Thursday, December 11, 2014

Project Snort++, a.k.a. Snort 3.0

Snort++

The Snort++ project has been hard at work for a while now and we are finally ready to release the first alpha of the next generation Snort IPS (Intrusion Prevention System). This post will show you what Snort++ has to offer and guide you through the steps from download to demo. If you are unfamiliar with Snort you should take a look at the Snort documentation first. We will cover the following topics:
  • Overview
  • Dependencies
  • Download
  • Build Snort
  • Run Snort
  • Documentation
  • Squeal


OVERVIEW

This first alpha release is based on early Snort 2.9.6 and excludes all but one of Snort's dynamic preprocessors (ftp_telnet). Work is underway to port that functionality and sync with 2.9.7; those updates will be rolled out as they become available.

    Project = Snort++
    Binary = snort
    Version = 3.0.0-a1

Here are some key features in this alpha release:
  • Support multiple packet processing threads
  • Use a shared configuration and attribute table
  • Use a simple, scriptable configuration
  • Make key components pluggable
  • Autodetect services for portless configuration
  • Support sticky buffers in rules
  • Autogenerate reference documentation
  • Provide better cross platform support
Additional features on the roadmap include:
  • Use a shared network map
  • Support pipelining of packet processing
  • Support hardware offload and data plane integration
  • Rewrite critical modules like TCP reassembly and HTTP inspection
  • Support proxy mode
  • Facilitate component testing
  • Simplify memory management
  • Provide all of Snort's functionality


DEPENDENCIES

If you already build Snort, you may have everything you need. If not, grab the latest:
  • autotools or cmake to build from source
  • g++ >= 4.8 or other C++11 compiler
  • daq from http://www.snort.org for packet IO
  • dnet from http://code.google.com/p/libdnet/ for network utility functions
  • LuaJIT from http://luajit.org for configuration and scripting
  • pcap from http://www.tcpdump.org for tcpdump style logging
  • pcre from http://www.pcre.org for regular expression pattern matching
  • zlib from http://www.zlib.net for decompression
  • pkgconfig from http://www.freedesktop.org to build the example plugins


DOWNLOAD

There are two source tarballs, once for autotools and one for cmake:
    snort-3.0.0-a1-130-auto.tar.gz
    snort-3.0.0-a1-130-cmake.tar.gz


BUILD SNORT

First do these setup steps:

    export my_path=/path/to/snorty
    tar zxf snort-tarball
    cd snort-3.0.0*

Then do one of the following:
  • To build with autotools, simply do the usual from the top level directory:
    ./configure --prefix=$my_path
    make -j 8 install
  • To build with cmake and make, run configure_cmake.sh. It will automatically create and populate a new subdirectory named 'build'.
    ./configure_cmake.sh --prefix=$my_path
    cd build
    make -j 8 install

Note:
  • If you can do src/snort -V you built successfully.
  • If you are familiar with cmake, you can run cmake/ccmake instead of configure_cmake.sh.
  • cmake --help will list any available generators, such as Xcode. Feel free to use one, however help with those will be provided in a later post.


RUN SNORT

First set up the environment:

    export LUA_PATH=$my_path/include/snort/lua/\?.lua\;\;
    export SNORT_LUA_PATH=$my_path/etc/snort

Then give it a go:
  • Snort++ provides lots of help from the command line. Here are some examples:
    $my_path/bin/snort --help
    $my_path/bin/snort --help-module suppress
    $my_path/bin/snort --help-config | grep thread
  • Examine and dump a pcap:
    $my_path/bin/snort -r pcap
    $my_path/bin/snort -K text -d -e -q -r pcap
  • Verify a config, with or w/o rules:
    $my_path/bin/snort -c $my_path/etc/snort/snort.lua
    $my_path/bin/snort -c $my_path/etc/snort/snort.lua -R $my_path/etc/snort/sample.rules
  • Run IDS mode. In the following, replace a.pcap with your favorite. pcaps/ is a directory with one or more *.pcap files:
    $my_path/bin/snort -c $my_path/etc/snort/snort.lua -R $my_path/etc/snort/sample.rules \
        -r a.pcap -A alert_test -n 100000
  • Let's suppress 1:2123. We could edit the conf or just do this:
    $my_path/bin/snort -c $my_path/etc/snort/snort.lua -R $my_path/etc/snort/sample.rules \
        -r a.pcap -A alert_test -n 100000 --lua "suppress = { { gid = 1, sid = 2123 } }"
  • Go whole hog on a directory with multiple packet threads:
    $my_path/bin/snort -c $my_path/etc/snort/snort.lua -R $my_path/etc/snort/sample.rules \
        --pcap-filter \*.pcap --pcap-dir pcaps/ -A alert_fast --max-packet-threads 8


DOCUMENTATION

Take a look at the manual, parts of which are generated by the code so it stays up to date:

    $my_path/share/doc/snort/snort_manual.pdf
    $my_path/share/doc/snort/snort_manual.html
    $my_path/share/doc/snort/snort_manual/index.html

It does not yet have much on the how and why, but it does have all the currently available configuration, etc. Some key changes to rules:
  • you must use comma separated content sub options like this: content:"foo", nocase;
  • buffer selectors must appear before the content and remain in effect until changed
  • pcre buffer selectors were deleted
  • check the manual for more on Snort++ vs Snort
  • check the manual reference section to understand how parameters are defined, etc.
It also covers new features not demonstrated here:
  • snort2lua, a tool to convert Snort 2.X conf and rules to the new form
  • a new HTTP inspector, new_http_inspect - incomplete but off to a good start
  • a binder, for mapping configuration to traffic
  • a wizard for port-independent configuration
  • improved rule parsing - arbitrary whitespace, C style comments, #begin/#end comments
  • local and remote command line shell


SQUEAL o")~

We hope you are as excited about Snort++ as we are. Although a lot of work remains, we wanted to give you a chance to try it out and let us know what you think on the snort-users list. In the meantime, we'll keep our snout to the grindstone.