Why so many alerts in snort

You can choose the binary encoding option that is best suited for your environment. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages: hex: default Represent binary data as a hex string. This is the only option where you will actually loose data. Non ascii data is represented as a ". If you choose this option then data for ip and tcp options will still be represented as "hex" because it does not make any sense for that data to be ascii.

How much detailed data do you want to store? You severely limit the potential of some analysis applications if you choose this option, but this is still the best choice for some applications. The following fields are logged- timestamp, signature, source ip, destination ip, source port, destination port, tcp flags, and protocol. Host to connect to. Describe in plain English at least one type of ruleset you would want to add to a high level security network and why?

Couple of rules that can be added to a high level security network could be:. This Rule is to detect direct exploits and generally if we are looking for a windows exploit, such as Veritas, etc, they will be here. Attack-Response Rules: These are designed to catch the results of a successful attack. This is a large ruleset that intends to catch specific attacks on specific applications. But these rules are much more specific to apps and web servers. Also the person can adjust the ruleset to have his identity not being capture by the IDS.

This can be done by altering for example ports that should be used for packet sniffing and intrusion detection, giving him a perfect map for future attacks on the network. Worst he can disable the IDS. An intrusion prevention system can either wait until it has all of the information it needs, or can allow packets through based on statistics guessed or previously known facts.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach? At least two things can happen; the system can allow all traffic through without being checked or can deny all traffic until the system comes back up.

What are the factors that you must consider in making this design decision? If the IPS allows all the traffic through, it would then expose the whole network system to all sort of vulnerability which can be exploited later on.

This would give for example an open door for an attacker to launch attacks, have access to sensitive data, inserting malware to the network and even leave a backdoors for future access when the system comes up. On the other hand, denying all traffic would ensure that nothing bad can compromise the network security but at the same time would restrict the traffic to even genuine traffic coming through the network.

Both decisions have inconvenient so therefore the final decision should be a consensus between the security team and the senior management because they have to take in consideration both consequences of denying communications to the network, and an attacker being able to compromise the network.

What would you change to make it better? Fast : in this mode Snort will report the timestamp, alert message, IP source address and port and destination IP address and port. Console: prints fast alerts in the console. Cmg: This format was developed by Snort for testing purposes, it prints a full alert on the console without saving reports on logs.

The first step is to download Snort itself. After you have downloaded Snort, download Snort rules. Because these rules are community rules, you can download without having to sign up.

There is not much difference between the community rules and the subscribers' rules—they have the same structure, but you will get updates for new Snort rules very quicly if you are a subscriber. When installing Snort in root directory, a popup will appear for installing Winpcap. Install it if its not already installed in your Windows. Check if there is a bin directory created under directory folder. Now, go to Bin directory and check Snort version. If it asks to overwrite the files, say yes to all.

It will replace all the old versions with new preproc rules. After you have copied all the contents, the main task starts here.

CONF stands for configure. First, we will set the variables. You can leave this to any, but it is preferred to put your machine IP address. In my case, the IP is Otherwise, leave it blank. At last, replace.. If a pop up appears, click yes. This will help Snort write the output in a particular location. Now, straightaway go to step four.

In this, we have to configure dynamic loaded libraries. Comment the dynamic rule libraries line, as we have already configured the libraries. Now, we are on step five. Add a comment before all the listed preprocessors under inline packet normalization. They do nothing but generate errors at the runtime. In step six, configuring output plugins, provide the location of the classification.