Snort mailing list archives

Re: fbidsmate and watchguard firebox


From: Jeff Nathan <jeff () snort org>
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 17:01:31 -0700

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I forgot to add that SnortSam *ALSO* adds the functionality in question!

- -Jeff

On Thursday, September 4, 2003, at 03:41 PM, Jeff Nathan wrote:

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Matt,

well stated.  I just wanted to clarify.

On Thursday, September 4, 2003, at 02:24 PM, Matt Kettler wrote:

At 04:08 PM 9/4/2003 -0400, Hamilton, Robert wrote:

Any way to directly call fbidsmate from snort alert rules?

Directly from snort there is no way to call *any* firewall tool.

Fundamentally out of the box snort is an IDS and only an IDS. It has no support for reconfiguring any firewalls of any sort. No support for IpTables, IPF, cisco, watchguard, or any other kind of firewall is present.

It does have a *very* limited ability to attempt to kill offensive connections using flexresp, but this doesn't reconfigure a firewall.. "react:block" just causes flexresp to generate some tcp reset packets or icmp unreachable messages. It is however not reliable when racing against an educated attacker (If the attacker knows flexresp is going to issue a reset in response to an attack, they can attempt to advance the sequence number before flexresp can respond. Flexresp is being improved to help avoid this, but it still fundamentally boils down to a race where flexresp has the speed advantage, but the attacker has the advantage of knowing when the race will start and can be prepared in advance. .)

The react keyword implements HTTP (application layer) blocking by returning HTTP data to the client browser. The resp keyword performs the active response that you're describing above.

Flexresp2, released yesterday, uses a brute force approach for desynchronizing TCP connections. The biggest hinderance in this race is TCP stream reassembly. Essentially, TCP segments are coalesced before the detection plugins even get them, making active response really tough.

While an attacker can try to advance their sequence numbers outside the range used by flexresp2, they can't do this easily. This sort of attack would require some sort of event-based logic to track the state of the connection used for the attack and would have to "cook" ethernet frames and avoid the actual TCP/IP stack.

Flexresp2 already does this :) It makes a few assumptions on the rate of ACK number consumption and attempts to send a TCP reset packet with an ACK number that lands within the acceptable range of sequence numbers. By default it sends three of these to the receiving TCP.

It's only add-ons such as snortsam which extend firewall modification capability, bringing snort more into the realm of IPS type functionality than IDS functionality.

Snort_inline provides the sort of functionality being requested. (as you mention below).

And really, this separation into different add-on tools allows snort to be as flexible as possible without becoming insanely bloated. Snort by itself focuses on being a good IDS, and projects like snortsam and inline-snort focus on firewall manipulation.

- -Jeff

- --
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"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
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