Snort mailing list archives

Re: snort.conf


From: "AJ Butcher, Information Systems and Computing" <Alex.Butcher () bristol ac uk>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 08:38:11 +0100



--On 20 April 2004 19:18 -0400 Matt Kettler <mkettler () evi-inc com> wrote:

At 03:05 PM 4/20/2004, Chuck Holley wrote:
[snip]
 What does the external_net mean??  I guess I am looking for a sample
conf with explanations of my options and what they mean.  I am brand new
to IDS, excuse my ignorance.

EXTERNAL_NET is just a variable used by many rules in the ruleset. Most
of the default ruleset looks for attacks which come from an IP address in
EXTERNAL_NET and go to HOME_NET. Others look for exploit responses going
the other way.

In general, EXTERNAL_NET should be set to whatever IP addresses you want
to monitor as potential sources of attack. "any" is a good starting
point, but !HOME_NET also has it's merits in that you save CPU time by
not checking packets generated by your own network as a source of attack.

However, what you want/need to monitor is very dependent on what kind of
network you run. For example, if you worked for a university, it might
well be that you would reverse the typical meanings of HOME and EXTERNAL
and monitor for attacks coming from your computer labs and being launched
into the rest of the world.

...or even monitor from any to any. :-)

IMHO, just like outbound (aka egress) filtering, this is good practice and shouldn't just be done by universities.

Best Regards,
Alex.
--
Alex Butcher: Security & Integrity, Personal Computer Systems Group
Information Systems and Computing             GPG Key ID: F9B27DC9
GPG Fingerprint: D62A DD83 A0B8 D174 49C4 2849 832D 6C72 F9B2 7DC9




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