Snort mailing list archives

RE: Centralized DB Server??


From: Paulie <paulie () hayseed net>
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 15:01:48 -0700 (PDT)


Just jumping in here but I saw a recomendation somewhere to use something
like swan between distributed sensors and the centralized console.
Anybody actually accomplished this?

This would get problematic if you were attempting to force the IPSEC
tunnels through a NAT-ing box i suppose.


Paul

On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, patrick.n.fitzgerald.1 wrote:


I would have to say, No, that's not a good idea. Keep in mind that while
the MySQL development team keeps security in mind, the MySQL server is not
designed to be outside the firewall. I would strongly suggest that you
rig up some firewall rules to block all traffic from any other host to the
MySQL port. Even that is dangerous given the prevalence of spoofing, but
it's better than nothing. In that case, you would want Snort to ignore
traffic to the MySQL port only from the remote sensor.

I would also strongly recommend using stunnel or a VLAN or something
similar, as MySQL queries are (mostly) plaintext.

Something that my project is currently working on to circumvent this
problem is a PHP script which catches XML formatted alerts and puts them
into the MySQL DB. The XML module can use https, so we just let Apache
handle the transport layer instead of MySQL.  Unfortunately, because of
differences between the two data models this is proving somewhat
difficult. But, we do feel pretty strongly against leaving MySQL open.

Patrick F.
CERIAS IRDB project

On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, Marc Thompson wrote:

Kris,

Are your sensors in different geographic locations?

Thank you for responding.  My sensors will be in several different
geographical locations.  I've been brainstorming this a bit, and it seems
that I should be able to easily ignore alerts that are being generated by
traffic to the MySQL TCP port.  Does this sound like the answer?

Thank you for your response,
Marc Thompson


-----Original Message-----
From: Kris Quinby [mailto:kquinby () pdx medscapeinc com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 2:29 PM
To: Marc Thompson; snort-users () lists sourceforge net
Subject: RE: [Snort-users] Centralized DB Server??


Are your sensors in different geographic locations?  If not you could have
two network interfaces in each NIDS, one with no IP on the network you are
watching, and one on a "management" network.  Then you could have your MySQL
data base on the management network collecting from all your sensors.

Kris

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Thompson [mailto:Marc.Thompson () bops com]
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 7:21 AM
To: snort-users () lists sourceforge net
Subject: [Snort-users] Centralized DB Server??


I would like to use a IDS architecture using Snort and MySQL
that utilizes multiple NIDS across many routers and sites, but
only one database to collect alerts.

My question is, wouldn't the action of sending an alert to a
centralized database set off the same rule on a NIDS box sitting
between the alert source and the remote database?

Is the only way to prevent this double-logging of alerts to specify
that the 'in-between' NIDS should ignore traffic from the remote NIDS
to the central database server?  If so, is there a standard way of
specifying this in the Snort configuration file? (ignore traffic
globally to the MySQL TCP port?)

Thank you in advance,
Marc Thompson


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