Re: IDS is dead, etc

[belka () att net]

Martin Roesch right on the money.  IDS alone is just not very useful.  I have 
seen IDS deployed in a managed security setting, where data from IDS, HIDS, 
Vulnerability Scanning, and Firewall logs are all run through a correlation 
engine to produce a true security picture.  The particular center I was at was 
able do this in real time.  So -- if the IDS shows and attack, but the 
vulnerability scan shows you are patched against the attack and the HIDs is 
quiet -- there is no alert.  On the other hand, if the IDS shows an attack 
that the latest vulnerability scan show was a hole, and the HIDS is going off, 
you have a big problem.

It is the correlation of the data in a managed, 24x7 environment with analysts 
making the final call of the few events spit out by the correlation engine 
that is the key.  That is where the real value of NIDS, HIDS, and Vulnerabilty 
scanning lies.

--
Rob Frazier
www.xakephet.com
915-695-7238
817-271-7557
> Just to throw my hat into the ring on this topic in this particular
> forum, I thought I'd comment. (like I don't get enough email as it
> is...)
>
> Boiling the Gartner report down, here are my take aways:
>
> 1) IDSes produce too many false positives (i.e. the quality of the
> information they produce is low)
>
> 2) IDSes produce too much data (i.e. the quantity of information they
> produce is high)
>
> 3) There is no solution to these problems, therefore IDS is dead and we
> should all buy in-line IPS, er, "deep content inspection firewalls"!
>
> So, is there any way to make the quality of data coming out of the IDS
> higher while at the same time diminishing the amount of information
> generated?  We've been talking about this exact topic on this list since
> 1999 on and off and I think all the IDS vendors have ideas how to
> achieve this goal by integrating network maps and host/service
> identification into the IDS's world view.  If those ideas should
> actually make their way to market, would that make the systems more
> useful?  I believe so.  (At this point I usually pitch Sourcefire, but
> I'll spare you all.)
>
> IDS is all about giving people awareness of what's happening on their
> networks independent of the network management picture or the other
> security infrastructure.  Deploying security infrastructure without
> having a mechanism to monitor that infrastructure's behavior and
> efficacy is like rolling out a spacecraft with all of the telemetry
> systems removed, it may be doing its job but when something goes wrong
> (and it will) you will be relying on data coming out of failed/bypassed
> systems to try to effect repairs.
>
> The whole "ASICs will save us all" part of the argument is where I
> really start scratching my head.  How do ASICs, which tend to exchange
> flexibility for performance, suddenly become these hyperintelligent
> application layer analysis devices with enough flexibility to evolve
> with the relatively rapid changes in the application protocols?  NPUs I
> can see, but ASICs really don't seem like an appropriate solution here. 
> I believe wishful thinking might be driving this line of argument...
>
> Finally, we have the "if you can detect the attacks, why don't you just
> prevent them?!?!?" argument.  What happens if I can't be 100% certain
> about the attack?  Blocking attacks is an all-or-nothing proposition, if
> you're wrong you're 100% wrong and you just DoSed yourself, what are the
> chances that large enterprise networks are going to trust their critical
> infrastructure to that kind of system? 
>
> Anyway, I hope that wasn't too much of a rehash of other people's
> thoughts and you guys found it somewhat insightful.  Obviously I think
> Gartner is being inflammatory and creating their own hype cycle, but
> I've got a vested interest in this technological field.  I believe that
> noisy, inaccurate IDS is definitely dying due to a number of factors,
> but it's the vendors/developers themselves that are killing it.
>
>
>      -Marty
>
> -- 
> Martin Roesch - Founder/CTO, Sourcefire Inc. - (410)290-1616
> Sourcefire: Snort-based Enterprise Intrusion Detection Infrastructure
> roesch () sourcefire com - http://www.sourcefire.com
> Snort: Open Source Network IDS - http://www.snort.org
>
>
>
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attend the Black Hat Briefings & Training, July 28 - 31 in Las Vegas, the 
world's premier technical IT security event! 10 tracks, 15 training sessions, 
1,800 delegates from 30 nations including all of the top experts, from CSO's to 
"underground" security specialists.  See for yourself what the buzz is about!  
Early-bird registration ends July 3.  This event will sell out. www.blackhat.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------