What timing! Just in time to read this thread, and I just read a press
release from Netscreen announcing their in-line device:
http://www.netscreen.com/products/prevention.html

Gotta love all the marketing key phrases in there. All the things people
said in this thread to be careful NOT to say are there. =)

Initially I would tend to agree that HIPS would move more rapidly, but
then a big firewall player like Netscreen builds a NIPS. My guess would
be all the other firewall appliance players are scrambling to come up
with a nice neat little device that works similar.

I know WatchGuard has an IDS intergration tool already. It's actually
just a command line program that auto-blocks on the appliance given
certain output. I've been trying to implement it with Snort in a test
bed scenario and would be very surprised if it wasn't integrated and
expanded on the firebox line into a true NIPS in the future.

Other to quickly follow?

M. Dante Mercurio, CCNA, MCSE+I, CCSA
dmercurioccgsecurity.com
Consulting Group Manager
Continental Consulting Group, LLC
www.ccgsecurity.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Falciola [mailto:falciolaus.ibm.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 9:17 AM
To: Martin Roesch
Cc: Avi Chesla; focus-idssecurityfocus.com; 'Samuel Cure'
Subject: Re: Changes in IDS Companies?

I concur with Marty's excellent points, specifically about the more
rapid introduction of HIPS over NIDS.

In general, I think this is a trend that will probably emerge as
encryption becomes more pervasive. While there are still plenty of
plain text protocols out there (and will be for quite a while),
increasing use of SSH, IPSEC, etc. will force broader implementation of
HIDS/HIPS. Hopefully HIDS/HIPS (or at least personal firewalls) will
soon be a given - something that ships pre-installed on a computer, just
like AV.

Now if we could only see IDS/IPS mature to the point where they are as
easy to use, manage, administer, and update as AV...

Jason Falciola
Internet Security Analyst
IBM Managed Security Services
falciolaus.ibm.com

|---------+---------------------------->
| | Martin Roesch |
| | <roeschsourcefir|
| | e.com> |
| | |
| | 10/16/2002 05:46 |
| | PM |
| | |
|---------+---------------------------->
 
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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  |
|
  | To: Avi Chesla <avicV-Secure.com>
|
  | cc: focus-idssecurityfocus.com, "'Samuel Cure'"
<scurenetpierce.net> |
  | Subject: Re: Changes in IDS Companies?
|
  |
|
  |
|
 
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Network intrusion prevention systems are also relatively untested and
still first generation. The Hogwash wrapper for Snort (and the in-line
mode being rolled into Snort) are both good technologies and intrusion
prevention in general is a good idea, but the distance between "good
idea" and a concept that's ready for larger market acceptance is a
pretty wide gap.

One of the things that's been bothering me about the rush to build and
deploy Network Intrusion Prevention Systems (NIPS) lately is the
complete lack of discussion about the downsides of such technologies. My
consternation falls into a couple categories that deal with the failure
modes of NIPS and the political issues associated with deploying this
kind of technology.

Most NIPS are built on the concepts pioneered by intrusion detection
systems, protocol anomaly detection, signature-based analysis and
traffic anomaly detection (port scans, etc). Intrusion detection
techniques are pretty well known for their applicability to specific
problem areas, signature-based detection doesn't pick up attacks it
doesn't know about, anomaly-based detection can't pick up signature
based events (/cgi-bin/phf) very effectively. The melding of these
techniques is critical to providing good coverage from the perspective
of a sensor designer, which is why Snort does signature and protocol
anomaly detection (and several other tricks). The problem is that *no*
technology is capable of picking up every possible attack, a mix of
technologies is often the best way to go to provide effective coverage
of the security picture on a given network.

With this in mind, the basic question becomes "how do we know if our
NIPS misses an attack?" If the NIPS misses an attack, we better have a
pretty good NIDS/HIDS in place to let us know what happened.

How about failure modes of the technology itself? It's been shown
repeatedly in tests that NIDS technology can be notoriously unstable in
a number of scenarios, what happens if that instability is translated to
an in-line device? We're either going to have a fail closed scenario
(protected network is DoS'd) or a fail open scenario in which the
protected network becomes unprotected, possibly for a protracted period
of time. In the first scenario the failure mode will make itself
apparent very rapidly, but in the second a NIDS/HIDS is going to be
required to record and inform the security/admin staff about the problem
as well as attacks during the lapse.

There's also the political battle of deploying another in-line
technology in the network, etc. that will be fought anytime one of these
is deployed, although I think that fight will happen in the enterprise
and not in the mid-tier market.

I'm an advocate of a layered solution. Firewalls, NIDS/HIDS,
authentication, crypto, etc. all continue to have their places on the
network. I think that host-based IPS will see quicker acceptance in the
market than NIPS due to the lower "price of deployment/failure"
associated with the host-based technologies, they're more like AV
systems in their positioning as an end-host oriented security mechanism.
I think that there will definitely be convergence of the firewall and
the NIDS, but I think it's early to declare these systems as the next
generation, the political battle will have to be fought and the
operational limitations of the technologies will have to be found before
the final place of IPS in the network security "ecosystem" will be
known.

      -Marty

--
Martin Roesch - Founder/CTO, Sourcefire Inc. - (410)290-1616
Sourcefire: Snort-based Enterprise Intrusion Detection Infrastructure
roeschsourcefire.com - http://www.sourcefire.com
Snort: Open Source Network IDS - http://www.snort.org
On Tuesday, October 15, 2002, at 04:45 AM, Avi Chesla wrote:
> I totally agree with you. Next generation IDS  ,also being called 
> Intrusion Prevention Systems or Perimeter Security devices are the 
> next step in the
> evolution of the Traditional Intrusion Detection Systems. Vendors such
> as
> Intruvert, Tipping point ,  Vsecure Technologies , Lancope, Forescout
,
> TopLayer (Mitigator) etc, are example of some.
> All these vendors claim to have an Intrusion Prevention Systems which
> usually has some kinds of Adaptive capabilities, they do behavioral
and
> protocol analysis and do not based on attack signature (most of them)
> , they
> sit in-line (most of them), they mitigate attack without be depended
in
> other products to do the blocking...
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Avi Chesla
> Director of Research
> Vsecure Technoliges, Inc.
> www.v-secure.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Samuel Cure [mailto:scurenetpierce.net]
> Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002 10:54 PM
> To: focus-idssecurityfocus.com
> Subject: Changes in IDS Companies?
>
>
> Just noticing some changes with some known IDS companies and wanted 
> some feedback from the community. Because Marcus Ranum left NFR 
> earlier this year
> and Ron Gula has left Enterasys Networks, I am questioning the future
> of
> some early-on IDS companies. I mentioned some time ago that the IDS
> market
> will eventually consolidate and it seems like things are moving in
that
> direction.
>
>
> To further enforce my point, word on the street is TippingPoint is now
> seeking for someone to buy them out. Does anyone else have anything 
> that could help validate this or these types of trends in IDS 
> companies?
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> -------------------
> Samuel J. Cure
> Security Specialist
> NetPierce Security Services
> www.netpierce.net
> -------------------
>
>

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