Snort mailing list archives

RE: Drifting timestamps


From: "M. Shirk" <shirkdog_linux () hotmail com>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 09:30:25 -0400

In the default barnyard.conf, there is a setting to convert all timestamps to UTC

See the following:

# use localtime instead of UTC (*not* recommended because of timewarps)
#config localtime

This is the default for the configuration to use UTC. This might be it.

Shirkdog


From: "Jacob Roberts" <jake_roberts () byu edu>
To: "Martin Roesch" <roesch () sourcefire com>
CC: <snort-users () lists sourceforge net>
Subject: RE: [Snort-users] Drifting timestamps
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:18:27 -0600

We check the timezones and clocks of all the systems involved.  They are
all correct and don't drift from day to day.

They daily routine is to Stop barnyard, stop snort, drop the Mysql
database(not just deleted the records), re-create the database, start
snort, start barnyard.

At the time everything is restarted the timestamps are in sync with
correct time.  As the system runs the timestamps drift

We've narrowed it down to on of the following:
        1. Something weird in Snort (probably not)
        2. Something in Barnyard (we've no idea)
        3. Something in Mysql. (We've added a timestamp column to the
event table and it auto-inserted correct timestamps. So we don't thing
its Mysql)

Could this be a Barnyard thing?

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Roesch [mailto:roesch () sourcefire com]
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 9:10 AM
To: Jacob Roberts
Cc: snort-users () lists sourceforge net
Subject: Re: [Snort-users] Drifting timestamps


Hi Jake,

That'd have to be the system clock on the sensor drifting, the
timestamps that Snort uses is based on a call to gettimeofday() that
libpcap performs when it receives a new packet.  Snort has no internal
time tracking mechanisms and in fact we take advantage of the fact that
libpcap gives us time data "for free" to track time inside Snort.

       -Marty


On Oct 15, 2004, at 6:50 PM, Jacob Roberts wrote:

> We have a snort setup with barnyard which dumps in to a MySQL
> database. We stop snort and barnyard each day, delete the database,
> re-create it, then restart snort and barnyard.
>
> As snort runs through the day we start to see the timestamps of alerts

> drift behind actual time.  We aren't receiving an excessive amount of
> alerts so we ruled out Barnyard not being able to keep up with the
> alerts generated by Snort (I don't know if that would happen anyways)
>
> Has anyone had anything like this happen?  We haven't been able to
> track
> it down and aren't sure what to do.
>
> Thanks,
> Jake Roberts
> Brigham Young University
> jake_roberts () byu edu
>
>
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--
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Sourcefire - Discover.  Determine.  Defend. roesch () sourcefire com -
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