Snort mailing list archives

Re: was--Matt Jonkman in the new Hakin9--now detecting infections


From: Marshall Bartoszek <gmb95125 () yahoo com>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 09:57:31 -0800 (PST)

Hi Matt, John

MATT:  Thanks for the mention !

JOHN:  Take a look at www.metaflows.com.  We have taken BotHunter and integrated 
it into our network monitoring solution kit.  You can download a free, personal 
use copy of it from our website.

Let me know I can be of more assistance to you.  I included my metaflows email 
address.

Cheers,

MB

 



________________________________
From: Matthew Jonkman <jonkman () emergingthreatspro com>
To: John York <YorkJ () brcc edu>
Cc: "snort-users () lists sourceforge net" <snort-users () lists sourceforge net>
Sent: Thu, February 3, 2011 7:07:41 AM
Subject: Re: [Snort-users] was--Matt Jonkman in the new Hakin9--now detecting 
infections

Bothunter is a spectacular tool! I highly recommend it. They use a subset of the 
ET rules, so what we're all contributing to emerging threats is helping improve 
Bothunter. Although in a relatively small way, most of it's actions are based on 
much higher thought than static sigs. 


Metaflows.com is also a tool implementing bothunter for open and professional 
use with great results. I'm sure there will be more commercial uses of it very 
soon.

Matt


On Feb 3, 2011, at 9:42 AM, John York wrote:

I agree wholeheartedly.  My biggest concern is getting to the infected machines 
ASAP, so that's what I *really* want alerts on.  The IPS, firewall, AV, web 
filter, no admin rights for users, etc all do what they can to prevent 
compromises.  If Joe Clueless clicks on enough bad things, one of them will get 
him eventually and the trick is to get the computer isolated immediately.

BotHunter is a Snort-based system for detecting infections.  I've wanted to 
test it but have never had time.  Has anyone had good results with it?  ( I know 
I'm OT, but it is Snort based--maybe only one drink ;-)

Thanks
John


-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Holste [mailto:mcholste () gmail com] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2011 5:23 PM
To: Matthew Jonkman
Cc: snort-users () lists sourceforge net; emerging-sigs () emergingthreats net
Subject: Re: [Snort-users] [Emerging-Sigs] Matt Jonkman in the new Hakin9

Yes, an infection is a failure. But we will always have failures. And you;ll 
have hosts that come in from the outside already infected. You MUST focus on CnC 
channels, I don't see any alternative.


This is the key point.  We responded to over a thousand incidents last
year alone, and in each case, AV had been completely overtaken (only
even generating an alert about 1/3 of the time) and more than half of
the cases were on fully patched machines.  This is IDS's core
competency.  Packets will never lie (though you may misinterpret what
they say).  The same cannot be said of anything on a host that may
have been compromised.

The NSS testing is becoming increasingly irrelevant because exploits
aren't actionable--infections are.  If I told you that you could have
the choice between a magic blinking box that told you whenever a host
was infected versus a box that told you whenever someone tried to
infect a box, wouldn't you go with the first one?  Most orgs aren't
interested in attempts--they're interested in break-ins.  The idea of
detecting exploits via IDS comes from way back in the 90's when CnC
channels (or malware) didn't really exist like they do now.  Your only
chance then was to detect the break-in.  There's been a complete
reversal in the last few years and now your only real chance is to
detect the CnC channel because the exploit doesn't really exist like
it did then.

Exploit code is far more likely to be encrypted/encoded than check-in
traffic (URL's at least).  It is almost impossible to write signatures
to catch the exploits in the wild for anything more than the PoC
examples or the kit-of-the-day.  So many SF and ET signatures look for
things like CLSID's for ActiveX objects, which will almost never hit
on an actual exploit, because they will be heavily obfuscated with
Javascript.  It's very unfortunate, because most Snort instances will
be dropping packets because of the wasted cycles on those signatures,
so they're missing the check-ins as well.  You can get far better
results by running a handful of signatures to look for basic file
types like executables, PDF, Flash, and Java, then matching those hits
(which will be very numerous) with disreputable autonomous systems
(AS's).  I bet anyone on this list a case of beer that the next JAR
file coming out of Latvia to their corporate network is a malware
loader (no cheating please!).

The other critical component to that is regarding Jason's point about
off-network infections.  CnC check-ins are your only hope at that
point--try to spot the already-infected devices so that they can be
cleaned.  Since the host has already failed to defend itself, the
network IDS is your last chance.

Both the Mandiant M-Trends and Verizon Data Breach Report each year
have been illustrating how futile it is to expect to be able to defend
all of your endpoints.  They do, however, show how damage isn't
usually done for days or weeks after the initial infection, so if you
can find the infected machines within a few business days, you've got
a good chance of emerging unscathed (other than the re-images, of
course).



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----------------------------------------------------
Matthew Jonkman
Emergingthreats.net
Emerging Threats Pro
Open Information Security Foundation (OISF)
Phone 765-807-8630
Fax 312-264-0205
http://www.emergingthreatspro.com
http://www.openinfosecfoundation.org
----------------------------------------------------

PGP: http://www.jonkmans.com/mattjonkman.asc


      
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