The usefullness of IDSes (Was: Re: Is Marty Lying?)

[Peter Busser <peter () trusteddebian org>]

Hi!

> "Detect intrusions" - if you can set an IDS signature for something, then
> you shouldn't be vulnerable to it.  So the functionality of IDS is to tell
> you when you've been compromised by six-month old public vulnerabilities
> that dvdman has finally gotten his hands on an exploit for, that you never
> bothered to patch for?
>
> Useless.

And what if you use an IDS for checking a security policy? E.g. if you have a
special server that is only used by the accounting department and you set up
rules to detect connections to that server coming from other departments?

Or to monitor port scanning probes on the network. A system shouldn't be
vulnerable to a probe. But it could mean the prelude to an attack.

Of course these things could be detected by other means as well.

Groetjes,
Peter Busser
-- 
The Adamantix Project
Taking trustworthy software out of the labs, and into the real world
http://www.adamantix.org/

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