Re: CVE selection for IDS/IPS signature rules

[Ron Gula <rgula () tenablesecurity com>]

Ravi Chunduru wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There are over 30000 CVE vulnerability reports.  Many IDS/IPS devices
> have around 4000-5000 signature rules. My guess is that these
> signatures may cover (detect)around 4000-7000 attacks.  23000 to 26000
> CVEs, that is, significant number of CVEs are not covered by IDS/IPS
> devices.
>
> I am guessing that there is reason for this. IDS/IPS vendors may be
> selecting few CVEs for developing signatures. What is the selection
> criteria followed in industry? One criteria, I know is that Network
> IDS/IPS devices don't need to worry about attacks that can only be
> mounted on the local machine, that is,  NIDS/NIPS devices only need to
> worry about detection of attacks mounted remotely. Are there any other
> considerations?
>
> Thanks
> Ravi


Hi Ravi,

There are several reasons, probably more.

Some NIDS vendors try to code for generic exploit vectors and not
specific vulnerabilities. Some try to do both.

Many of the CVEs not covered are for products that have come and
gone, are very old, don't work over TCP/IP and so on.

Some CVE entries focus on weak encryption and denial of service
attacks which can be difficult to see with NIDS technology.

Ron Gula
Tenable Network Security
http://www.nessus.org









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