IDS: Re: TippingPoint Releases Open Source Code for FirstIntrusionPrev ention Test Tool, Tomahawk

[Martin Roesch <roesch () sourcefire com>]

I'm the original author of Snort as well as the founder of Sourcefire  
(yes, it is called Sourcefire, I also came up with the name).  What  
TippingPoint has released is basically tcpreplay with some connection  
testing functionality from what I can see.  It's good to see them  
contributing to the open source community!  Sourcefire makes  
Snort-based sensor and management infrastructure as well as cool  
technology like RNA, IDS is a component of what we do but not the whole  
sum of our offering.
Sourcefire continues to innovate in the IDS arena and contribute those  
innovations back to the open source security community.  If you look at  
the development history of Snort over the past ~4 years since  
Sourcefire was founded you will see that we are dedicated to keeping  
the open source community on the cutting edge of Snort development.   
Recent examples include our new portscan detector and target-based  
defragmentation system that were developed internally at Sourcefire  
with Sourcefire dollars and then freely contributed back to the OSS  
community.
As far as pcaps are concerned, pcaps in a vacuum don't really add a  
whole lot beyond just testing basic detection capabilities.  You need  
to have real high grade network testing equipment like the stuff  
Spirent makes so that you can develop normalized, repeatable test  
environments in which to test detection capabilities.  Measuring  
latency, throughput, etc is also best done in an environment where you  
can setup repeatable test environments or at least where you can setup  
repeatable baseline environments to transmit your pcaps over the top  
of.  Tcpreplay doesn't meet this requirement particularly well all by  
itself, nor will the TippingPoint software.
Greg Shipley and the Neohapsis guys can comment on this stuff better  
than I, but one thing that I've learned from building Sourcefire for  
the past ~4 years is that testing gigabit IDS/IPS systems requires  
considerable expertise and infrastructure if you want to do anything  
more than just test basic detection capability.

     -Marty


On Nov 2, 2004, at 10:40 AM, kquest () toplayer com wrote:

> I'm aware that SourceFire (or whatever it's called)
> is backing up Snort; however, that's not how Snort started
> (snort was already there when SourceFile was created,
>  which is similar to what happened with zebra).
> I'm sorry if my history of snort is not correct,
> but I thought that's how it was. It's totally opposite
> to what we have there, where we have.
>
> There's also a difference between what's going on
> with Snort and this tool. SourceFire makes an IDS
> tool based on Snort where TippingPoint makes an IPS
> device and this tool is suppose to test IPSes.
>
> I do have have pcaps to contribute, but I'm definitely
> not going to give them on a silver platter to TippingPoint.
> We need a next generation IDS/IPS/whatever testing
> tool that goes beyond simple pcap replay. We need something
> that can take a pcap... then fully parse it (not just
> data link,network, and transport layers) and then
> have application intelligence to do something actually
> useful with it (e.g., perform application fragmentation
> for RPC, etc). The list goes on...
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> - Kyle, Don't forget the 'snort' folks have just as much of a
> vendor presence as TippingPoint or any other IDS vendor. TippingPoint
> _may_ be trying to encourage use of their tool for IDS evolution as a
> whole  much like snort has yet still has hopes they will get some
> benefit from their free tool.
>
>         Now do you have any pcaps to contribute to snort or the rest of
> us packetninjas?
>
>         -Dan
>
>
>
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--
Martin Roesch - Founder/CTO, Sourcefire Inc. - +1-410-290-1616
Sourcefire - Discover.  Determine.  Defend.
roesch () sourcefire com - http://www.sourcefire.com
Snort: Open Source Network IDS - http://www.snort.org


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