Snort mailing list archives

Re: many rules with good fast_pattern vs. single rule with pcre


From: "Joel Esler (jesler)" <jesler () cisco com>
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 21:24:04 +0000

The answer is:

It depends.

How big are the packets?  
Is the pcre really simple, or it is it extremely complex?
What is the prequalifying content match?
Do you have a pcap?
If so, you can test this.


On Dec 29, 2014, at 3:43 PM, Duane Howard <duane.security () gmail com> wrote:

I'm writing some rules, and I find myself asking a question that's probably been answered, but my searching isn't 
turning up something obvious.

In looking at a set of malware samples the only consistent pattern that can be used for all variants is a bunch of 
null bytes. This is a pretty poor fast pattern, and this alone makes for a large number of FP's. Adding another match 
to the rule can be done, but there are ~20 variants for the next byte match, these are good fast_pattern matches from 
my basic testing.

My question, is whether it's better to have 20 rules with a good fast pattern, or one rule with a mediocre fast 
pattern and a pcre covering the 20 variants?

This is another instance where I find myself wishing flowbits were taken into consideration *before* entering full 
rule evaluation, etc.

./d
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