Re: My Experience with the new Sourcefire VRT rules..

["Peter J Manis" <pmanis () comcast net>]

When I went on to look at the prices, it was $200/month, or $500/quarter, or $1800/year for a subscription to the VRT 
Rules.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Marc Hering 
  To: snort-users () lists sourceforge net 
  Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 1:19 PM
  Subject: [Snort-users] My Experience with the new Sourcefire VRT rules..



  Well, 
  I know there has been a lot of debate over the new VRT Rules and licensing methods from Sourcefire.  I was staying on 
the sidelines due to my relative newness to Snort in general, but now that I have had some interaction with the new 
website I wanted to let everyone know my experiences..  This is just what happened to me, and I am not trying to start 
any flame wars...so if you agree with me then great, if you don't agree with me then great!

  Let me start out by saying that I personally don't have a problem with what SF is doing,  After all, if I didn't want 
to pay I can still get the rules 5 days later for free or write my own.  but since I need the rules pretty fast (and I 
am not the best at writing rules..) I was ok with paying the subscription fee.   So I mosey on over to snort.org and 
try to sign up.  

  Well, all I can say is that if you are like me and don't mind paying the subscription, then GOOD LUCK!!  Finding the 
pricing is damn near impossible, and when you follow the link to even sign up, it tries to take you to a secure site 
THAT HAS AN INVALID CERTIFICATE! (the cert is valid, but it doesn't protect snort.ort  it is for sourcefire.com)   then 
when I get to the signup page, firefox reports that this site is not secure at all (even though it says https, there is 
no encryption going on) Yean I'm gonna transmit info plaintext..NOT!   And still no mention of how much it costs until 
after you create an account.....  Oh and for all you ACID users out there, I just found out that you can't do a rule 
lookup anymore even if you are a subscriber ( In their defense, they DO say the rule lookup function is forthcoming and 
I am sure some clever person will write a patch eventually)

  I completely understand why Sourcefire is changing the way the rules are distributed, and I support them in it after 
all, they do deserve to get paid for hard work, however if they are going to make a change like this that affects the 
whole snort community, then I would request that they at least make sure that everything works before they put it live!
  Thanks!

  </rant mode>