IDS mailing list archives

Re: Announcement: Alert Verification for Snort


From: "Raistlin" <raistlin () gioco net>
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 12:35:19 +0200

Hi Martin, hi all.

My own .02 EUR:

1) Detect, Attack Present, Vulnerable:  True Positive
2) Detect, Attack Present, Not Vulnerable: Nontextual (i.e. detect
requiring contextual data to resolve)

Actually, I think that vulnerable or non-vulnerable is not tied to the
true/false positive concept... so I'd say:

Detect, Attack Present, Signature Present, [vuln|not]: True Positive

(thinking of a signature based system, reword it for your favorite system)

4) No Detect, Attack Present, Vulnerable: False Negative
5) No Detect, Attack Present, Not Vulnerable: ?

Here it is a bit more complex, but I'd say
No Detect, Attack Present, Signature Present, [Vuln|not vuln]: False
Negative

No Detect, Attack Present, Signature Present, Not Vulnerable: a lucky false
negative :)

6) No Detect, No Attack, [vuln|not vuln]: Don't care (true negative?)

True negative is the correct definition, but it encloses also:

No Detect, [Attack|No Attack], No Signature, [vuln|not vuln]

In case 2 the "nontextual" isn't a false positive but I think that most
people are calling it an FP these days.  I *personally* think that's a
misconception.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Stefano "Raistlin" Zanero
System Administrator Gioco.Net
public PGP key block at http://gioco.net/pgpkeys



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