RE: TippingPoint Releases Open Source Code for First Intrusion Pr evention Test Tool, Tomahawk

["Compton, Rich" <RCompton () chartercom com>]

Why the heck would a pcap be confidential?  As far as I know the pcaps that
would be used in IPS testing would consist of some attack traffic (maybe
obfuscated w/ fragrouter) with a mix of valid traffic.  You replay the pcap
and verify that the attack traffic was blocked.  Anybody can generate and
record this traffic relatively easily.  Would it be because some IPSs work
well with certain types of traffic (pcaps) and not very well with others?
If so, then the community should share this information and these pcap files
to reproduce the results.  We could then make better informed decisions
about what is the right device to purchase for our networks.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kyle Quest [mailto:kquest () toplayer com]
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 9:21 PM
To: focus-ids () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: TippingPoint Releases Open Source Code for First Intrusion
Prevention Test Tool, Tomahawk


In-Reply-To:
<B0DF0180764CDC4888BACFD27C84125F10CF8E27 () stl02mexc11 corp chartercom com>

TippingPoint is making some interesting claims here:
1. "the first test tool designed specifically 
    to evaluate the unique capabilities of 
    network-based intrusion prevention systems",
2. "end users can set up their own IPS test 
    beds free of charge",
3. "TippingPoint is contributing Tomahawk 
    to the public to make IPS testing
    easier and more affordable for end users"



The big questions are... how useful is it and 
what is the motivation behind it? This looks 
like yet another pcap replay tool (remember tcpreplay :-]) 
that doesn't bring much new to the table. 
The heart and the soul of tools like this is 
the set of test pcaps; however, it's very unlikely 
that TippingPoint will give away their pcaps 
(for the same reason NetScreen doesn't give 
away its pcaps for tcpreplay). Without that... 
there seems to be very little use for it. 
I'd like to quote something Aaron Turner
(creator of tcpreplay who works for NetScreen)
said in one of his emails: 
"...NetScreen, like probably most companies
 considiers our set of pcap's confidential; 
 mostly because the amount of work that goes 
 into creating them."

What I'm trying to say is that given historical
data a tool like this backed by a company with
direct interest is not very likely to be useful.
More importantly it looks a bit like a marketing
trick (it's a bit ironic how a company who makes
an IPS device is giving away a tool to test IPS
devices). 

What we need... is Snort for IPS/IDS/Firewall
testing, which would be advanced by the security
community and not by a commerical company who's
business interests are in conflict with the purpose
of the tool.


That's just my take on it... 

Kyle 



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