RE: Application level IDS?

["Eric Greenberg" <eric () netframeworks com>]

Hi Smokey,
When I think of application-level IDS, wherein some level of knowledge of
correct or allowable application-level behavior is known and controlled, I
think of products such as those from Okena (recently acquired by Cisco),
Entercept's products (acquired by Network Associates), RealSecure Server
Sensor and Desktop Protector (formerly the bBlackICE product), and primarily
at the desktop, ZoneAlarm.  These application-level IDS's focus on managing
network-level actions based on application-level knowledge. 

You gave specific examples of exploits that may not be detectable by IDS
systems in general-- for example, it's very hard to detect SQL injection as
an incorrect behavior when it is acceptable, though risky, for an
application programmer to accept browser input as an argument to a system
call. If you or others have thoughts on how an architecture could be
developed to detect such things, I'd be interested. I'm sure there are some
brilliant minds that have given it some thought. In terms of general
approaches to controlling such things, one could consider Java code signing
for example, wherein there is the attempt to create the notion of a
sandbox-- a safe area-- for executable control. For example, one could
imagine containing an SQL script to within a sandbox, thus containing
anything that would otherwise be injectable that might represent a function
not allowed within the pre-defined sandbox. Or if there were a profile of
the application (a dynamically developed sandbox "profile") and an
application stepped out of those bounds, a system could perhaps detect it.
I tend to think of it as an operating system level function in an ideal
world. No doubt though, application-level IDS's nearly become operating
system overlays.

Regards,

Eric Greenberg
Chief Technical Officer
NetFrameworks, Inc.
http://www.NetFrameworks.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Smokey Lonesome [mailto:smokey_ids () yahoo com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:52 PM
To: focus-ids () securityfocus com
Subject: Application level IDS?


Hi IDS experts,

        I'm not deeply familiar with IDS technologies and
products, so I apologize in advance if this is a
too-trivial question:
        
        Is there anything like an "application level IDS" ?
(similar to what is now called "application
firewall"?)
        
        What I mean is something that has the non-intrusive characteritics
of an IDS (as it was discussed lately regarding Gartner's article - I'm
talking about I_D_S and not I_P_S) but which is doing deep application level
analysis, maybe even application-session
(cookies?) related analysis (though i'm not sure it is
possible to keep track of a session when you're just
monitoring traffic).
        I think such a system should be able to detect the
many application level attacks - SQL injections,
hidden-fields tampering, cookie poisoning etc. while
being more sensitive than a firewall\IPS considering
it is not blocking any traffic upon detecting
"suspicious" activity.

        Does something like that exist? Has any of you
implemented it? Can it be implemented using any of the
existing IDS's (maybe on top of Snort's stream4?
Someone mentioned in a recent post "build POP3
protocol intelligence" - how can this be done with
existing tools? can it be done for HTTP\HTML as well?)
        
        TIA,    
        (-) Smokey.
------
"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
(Steven Wright)


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Attend the Black Hat Briefings & Training, July 28 - 31 in Las Vegas, the
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"underground" security specialists.  See for yourself what the buzz is about!
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