RE: need your help about IPS and IDS,thanks

From: Eric McCarty (eric_at_piteduncan.com)
Date: 11/18/04

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    Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 08:47:19 -0800
    To: "Chris Petersen" <chris.petersen@security-conscious.com>, "Lily" <xiaoche111@hotmail.com>
    
    

    I don't think there could be a better breakdown between the two
    technologies. Great work Chris, the papers on your website were
    definitely informative and worth reading for anyone looking for more
    information than what was already discussed.

    Eric

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Chris Petersen [mailto:chris.petersen@security-conscious.com]
    Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 8:38 AM
    To: 'Lily'; Eric McCarty
    Cc: focus-ids@securityfocus.com
    Subject: RE: need your help about IPS and IDS,thanks

    Lily, I think of IPS as IDS with the ability to take action. Both IPS
    and IDS have techniques for detecting malicious activity and most
    commercial products use a combination:

    Network I(P/D)S
    - Packet signature analysis
    - Protocol analysis
    - Session analysis

    Host I(P/D)S
    - System call analysis
    - Binary behavior analysis (e.g., is IIS.exe accessing an unauthorized
    file/directory)
    - Automated Log analysis
    - File integrity monitoring

    Regardless of whether the product is an IPS or IDS, it is going to
    detect malicious activity via one or more of the aformentioned
    techniques. The difference with IPS is that once malicious activity is
    detected, the IPS has the ability to take action where this action might
    be:

    Network IPS
    - Terminate IP connection (if sitting in-line)
    - Send TCP Reset (if killing TCP session and not sitting in-line)
    - Send ICMP unreachable (if killing UDP session and not sitting
    in-line)(if my memory serves)

    Host IPS
    - Block system call
    - Block access
    - Terminate Process

    What one has to weigh are the pro's/con's of each. As Eric mentioned in
    his post, if you kill a session, you can't continue to collect data on
    that session, however, the session is killed so if it was actually an
    attack you are probably better off. In talking to users of IPS, they
    typically use the product as an IDS first (just detect stuff) and then
    begin to turn on IPS actions as they determine the reliability of its
    detection capabilities.

    Personally, I see value in both. Use an IPS to prevent what can
    reliably be prevented, use an IDS (or the IPS in IDS-only mode) to
    detect the more difficult to prevent attacks and collect additional
    forensic data. Now what you with all that data is another question (and
    why I built LogRhythm ;-).

    There are a couple of papers I wrote that might be of help, one is an
    intro to IDS and the detection techniques referred to above, the other
    is a brief statement on IPS. You can find them on the literature page
    at www.logrhythm.com.

    Cheers and good luck,

    Chris Petersen
    CTO, Security Conscious, Inc.

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Lily [mailto:xiaoche111@hotmail.com]
    Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 2:39 AM
    To: Eric McCarty
    Cc: focus-ids@securityfocus.com
    Subject: Re: need your help about IPS and IDS,thanks

    Thanks for your reply.But I still some question about it:
    1.I see 'HIPS creates a baseline of normal activity' and 'NIPS to
    perform pattern-matching between what is known as an attack and the
    traffic that is traversing the network' in the Web of Vigilar. If the
    meaning of these two sentences is HIPS can only build the normal model
    to detect while NIPS can use the pattern matching as the IDS? 2. If the
    'IPS just knows its an attack which needs to be
    blocked/dropped/reset',what's the meaning of log the traffic?I think the
    logs is no meaning because of the integrity.These type logs can not
    distinguish any known attack.
    3.I am puzzling what technology is used of IDS by IPS?
    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Eric McCarty" <eric@piteduncan.com>
    To: "Lily" <xiaoche111@hotmail.com>; <focus-ids@securityfocus.com>
    Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 1:00 AM
    Subject: RE: need your help about IPS and IDS,thanks

    Responses Inline :

    1.IPS must build normal model while IDS can use the abnormal
    model(misuse detection)?If it is what's the difference between the IDS's
    anomaly detection and IPS?

    IDS can watch the whole session and figure out whats just happened. IPS
    must know long before the session is finished in order to Prevent
    anything from happening.

    4.Why someone said IPS can not log the trace of the attacks while IDS
    can do?I think IPS can do it easily.Maybe because IPS is in-line and log
    the trace needing many time?

    The IPS would see the same packets any IDS would, the difference is that
    once the IPS figured out the traffic is malicious it takes action. Thus
    the IPS log would be up to the point of action being taken, so an IDS
    may see the entire flow of traffic and more acurately match the traffic
    to a signature of a known attack while the IPS just knows its an attack
    which needs to be blocked/dropped/rset.

    So depressed with the IDS/IPS and my thesis is flying in the sky:( Thank
    you in advance.

    I had this great apricot beer the other day, I highly recommend it.

    Lily

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