When is a virus attack lucky? When it strikes right in the middle of a test of intrusion detection systems. In fact, InfoWorld was lucky many times over as we conducted the testing for “Network Detectives: Inspecting the Inspectors”. Not only were we slammed by the Sasser worm, but we ran smack dab into a host of Microsoft IIS attacks and a plague of Gator spyware. Needless to say, our review team was pleased; there’s nothing quite like real-life attacks on real-world networks to find out what really works.
Luck also played a role in our choice of test venue. Contributing Editor Victor R. Garza was attending a Wi-Fi Planet conference last year when he met Lieutenant Commander Joseph L. Roth, department head of the Network Security Group at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, Calif. The two struck up a conversation, and pretty soon they decided to collaborate on a test of vulnerability assessment appliances (“Uncovering Network Holes”) at NPS. This week’s IDS test is a continuation of that serendipitous partnership with NPS, a facility with 3,000 nodes on its network and a host of top-notch IT talent to watch over it.
For our four-month torture test, we invited the major IDS vendors to participate; a few — including McAfee, Sourcefire, and Symantec — declined because the timing wasn’t right. (Look for our reviews of their new releases in coming weeks.) The six products that survived our testing, however, were put through the proverbial mill. Over the course of the trial, our team detected more than 4,000 “events” from nearly 1,000 unique attackers.
By and large, these IDS solutions acquitted themselves admirably, although some used a signature-based approach and others employed anomaly detection algorithms to spot the black hats. Ultimately, our review team concluded that, in the safest of all possible worlds, an IDS would use both signatures and anomaly detection.
Garza and company might have drawn another conclusion, namely that open source folks have more fun. Whereas the commercial IDS products have sober names (Border Guard and StealthWatch), the open-source IDS of choice is Snort (nicknamed “The Pig”). The Pig’s most commonly used graphical front end is the colorfully named ACID (Analysis Console for Intrusion Databases). And then there are the porcine-inspired Snort add-ons Barnyard and Oinkmaster.
Snort creator Martin Roesch — founder of security pioneer Sourcefire and an InfoWorld 2004 Innovator — confirmed our suspicions about the open source crowd in a post-test conversation. ACID, he confided, is on its way out as the preferred Snort GUI, soon to be replaced by SGUIL. And what does that stand for? Snort Graphical User Interface for Losers, of course.
That’s a winner in our book.
Read more about security in InfoWorld's Security Central Channel.
Get the independent advice and expertise you need to support a virtual workforce.
The increase in Linux popularity has increased the frequency and sophistication of malware attacks. Read this 2 page white paper now to learn how you can protect your Linux environment with real-time protection that is certified by all major Linux vendors.
Download now »Ensuring acceptable application delivery will become even more difficult over the next few years. As a result, IT organizations need to ensure that the approach that they take to resolving the current application delivery challenges can scale to support the emerging challenges. This handbook elaborates on the key tasks associated with planning, optimization, management and control and provides decision criteria to help IT organizations choose appropriate solutions.
Download now »A common misconception is that mid-range storage requirements are dramatically different than that of a larger enterprise. Mid-range storage users may require less capacity, but they have similar functionality and management requirements. This ESG paper examines mid-range storage needs and reviews a new solution that adjusts size while retaining value, performance and functionality.
Download now »
Sign up to receive Security Resource Alerts
This white paper provides guidance on how to develop a strategic approach to managing and monitoring logs, a key function required for compliance with many regulatory mandates and a critical defense against security threats.
Download now! »Learn about the processes and technologies that support security information management (SIM) operations, as well as the business case for SIM. The series examines different options for implementing SIM and gives you evaluation criteria for selecting the best option for your organization.
Download now! »Learn the strategies, actions, and capabilities that Best-in-Class organizations employ and technologies they choose to obtain superior performance against various security performance metrics. This report provides guidelines for identifying which security solutions to consume as a MSS and defines best practices for choosing and managing MSSPs.
Download now! »