
> analysis built in which can review the destination/source ip traffic
> over time, which can be used to identify particular boxes which are
> easily targeted, which would mean that more work needs to be done for
> that box.
>
> Regards,
> Alvin
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Captus Networks IPS 4000
> Intrusion Prevention and Traffic Shaping Technology to:
>  - Instantly Stop DoS/DDoS Attacks, Worms & Port Scans
>  - Automatically Control P2P, IM and Spam Traffic
>  - Precisely Define and Implement Network Security & Performance Policies
> FREE Vulnerability Assessment Toolkit - WhitePapers - Live Demo
> http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/CaptusNetworks_focus-ids_000101
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Views Presented in this mail are completely mine. The company is not 
responsible for what so ever.

----------
Ravi Kumar CH
Rendezvous On Chip (I) Pvt Ltd
Hyderabad, INDIA

ROC HOME PAGE:
http://www.roc.co.in



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Captus Networks IPS 4000
Intrusion Prevention and Traffic Shaping Technology to: 
- Instantly Stop DoS/DDoS Attacks, Worms & Port Scans
- Automatically Control P2P, IM and Spam Traffic
- Precisely Define and Implement Network Security & Performance Policies
FREE Vulnerability Assessment Toolkit - WhitePapers - Live Demo 
http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/CaptusNetworks_focus-ids_000101
---------------------------------------------------------------------------