- Preface
- Introducing the CLI Configuration Guide
- Logging In to the Sensor
- Initializing the Sensor
- Setting Up the Sensor
- Configuring Interfaces
- Configuring Virtual Sensors
- Configuring Event Action Rules
- Defining Signatures
- Configuring Anomaly Detections
- Configuring External Product Interfaces
- Configuring IP Logging
- Displaying and Capturing Live Traffic on an Interface
- Configuring Attack Response Controller for Blocking and Rate Limiting
- Configuring SNMP
- Working With Configuration Files
- Administrative Tasks for the Sensor
- Configuring AIM-IPS
- Configuring AIP-SSM
- Configuring IDSM-2
- Configuring NME-IPS
- Upgrading, Downgrading, and Installing System Images
- Obtaining Software
- System Architecture
- Signature Engines
- Troubleshooting
- CLI Error Messages
- Open Source License Files
- Glossary
- Index
Cisco Intrusion Prevention System Sensor CLI Configuration Guide for IPS 6.1
Bias-Free Language
The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.
- Updated:
- April 30, 2008
Chapter: Signature Engines
- Understanding Signature Engines
- Master Engine
- Regular Expression Syntax
- AIC Engine
- Atomic Engine
- Fixed Engine
- Flood Engine
- Meta Engine
- Multi String Engine
- Normalizer Engine
- Service Engines
- Service DNS Engine
- Service FTP Engine
- Service Generic Engine
- Service H225 Engine
- Service HTTP Engine
- Service IDENT Engine
- Service MSRPC Engine
- Service MSSQL Engine
- Service NTP Engine
- Service P2P Engine
- Service RPC Engine
- Service SMB Advanced Engine
- Service SNMP Engine
- Service SSH Engine
- Service TNS Engine
- State Engine
- String Engines
- Sweep Engines
- Traffic Anomaly Engine
- Traffic ICMP Engine
- Trojan Engines
Signature Engines
This appendix describes the IPS signature engines. It contains the following sections:
•
Understanding Signature Engines
Understanding Signature Engines
A signature engine is a component of the Cisco IPS that is designed to support many signatures in a certain category. An engine is composed of a parser and an inspector. Each engine has a set of parameters that have allowable ranges or sets of values.
Note The Cisco IPS 6.1 engines support a standardized Regex.
Cisco IPS 6.1 contains the following signature engines:
•AIC—Provides thorough analysis of web traffic. The AIC engine provides granular control over HTTP sessions to prevent abuse of the HTTP protocol. It allows administrative control over applications, such as instant messaging and gotomypc, that try to tunnel over specified ports. You can also use AIC to inspect FTP traffic and control the commands being issued. There are two AIC engines: AIC FTP and AIC HTTP.
•Atomic—The Atomic engines are now combined into two engines with multi-level selections. You can combine Layer 3 and Layer 4 attributes within one signature, for example IP + TCP. The Atomic engine uses the standardized Regex support.
–Atomic ARP—Inspects Layer 2 ARP protocol. The Atomic ARP engine is different because most engines are based on Layer 3 IP protocol.
–Atomic IP—Inspects IP protocol packets and associated Layer 4 transport protocols.
This engine lets you specify values to match for fields in the IP and Layer 4 headers, and lets you use Regex to inspect Layer 4 payloads.
Note All IP packets are inspected by the Atomic IP engine. This engine replaces the 4.x Atomic ICMP, Atomic IP Options, Atomic L3 IP, Atomic TCP, and Atomic UDP engines.
–Atomic IPv6—Detects two IOS vulnerabilities that are stimulated by malformed IPv6 traffic.
•Fixed—Performs parallel regular expression matches up to a fixed depth, then stops inspection using a single regular expression table. There are three Fixed engines: ICMP, TCP, and UDP.
•Flood—Detects ICMP and UDP floods directed at hosts and networks. There are two Flood engines: Flood Host and Flood Net.
•Meta—Defines events that occur in a related manner within a sliding time interval. This engine processes events rather than packets.
•Multi String—Inspects Layer 4 transport protocols and payloads by matching several strings for one signature. This engine inspects stream-based TCP and single UDP and ICMP packets.
•Normalizer—Configures how the IP and TCP normalizer functions and provides configuration for signature events related to the IP and TCP normalizer. Allows you to enforce RFC compliance.
•Service—Deals with specific protocols. Service engine has the following protocol types:
–DNS—Inspects DNS (TCP and UDP) traffic.
–FTP—Inspects FTP traffic.
–Generic—Decodes custom service and payload.
–Generic Advanced—Analyzes traffic based on the mini-programs that are written to parse the packets.
–H225— Inspects VoIP traffic. Helps the network administrator make sure the SETUP message coming in to the VoIP network is valid and within the bounds that the policies describe. Is also helps make sure the addresses and Q.931 string fields such as url-ids, email-ids, and display information adhere to specific lengths and do not contain possible attack patterns.
–HTTP—Inspects HTTP traffic. The WEBPORTS variable defines inspection port for HTTP traffic.
–IDENT—Inspects IDENT (client and server) traffic.
–MSRPC—Inspects MSRPC traffic.
–MSSQL—Inspects Microsoft SQL traffic.
–NTP—Inspects NTP traffic.
–P2P—Inspects P2P traffic.
–RPC—Inspects RPC traffic.
–SMB Advanced—Processes Microsoft SMB and Microsoft RPC over SMB packets.
The SMB engine has been replaced by the SMB Advanced engine. Even though the SMB engine is still visible in IDM, IME, and the CLI, its signatures have been obsoleted; that is, the new signatures have the obsoletes parameter set with the IDs of their corresponding old signatures. Use the new SMB Advanced engine to rewrite any custom signature that were in the SMB engine.
–SNMP—Inspects SNMP traffic.
–SSH—Inspects SSH traffic.
–TNS—Inspects TNS traffic.
•State—Stateful searches of strings in protocols such as SMTP. The state engine now has a hidden configuration file that is used to define the state transitions so new state definitions can be delivered in a signature update.
•String—Searches on Regex strings based on ICMP, TCP, or UDP protocol. There are three String engines: String ICMP, String TCP, and String UDP.
•Sweep—Analyzes sweeps from a single host (ICMP and TCP), from destination ports (TCP and UDP), and multiple ports with RPC requests between two nodes. There are two Sweep engines: Sweep and Sweep Other TCP.
•Traffic Anomaly—Inspects TCP, UDP, and other traffic for worms.
•Traffic ICMP—Analyzes nonstandard protocols, such as TFN2K, LOKI, and DDOS. There are only two signatures with configurable parameters.
•Trojan—Analyzes traffic from nonstandard protocols, such as BO2K andTFN2K. There are three Trojan engines: Bo2k, Tfn2k, and UDP. There are no user-configurable parameters in these engines.
Master Engine
The Master engine provides structures and methods to the other engines and handles input from configuration and alert output. This section describes the Master engine, and contains the following topics:
General Parameters
The following parameters are part of the Master engine and apply to all signatures (if it makes sense for that signature engine).
Table B-1 lists the general master engine parameters.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
signature-id |
Specifies the ID of this signature. |
number |
sub-signature-id |
Specifies the sub ID of this signature |
number |
alert-severity |
Specifies the severity of the alert: • • • • |
• • • • |
sig-fidelity-rating |
Specifies the rating of the fidelity of this signature. |
0 to 100 |
promisc-delta |
Specifies the delta value used to determine the seriousness of the alert. |
0 to 30 |
sig-name |
Specifies the name of the signature. |
sig-name |
alert-notes |
Provides additional information about this signature that will be included in the alert message. |
alert-notes |
user-comments |
Provides comments about this signature. |
comments |
alert-traits |
Specifies traits you want to document about this signature. |
0 to 65335 |
release |
Provides the release in which the signature was most recently updated. |
release |
signature-creation-date |
Specifies the date the signature was created. |
— |
signature-type |
Specifies the signature category. |
• • • • |
engine |
Specifies the engine to which the signature belongs. Note |
— |
event-count |
Specifies the number of times an event must occur before an alert is generated. |
1 to 65535 |
event-count-key |
Specifies the storage type on which to count events for this signature: • • • • • |
• • • • • |
specify-alert-interval {yes | no} |
Enables the alert interval: • |
2 to 1000 |
status |
Specifies whether the signature is enabled or disabled, active or retired. |
enabled | retired {yes | no} |
obsoletes |
Indicates that a newer signature has disabled an older signature. |
— |
vulnerable-os-list |
When combined with passive OS fingerprinting, it allows the IPS to determine if it is likely a given attack is relevant to the target system. |
aix |
mars-category {yes | no} |
Maps signatures to a MARS attack category.1 |
— |
1 This is a static information category that you can set in the configuration and view in the alerts.Refer to the MARS documentation for more information. |
Promiscuous Delta
The promiscuous delta lowers the risk rating of certain alerts in promiscuous mode. Because the sensor does not know the attributes of the target system and in promiscuous mode cannot deny packets, it is useful to lower the prioritization of promiscuous alerts (based on the lower risk rating) so the administrator can focus on investigating higher risk rating alerts. In inline mode, the sensor can deny the offending packets so that they never reach the target host, so it does not matter if the target was vulnerable. Because the attack was not allowed on the network, the IPS does not subtract from the risk rating value. Signatures that are not service, OS, or application-specific have 0 for the promiscuous delta. If the signature is specific to an OS, service, or application, it has a promiscuous delta of 5, 10, or 15 calculated from 5 points for each category.
We recommend that you do NOT change the promisc-delta setting for a signature.
Obsoletes
The Cisco signature team uses the obsoletes field to indicate obsoleted, older signatures that have been replaced by newer, better signatures, and to indicate disabled signatures in an engine when a better instance of that engine is available.
Vulnerable OS List
When you combine the vulnerable OS setting of a signature with passive OS fingerprinting, the IPS can determine if it is likely that a given attack is relevant to the target system. If the attack is found to be relevant, the risk rating value of the resulting alert receives a boost. If the relevancy is unknown, usually because there is no entry in the passive OS fingerprinting list, then no change is made to the risk rating. If there is a passive OS fingerprinting entry and it does not match the vulnerable OS setting of a signature, the risk rating value is decreased. The default value by which to increase or decrease the risk rating is +/- 10 points.
For More Information
•For more information about promiscuous mode, see Understanding Promiscuous Mode.
•For more information about passive OS fingerprinting, see Configuring OS Identifications.
Alert Frequency
The purpose of the alert frequency parameter is to reduce the volume of the alerts written to the Event Store to counter IDS DoS tools, such as stick. There are four modes: Fire All, Fire Once, Summarize, and Global Summarize. The summary mode is changed dynamically to adapt to the current alert volume. For example, you can configure the signature to Fire All, but after a certain threshold is reached, it starts summarizing.
Table B-2 lists the alert frequency parameters.
Event Actions
Note Most of the following event actions belong to each signature engine unless they are not appropriate for that particular engine.
The following event action parameters belong to each signature engine (if it makes sense for that signature engine):
•Alert and Log Actions
–produce-alert—Writes an evIdsAlert to Event Store.
–produce-verbose-alert—Includes an encoded dump (possibly truncated) of the offending packet in the evIdsAlert.
–log-attacker-packets—Starts IP logging of packets containing the attacker address and sends an alert.
–log-victim-packets—Starts IP logging of packets containing the victim address and sends an alert.
–log-pair-packets—(Inline mode only) Starts IP logging of packets containing the attacker/victim address pair.
–request-snmp-trap—Sends request to NotificationApp to perform SNMP notification.
•Deny Actions
–deny-packet-inline—(Inline mode only) Does not transmit this packet.
Note You cannot delete the event action override for deny-packet-inline because it is protected. If you do not want to use that override, set the override-item-status to disabled for that entry.
–deny-connection-inline—(Inline mode only) Does not transmit this packet and future packets on the TCP Flow.
–deny-attacker-victim-pair-inline—(Inline mode only) Does not transmit this packet and future packets on the attacker/victim address pair for a specified period of time.
–deny-attacker-service-pair-inline—(Inline mode only) Does not transmit this packet and future packets on the attacker address victim port pair for a specified period of time.
–deny-attacker-inline—(Inline mode only) Does not transmit this packet and future packets from the attacker address for a specified period of time.
Note This is the most severe of the deny actions. It denies the current and future packets from a single attacker address. Each deny address times out for X seconds from the first event that caused the deny to start, where X is the amount of seconds that you configured. You can clear all denied attacker entries with the clear denied-attackers command, which permits the addresses back on the network.
–modify-packet-inline—(Inline mode only) Modifies packet data to remove ambiguity about what the end point might do with the packet.
Note Modify-packet-inline is part of the Normalizer Engine. It scrubs the packet and corrects irregular issues such as bad checksum, out of range values, and other RFC violations.
•Other Actions
–request-block-connection—Requests ARC to block this connection.
–request-block-host—Requests ARC to block this attacker host.
–request-rate-limit—Requests ARC to perform rate limiting.
–reset-tcp-connection—Sends TCP resets to hijack and terminate the TCP flow.
Understanding Deny Packet Inline
For signatures that have deny-packet-inline configured as an action or for an event action override that adds deny-packet-inline as an action, the following actions may be taken:
•droppedPacket
•deniedFlow
•tcpOneWayResetSent
The deny packet inline action is represented as a dropped packet action in the alert. When a deny packet inline occurs for a TCP connection, it is automatically upgraded to a deny connection inline action and seen as a denied flow in the alert. If the IPS denies just one packet, the TCP continues to try to send that same packet again and again, so the IPS denies the entire connection to ensure it never succeeds with the resends.
When a deny connection inline occurs, the IPS also automatically sends a TCP one-way reset, which shows up as a TCP one-way reset sent in the alert. When the IPS denies the connection, it leaves an open connection on both the client (generally the attacker) and the server (generally the victim). Too many open connections can result in resource problems on the victim. So the IPS sends a TCP reset to the victim to close the connection on the victim side (usually the server), which conserves the resources of the victim. It also prevents a failover that would otherwise allow the connection to fail over to a different network path and reach the victim. The IPS leaves the attacker side open and denies all traffic from it.
Regular Expression Syntax
Regular expressions (Regex) are a powerful and flexible notational language that allow you to describe text. In the context of pattern matching, regular expressions allow a succinct description of any arbitrary pattern.
Table B-3 lists the IPS signature Regex syntax.
All repetition operators will match the shortest possible string as opposed to other operators that consume as much of the string as possible thus giving the longest string match.
Table B-4 lists examples of Regex patterns.
AIC Engine
The Application Inspection and Control (AIC) engine inspects HTTP web traffic and enforces FTP commands. This section describes the AIC engine and its parameters, and contains the following topics:
•AIC Engine and Sensor Performance
Understanding the AIC Engine
AIC provides thorough analysis of web traffic. It provides granular control over HTTP sessions to prevent abuse of the HTTP protocol. It allows administrative control over applications, such as instant messaging and gotomypc, that try to tunnel over specified ports. Inspection and policy checks for P2P and instant messaging are possible if these applications are running over HTTP.
AIC also provides a way to inspect FTP traffic and control the commands being issued. You can enable or disable the predefined signatures or you can create policies through custom signatures.
Note The AIC engine runs when HTTP traffic is received on AIC web ports. If traffic is web traffic, but not received on the AIC web ports, the Service HTTP engine is executed. AIC inspection can be on any port if it is configured as an AIC web port and the traffic to be inspected is HTTP traffic.
AIC Engine and Sensor Performance
Application policy enforcement is a unique sensor feature. Rather than being based on traditional IPS technologies that inspect for exploits, vulnerabilities, and anomalies, AIC policy enforcement is designed to enforce HTTP and FTP service policies. The inspection work required for this policy enforcement is extreme compared with traditional IPS inspection work. A large performance penalty is associated with using this feature. When AIC is enabled, the overall bandwidth capacity of the sensor is reduced.
AIC policy enforcement is disabled in the IPS default configuration. If you want to activate AIC policy enforcement, we highly recommend that you carefully choose the exact policies of interest and disable those you do not need. Also, if your sensor is near its maximum inspection load capacity, we recommend that you not use this feature since it can oversubscribe the sensor. We recommend that you use the adaptive security appliance firewall to handle this type of policy enforcement.
AIC Engine Parameters
The AIC engine defines signatures for deep inspection of web traffic. It also defines signatures that authorize and enforce FTP commands. There are two AIC engines: AIC HTTP and AIC FTP.
The AIC engine has the following features:
•Web traffic:
–RFC compliance enforcement
–HTTP request method authorization and enforcement
–Response message validation
–MIME type enforcement
–Transfer encoding type validation
–Content control based on message content and type of data being transferred
–URI length enforcement
–Message size enforcement according to policy configured and the header
–Tunneling, P2P and instant messaging enforcement.
This enforcement is done using regular expressions. There are predefined signature but you can expand the list.
•FTP traffic:
–FTP command authorization and enforcement
Table B-5 lists the parameters that are specific to the AIC HTTP engine.
Table B-6 lists the parameters that are specific to the AIC FTP engine.
For More Information
•For the procedures for configuring AIC engine signatures, see Configuring AIC Signatures.
•For an example of a custom AIC signature, see Creating an AIC Signature.
•For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Atomic Engine
The Atomic engine contains signatures for simple, single packet conditions that cause alerts to be fired. This section describes the Atomic engine, and contains the following topics:
Atomic ARP Engine
The Atomic ARP engine defines basic Layer 2 ARP signatures and provides more advanced detection of the ARP spoof tools dsniff and ettercap.
Table B-7 lists the parameters that are specific to the Atomic ARP engine.
Atomic IP Engine
The Atomic IP engine defines signatures that inspect IP protocol headers and associated Layer 4 transport protocols (TCP, UDP, and ICMP) and payloads.
Note The Atomic engines do not store persistent data across packets. Instead they can fire an alert from the analysis of a single packet.
Table B-8 lists the parameters that are specific to the Atomic IP engine.
Atomic IPv6 Engine
The Atomic IPv6 engine detects two IOS vulnerabilities that are stimulated by malformed IPv6 traffic. These vulnerabilities can lead to router crashes and other security issues. One IOS vulnerability deals with multiple first fragments, which cause a buffer overflow. The other one deals with malformed ICMPv6 Neighborhood Discovery options, which also cause a buffer overflow.
Note IPv6 increases the IP address size from 32 bits to 128 bits, which supports more levels of addressing hierarchy, a much greater number of addressable nodes, and autoconfiguration of addresses.
There are eight Atomic IPv6 signatures. The Atomic IPv6 inspects Neighborhood Discovery protocol of the following types:
•Type 133—Router Solicitation
•Type 134—Router Advertisement
•Type 135—Neighbor Solicitation
•Type 136—Neighbor Advertisement
•Type 137—Redirect
Note Hosts and routers use Neighborhood Discovery to determine the link-layer addresses for neighbors known to reside on attached links and to quickly purge cached values that become invalid. Hosts also use Neighborhood Discovery to find neighboring routers that will forward packets on their behalf.
Each Neighborhood Discovery type can have one or more Neighborhood Discovery options. The Atomic IPv6 engine inspects the length of each option for compliance with the legal values stated in RFC 2461. Violations of the length of an option results in an alert corresponding to the option type where the malformed length was encountered (signatures 1601 to 1605).
Note The Atomic IPv6 signatures do not have any specific parameters to configure.
Table B-9 lists the Atomic IPv6 signatures.
Fixed Engine
This section describes the Fixed engine, and contains the following topics:
•Understanding the Fixed Engine
Understanding the Fixed Engine
The Fixed engine combines multiple regular expression patterns in to a single pattern matching table that allows a single search through the data. It supports ICMP, TCP, and UDP protocols. After a minimum inspection depth is reached (1 to 100 bytes), inspection stops. There are three Fixed engines: Fixed ICMP, Fixed TCP, and Fixed UDP.
Note Fixed TCP and Fixed UDP use the service-ports parameter as exclusion ports. Fixed ICMP uses the service-ports parameter as excluded ICMP types.
Fixed ICMP Engine
Table B-10 lists the parameters specific to the Fixed ICMP engine.
For More Information
For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Fixed TCP Engine
Table B-11 lists the parameters specific to the Fixed TCP engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
direction |
Direction of traffic: • • |
from-service |
max-payload-inspect-length |
Specifies the maximum inspection depth for the signature. |
1 to 250 |
regex-string |
Specifies the regular expression to search for in a single packet. |
string |
specify-exact-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables exact match offset: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-min-match-length |
(Optional) Enables minimum match length: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-service-ports |
Enables service ports for use: • |
0 to 655351 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
For More Information
For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Fixed UDP Engine
Table B-12 lists the parameters specific to the Fixed UDP engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
direction |
Direction of traffic: • • |
from-service |
max-payload-inspect-length |
Specifies the maximum inspection depth for the signature. |
1 to 250 |
regex-string |
Specifies the regular expression to search for in a single packet. |
string |
specify-exact-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables exact match offset: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-min-match-length |
(Optional) Enables minimum match length: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-service-ports |
Enables service ports for use: • |
0 to 655351 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
For More Information
For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Flood Engine
The Flood engine defines signatures that watch for any host or network sending multiple packets to a single host or network. For example, you can create a signature that fires when 150 or more packets per second (of the specific type) are found going to the victim host. There are two types of Flood engines: Flood Host and Flood Net.
Table B-13 lists the parameters specific to the Flood Host engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
protocol |
Which kind of traffic to inspect. |
ICMP |
rate |
Threshold number of packets per second. |
0 to 655351 |
icmp-type |
Specifies the value for the ICMP header type. |
0 to 65535 |
dst-ports |
Specifies the destination ports when you choose UDP protocol. |
0 to 655352 |
src-ports |
Specifies the source ports when you choose UDP protocol. |
0 to 655353 |
1 An alert fires when the rate is greater than the packets per second. 2 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. 3 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
Table B-14 lists the parameters specific to the Flood Net engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
gap |
Gap of time allowed (in seconds) for a flood signature. |
0 to 65535 |
peaks |
Number of allowed peaks of flood traffic. |
0 to 65535 |
protocol |
Which kind of traffic to inspect. |
ICMP |
rate |
Threshold number of packets per second. |
0 to 655351 |
sampling-interval |
Interval used for sampling traffic. |
1 to 3600 |
icmp-type |
Specifies the value for the ICMP header type. |
0 to 65535 |
1 An alert fires when the rate is greater than the packets per second. |
Meta Engine
The Meta engine defines events that occur in a related manner within a sliding time interval. This engine processes events rather than packets. As signature events are generated, the Meta engine inspects them to determine if they match any or several Meta definitions. The Meta engine generates a signature event after all requirements for the event are met.
All signature events are handed off to the Meta engine by the Signature Event Action Processor. The Signature Event Action Processor hands off the event after processing the minimum hits option. Summarization and event action are processed after the Meta engine has processed the component events.
A large number of Meta signatures could adversely affect overall sensor performance.
Table B-15 lists the parameters specific to the Meta engine.
For More Information
For an example of a custom Meta engine signature, see Example Meta Signature.
Multi String Engine
The Multi String engine lets you define signatures that inspect Layer 4 transport protocol (ICMP, TCP, and UDP) payloads using multiple string matches for one signature. You can specify a series of regular expression patterns that must be matched to fire the signature. For example, you can define a signature that looks for regex 1 followed by regex 2 on a UDP service. For UDP and TCP you can specify port numbers and direction. You can specify a single source port, a single destination port, or both ports. The string matching takes place in both directions.
Use the Multi String engine when you need to specify more than one Regex pattern. Otherwise, you can use the String ICMP, String TCP, or String UDP engine to specify a single Regex pattern for one of those protocols.
Table B-16 lists the parameters specific to the Multi String Engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
inspect-length |
Length of stream or packet that must contain all offending strings for the signature to fire. |
0 to 4294967295 |
protocol |
Layer 4 protocol selection. |
icmp |
regex-component |
List of regex components: • • |
list (1 to 16 items) |
port-selection |
Type of TCP or UDP port to inspect: • • • |
0 to 65535 2 |
exact-spacing |
Exact number of bytes that must be between this regex string and the one before, or from the beginning of the stream/packet if it is the first entry in the list. |
0 to 4294967296 |
min-spacing |
Minimum number of bytes that must be between this regex string and the one before, or from the beginning of the stream/packet if it is the first entry in the list. |
0 to 4294967296 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 Port matching is performed bidirectionally for both the client-to-server and server-to-client traffic flow directions. For example, if the source-ports value is 80, in a client-to-server traffic flow direction, inspection occurs if the client port is 80. In a server-to-client traffic flow direction, inspection occurs if the server port is port 80. 2 A valid value is a comma- separated list of integer ranges a-b[,c-d] within 0 to 65535. The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
The Multi String engine can have a significant impact on memory usage.
For More Information
For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Normalizer Engine
The Normalizer engine deals with IP fragmentation and TCP normalization. This section describes the Normalizer engine, and contains the following topics:
•Understanding the Normalizer Engine
Understanding the Normalizer Engine
Note You cannot add custom signatures to the Normalizer engine. You can tune the existing ones.
The Normalizer engine deals with IP fragment reassembly and TCP stream reassembly. With the Normalizer engine you can set limits on system resource usage, for example, the maximum number of fragments the sensor tries to track at the same time. Sensors in promiscuous mode report alerts on violations. Sensors in inline mode perform the action specified in the event action parameter, such as produce alert, deny packet inline, and modify packet inline.
For signature 3050 Half Open SYN Attack, if you choose modify packet inline as the action, you can see as much as 20 to 30% performance degradation while the protection is active. The protection is only active during an actual SYN flood.
IP Fragmentation Normalization
Intentional or unintentional fragmentation of IP datagrams can hide exploits making them difficult or impossible to detect. Fragmentation can also be used to circumvent access control policies like those found on firewalls and routers. And different operating systems use different methods to queue and dispatch fragmented datagrams. If the sensor has to check for all possible ways that the end host can reassemble the datagrams, the sensor becomes vulnerable to DoS attacks. Reassembling all fragmented datagrams inline and only forwarding completed datagrams, refragmenting the datagram if necessary, prevents this. The IP Fragmentation Normalization unit performs this function.
TCP Normalization
Through intentional or natural TCP session segmentation, some classes of attacks can be hidden. To make sure policy enforcement can occur with no false positives and false negatives, the state of the two TCP endpoints must be tracked and only the data that is actually processed by the real host endpoints should be passed on. Overlaps in a TCP stream can occur, but are extremely rare except for TCP segment retransmits. Overwrites in the TCP session should not occur. If overwrites do occur, someone is intentionally trying to elude the security policy or the TCP stack implementation is broken. Maintaining full information about the state of both endpoints is not possible unless the sensor acts as a TCP proxy. Instead of the sensor acting as a TCP proxy, the segments are ordered properly and the normalizer looks for any abnormal packets associated with evasion and attacks.
AIP SSM and the Normalizer Engine
The majority of the features in the Normalizer engine are not used on the AIP SSM, because the ASA itself handles the normalization. Packets on the ASA IPS modules go through a special path in the Normalizer that only reassembles fragments and puts packets in the right order for the TCP stream. The Normalizer does not do any of the normalization that is done on an inline IPS appliance, because that causes problems in the way the ASA handles the packets.
The following Normalizer engine signatures are not supported:
•1300.0
•1304.0
•1305.0
•1307.0
•1308.0
•1309.0
•1311.0
•1315.0
•1316.0
•1317.0
•1330.0
•1330.1
•1330.2
•1330.9
•1330.10
•1330.12
•1330.14
•1330.15
•1330.16
•1330.17
•1330.18
For More Information
For the procedures for configuring signatures in the Normalizer engine, see Configuring IP Fragment Reassembly, and Configuring TCP Stream Reassembly.
Normalizer Engine Parameters
Table B-17 lists the parameters that are specific to the Normalizer engine.
Service Engines
The Service engines analyze Layer 5+ traffic between two hosts. These are one-to-one signatures that track persistent data. The engines analyze the Layer 5+ payload in a manner similar to the live service.
The Service engines have common characteristics but each engine has specific knowledge of the service that it is inspecting. The Service engines supplement the capabilities of the generic string engine specializing in algorithms where using the string engine is inadequate or undesirable.
This section describes the Service engines, and contains the following topics:
Service DNS Engine
The Service DNS engine specializes in advanced DNS decode, which includes anti-evasive techniques, such as following multiple jumps. It has many parameters such as lengths, opcodes, strings, and so forth. The Service DNS engine is a biprotocol inspector operating on both TCP and UDP port 53. It uses the stream for TCP and the quad for UDP.
Table B-18 lists the parameters specific to the Service DNS engine.
Service FTP Engine
The Service FTP engine specializes in FTP port command decode, trapping invalid port commands and the PASV port spoof. It fills in the gaps when the String engine is not appropriate for detection. The parameters are Boolean and map to the various error trap conditions in the port command decode. The Service FTP engine runs on TCP ports 20 and 21. Port 20 is for data and the Service FTP engine does not do any inspection on this. It inspects the control transactions on port 21.
Table B-19 lists the parameters that are specific to the Service FTP engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
direction |
Direction of traffic: • • |
from-service |
ftp-inspection-type |
Type of inspection to perform: • • • |
bad-port-cmd-address |
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 655351 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
Service Generic Engine
The Service Generic engine allows programmatic signatures to be issued in a config-file-only signature update. It has a simple machine and assembly language that is defined in the configuration file. It runs the machine code (distilled from the assembly language) through its virtual machine, which processes the instructions and pulls the important pieces of information out of the packet and runs them through the comparisons and operations specified in the machine code.
It is intended as a rapid signature response engine to supplement the String and State engines.
New functionality adds the Regex parameter to the Service Generic engine and enhanced instructions. The Service Generic engine can analyze traffic based on the mini-programs that are written to parse the packets. These mini-programs are composed of commands, which dissect the packet and look for certain conditions.
Note You cannot use the Service Generic engine to create custom signatures.
Due to the proprietary nature of this complex language, we do not recommend that you edit the Service Generic engine signature parameters other than severity and event action.
Table B-20 lists the parameters specific to the Service Generic engine.
Service H225 Engine
The Service H225 engine analyzes H225.0 protocol, which consists of many subprotocols and is part of the H.323 suite. H.323 is a collection of protocols and other standards that together enable conferencing over packet-based networks.
H.225.0 call signaling and status messages are part of the H.323 call setup. Various H.323 entities in a network, such as the gatekeeper and endpoint terminals, run implementations of the H.225.0 protocol stack. The Service H225 engine analyzes H225.0 protocol for attacks on multiple H.323 gatekeepers, VoIP gateways, and endpoint terminals. It provides deep packet inspection for call signaling messages that are exchanged over TCP PDUs. The Service H225 engine analyzes the H.225.0 protocol for invalid H.255.0 messages, and misuse and overflow attacks on various protocol fields in these messages.
H.225.0 call signaling messages are based on Q.931 protocol. The calling endpoint sends a Q.931 setup message to the endpoint that it wants to call, the address of which it procures from the admissions procedure or some lookup means. The called endpoint either accepts the connection by transmitting a Q.931 connect message or rejects the connection. When the H.225.0 connection is established, either the caller or the called endpoint provides an H.245 address, which is used to establish the control protocol (H.245) channel.
Especially important is the SETUP call signaling message because this is the first message exchanged between H.323 entities as part of the call setup. The SETUP message uses many of the commonly found fields in the call signaling messages, and implementations that are exposed to probable attacks will mostly also fail the security checks for the SETUP messages. Therefore, it is highly important to check the H.225.0 SETUP message for validity and enforce checks on the perimeter of the network.
The Service H225 engine has built-in signatures for TPKT validation, Q.931 protocol validation, and ASN.1PER validations for the H225 SETUP message. ASN.1 is a notation for describing data structures. PER uses a different style of encoding. It specializes the encoding based on the data type to generate much more compact representations.
You can tune the Q.931 and TPKT length signatures and you can add and apply granular signatures on specific H.225 protocol fields and apply multiple pattern search signatures of a single field in Q.931 or H.225 protocol.
The Service H225 engine supports the following features:
•TPKT validation and length check
•Q.931 information element validation
•Regular expression signatures on text fields in Q.931 information elements
•Length checking on Q.931 information elements
•SETUP message validation
•ASN.1 PER encode error checks
•Configuration signatures for fields like ULR-ID, E-mail-ID, h323-id, and so forth for both regular expression and length.
There is a fixed number of TPKT and ASN.1 signatures. You cannot create custom signatures for these types. For TPKT signatures, you should only change the value-range for length signatures. You should not change any parameters for ASN.1. For Q.931 signatures, you can add new regular expression signatures for text fields. For SETUP signatures, you can add signatures for length and regular expression checks on various SETUP message fields.
Table B-21 lists parameters specific to the Service H225 engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
message-type |
Type of H225 message to which the signature applies: • • • • |
asn.1-per |
policy-type |
Type of H225 policy to which the signature applies: • • • • • Regex and presence are not valid for TPKT signatures. |
length |
specify-field-name |
(Optional) Enables field name for use. Only valid for SETUP and Q.931 message types. Gives a dotted representation of the field name that this signature applies to. • |
1 to 512 |
specify-invalid-packet-index |
(Optional) Enables invalid packet index for use for specific errors in ASN, TPKT, and other errors that have fixed mapping. • |
0 to 255 |
specify-regex-string |
The regular expression to look for when the policy type is regex. This is never set for TPKT signatures: • • |
regex-string |
specify-value-range |
Valid for the length or value policy types (0x00 to 6535). Not valid for other policy types. • |
0 to 655351 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
For More Information
For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Service HTTP Engine
The Service HTTP engine is a service-specific string-based pattern-matching inspection engine. The HTTP protocol is one of the most commonly used in networks of today. In addition, it requires the most amount of preprocessing time and has the most number of signatures requiring inspection making it critical to the overall performance of the system.
The Service HTTP engine uses a Regex library that can combine multiple patterns into a single pattern-matching table allowing a single search through the data. This engine searches traffic directed to web services only to web services, or HTTP requests. You cannot inspect return traffic with this engine. You can specify separate web ports of interest in each signature in this engine.
HTTP deobfuscation is the process of decoding an HTTP message by normalizing encoded characters to ASCII equivalent characters. It is also known as ASCII normalization.
Before an HTTP packet can be inspected, the data must be deobfuscated or normalized to the same representation that the target system sees when it processes the data. It is ideal to have a customized decoding technique for each host target type, which involves knowing what operating system and web server version is running on the target. The Service HTTP engine has default deobfuscation behavior for the Microsoft IIS web server.
Table B-22 lists the parameters specific the Service HTTP engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
de-obfuscate |
Applies anti-evasive deobfuscation before searching. |
true | false |
max-field-sizes |
Maximum field sizes grouping. |
— |
specify-max-arg-field-length |
(Optional) Enables maximum argument field length: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-max-header-field-length |
(Optional) Enables maximum header field length: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-max-request-length |
(Optional) Enables maximum request field length: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-max-uri-field-length |
(Optional) Enables the maximum URI field length: • |
0 to 65535 |
regex |
Regular expression grouping. |
— |
specify-arg-name-regex |
(Optional) Enables searching the Arguments field for a specific regular expression: • |
— |
specify-header-regex |
(Optional) Enables searching the Header field for a specific regular expression: • |
— |
specify-request-regex |
(Optional) Enables searching the Request field for a specific regular expression: • • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-uri-regex |
(Optional) Regular expression to search in HTTP URI field. The URI field is defined to be after the HTTP method (GET, for example) and before the first CRLF. The regular expression is protected, which means you cannot change the value. |
[/\\][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][.]jpeg |
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 655351 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
For More Information
•For an example Service HTTP custom signature, see Example Service HTTP Signature.
•For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Service IDENT Engine
The Service IDENT engine inspects TCP port 113 traffic. It has basic decode and provides parameters to specify length overflows.
For example, when a user or program at computer A makes an ident request of computer B, it may only ask for the identity of users of connections between A and B. The ident server on B listens for connections on TCP port 113. The client at A establishes a connection, then specifies which connection it wants identification for by sending the numbers of the ports on A and B that the connection is using. The server at B determines what user is using that connection, and replies to A with a string that names that user. The Service IDENT engine inspects the TCP port 113 for ident abuse.
Table B-23 lists the parameters specific to the Service IDENT engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
inspection-type |
Type of inspection to perform: • • • |
— |
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 655351 |
direction |
Direction of the traffic: • • |
from-service |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
Service MSRPC Engine
The Service MSRPC engine processes MSRPC packets. MSRPC allows for cooperative processing between multiple computers and their application software in a networked environment. It is a transaction-based protocol, implying that there is a sequence of communications that establish the channel and pass processing requests and replies.
MSRPC is an ISO Layer 5-6 protocol and is layered on top of other transport protocols such as UDP, TCP, and SMB. The MSRPC engine contains facilities to allow for fragmentation and reassembly of the MSRPC PDUs.
This communication channel is the source of recent Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Window XP security vulnerabilities. The Service MSRPC engine only decodes the DCE and RPC protocol for the most common transaction types.
Table B-24 lists the parameters specific to the Service MSRPC engine.
For More Information
For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Service MSSQL Engine
The Service MSSQL engine inspects the protocol used by the Microsoft SQL server. There is one MSSQL signature. It fires an alert when it detects an attempt to log in to an MSSQL server with the default sa account. You can add custom signatures based on MSSQL protocol values, such as login username and whether a password was used.
Table B-25 lists the parameters specific to the Service MSSQL engine.
Service NTP Engine
The Service NTP engine inspects NTP protocol. There is one NTP signature, the NTP readvar overflow signature, which fires an alert if a readvar command is seen with NTP data that is too large for the NTP service to capture. You can tune this signature and create custom signatures based on NTP protocol values, such as mode and size of control packets.
Table B-26 lists the parameters specific to the Service NTP engine.
Service P2P Engine
P2P networks use nodes that can simultaneously function as both client and server for the purpose of file sharing. P2P networks often contain copyrighted material and their use on a corporate network can violate company policy. The Service P2P engine monitors such networks and provides optimized TCP and UDP P2P protocol identification. The Service P2P engine has the following characteristics:
•Listens on all TCP and UDP ports
•Increased performance through the use of hard-coded signatures rather than regular expressions
•Ignores traffic once P2P protocol is identified or after seeing 10 packets without a P2P protocol being identified
Note Because the P2P signatures are hard coded, the only parameters that you can edit are the Master engine parameters.
For More Information
For a list of the Master engine parameters, see Master Engine.
Service RPC Engine
The Service RPC engine specializes in RPC protocol and has full decode as an anti-evasive strategy. It can handle fragmented messages (one message in several packets) and batch messages (several messages in a single packet).
The RPC portmapper operates on port 111. Regular RPC messages can be on any port greater than 550. RPC sweeps are like TCP port sweeps, except that they only count unique ports when a valid RPC message is sent. RPC also runs on UDP.
Table B-27 lists the parameters specific to the Service RPC engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
direction |
Direction of traffic: • • |
from-service |
protocol |
Protocol of interest. |
tcp |
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 655351 |
specify-regex-string |
(Optional) Enables using a regular expression string: • – • – |
0 to 65535 |
specify-is-spoof-src |
(Optional) Enables the spoof source address: • |
true | false |
specify-port-map-program |
(Optional) Enables the portmapper program: • |
0 to 9999999999 |
specify-rpc-max-length |
(Optional) Enables RPC maximum length: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-rpc-procedure |
(Optional) Enables RPC procedure: • |
0 to 1000000 |
specify-rpc-program |
(Optional) Enables RPC program: • |
0 to 1000000 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
For More Information
For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
Service SMB Advanced Engine
The SMB engine has been replaced by the SMB Advanced engine. Even though the SMB engine is still visible in IDM, IME, and the CLI, its signatures have been obsoleted; that is, the new signatures have the obsoletes parameter set with the IDs of their corresponding old signatures. Use the new SMB Advanced engine to rewrite any custom signature that were in the SMB engine.
The Service SMB Advanced engine processes Microsoft SMB and Microsoft RPC over SMB packets. The Service SMB Advanced engine uses the same decoding method for connection-oriented MSRPC as the MSRPC engine with the requirement that the MSRPC packet must be over the SMB protocol. The Service SMB Advanced engine supports MSRPC over SMB on TCP ports 139 and 445. It uses a copy of the connection-oriented DCS/RPC code from the MSRPC engine.
Table B-28 lists the parameters specific to the Service SMB Advanced engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 65535 |
specify-command |
(Optional) Enables SMB commands: • |
0 to 255 |
specify-direction |
(Optional) Enables traffic direction: • – – |
from service |
specify-operation |
(Optional) Enables MSRPC over SMB: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-regex-string |
(Optional) Enables searching for regex strings: • |
|
specify-exact-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables exact match offset: • |
|
specify-min-match-length |
(Optional) Enables minimum match length: • |
|
specify-payload-source |
(Optional) Enables payload source: • |
|
specify-scan-interval |
(Optional) Enables scan interval: • |
1 to 131071 |
specify-tcp-flags |
(Optional) Enables TCP flags: • • |
• • • • • • • • |
specify-type |
(Optional) Enables type of MSRPC over SMB packet: • |
• • • • |
specify-uuid |
(Optional) Enables MSRPC over UUID: • |
32-character string composed of hexadecimal characters 0-9, a-f, A-F. |
specify-hit-count |
(Optional) Enables hit counting: • |
1 to 65535 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. 2 Currently supporting 37 (0x25) SMB_COM_TRANSACTION command \x26amp; 162 (0xA2) SMB_COM_NT_CREATE_ANDX command. 3 TCP_Data performs regex over entire packet, SMB_Data performs regex on SMB payload only, Resource_DATA performs regex on SMB_Resource. 3 For More Information 3 For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax. |
Service SNMP Engine
The Service SNMP engine inspects all SNMP packets destined for port 161. You can tune SNMP signatures and create custom SNMP signatures based on specific community names and object identifiers.
Instead of using string comparison or regular expression operations to match the community name and object identifier, all comparisons are made using the integers to speed up the protocol decode and reduce storage requirements.
Table B-29 lists the parameters specific to the Service SNMP engine.
Service SSH Engine
The Service SSH engine specializes in port 22 SSH traffic. Because all but the setup of an SSH session is encrypted, the engine only looks at the fields in the setup. There are two default signatures for SSH. You can tune these signatures, but you cannot create custom signatures.
Table B-30 lists the parameters specific to the Service SSH engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
SSH Version |
||
length-type |
Inspects for one of the following SSH length types: • – • – |
0 to 65535 |
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 655351 |
specify-packet-depth |
(Optional) Enables packet depth: • |
0 to 65535 |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
Service TNS Engine
The Service TNS engine inspects TNS protocol. TNS provides database applications with a single common interface to all industry-standard network protocols. With TNS, applications can connect to other database applications across networks with different protocols. The default TNS listener port is TCP 1521. TNS also supports REDIRECT frames that redirect the client to another host and/or another TCP port. To support REDIRECT packets, the TNS engine listens on all TCP ports and has a quick TNS frame header validation routine to ignore non-TNS streams.
Table B-31 lists the parameters specific to the Service TNS engine.
For More Information
For a list of the signature regular expression syntax, see Regular Expression Syntax.
State Engine
The State engine provides state-based regular expression-based pattern inspection of TCP streams. A state engine is a device that stores the state of something and at a given time can operate on input to transition from one state to another and/or cause an action or output to take place. State machines are used to describe a specific event that causes an output or alert. There are three state machines in the State engine: SMTP, Cisco Login, and LPR Format String.
Table B-32 lists the parameters specific to the State engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
state-machine |
State machine grouping. |
• • • |
cisco-login |
Specifies the state machine for Cisco login: • – – – – |
• • • • |
lpr-format-string |
Specifies the state machine to inspect for the LPR format string vulnerability: • – – – |
• • • |
state-name |
Specifies the state machine for the SMTP protocol: • – – – – – |
• • • • • |
direction |
Direction of the traffic: • • |
from-service |
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 655351 |
specify-exact-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables exact match offset: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-max-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables maximum match offset: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-min-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables minimum match offset: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-min-match- |
(Optional) Enables minimum match length: • |
0 to 65535 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true| false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
String Engines
This section describes the String engine, and contains the following topics:
•String ICMP Engine Parameters
Understanding String Engines
The String engine is a generic-based pattern-matching inspection engine for ICMP, TCP, and UDP protocols. The String engine uses a regular expression engine that can combine multiple patterns into a single pattern-matching table allowing for a single search through the data. There are three String engines: String ICMP, String TCP, and String UDP.
String ICMP Engine Parameters
Table B-33 lists the parameters specific to the String ICMP engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
direction |
Direction of the traffic: • • |
from-service |
icmp-type |
ICMP header TYPE value. |
0 to 181 |
specify-exact-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables exact match offset: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-min-match- |
(Optional) Enables minimum match length: • |
0 to 65535 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. 1 For More Information 1 For an example custom String engine signature, see Example String TCP Signature. |
String TCP Engine Parameters
Table B-34 lists the parameters specific to the String TCP engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
direction |
Direction of the traffic: • • |
from-service |
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 655351 |
specify-exact-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables exact match offset: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-min-match- |
(Optional) Enables minimum match length: • |
0 to 65535 |
strip-telnet-options |
Strips the Telnet option characters from the data before the pattern is searched.2 |
true | false |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. 2 This parameter is primarily used as an IPS anti-evasion tool. |
For More Information
For an example custom String engine signature, see Example String TCP Signature.
String UDP Engine Parameters
Table B-35 lists the parameters specific to the String UDP engine.
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
direction |
Direction of the traffic: • • |
from-service |
service-ports |
A comma-separated list of ports or port ranges where the target service resides. |
0 to 655351 |
specify-exact-match-offset |
(Optional) Enables exact match offset: • |
0 to 65535 |
specify-min-match- |
(Optional) Enables minimum match length: • |
0 to 65535 |
swap-attacker-victim |
True if attacker and victim addresses and ports (source and destination) are swapped in the alert message and actions. False for no swapping (default). |
true | false |
1 The second number in the range must be greater than or equal to the first number. |
For More Information
For an example custom String engine signature, see Example String TCP Signature.
Sweep Engines
This section describes the Sweep engines, and contains the following topics:
Sweep Engine
The Sweep engine analyzes traffic between two hosts or from one host to many hosts. You can tune the existing signatures or create custom signatures. The Sweep engine has protocol-specific parameters for ICMP, UDP, and TCP.
The alert conditions of the Sweep engine ultimately depend on the count of the unique parameter. The unique parameter is the threshold number of distinct hosts or ports depending on the type of sweep. The unique parameter triggers the alert when more than the unique number of ports or hosts is seen on the address set within the time period. The processing of unique port and host tracking is called counting.
Event action filters based on source and destination IP addresses do not function for the Sweep engine, because they do not filter as regular signatures. To filter source and destination IP addresses in sweep alerts, use the source and destination IP address filter parameters in the Sweep engine signatures.
A unique parameter must be specified for all signatures in the Sweep engine. A limit of 2 through 40 (inclusive) is enforced on the sweeps. 2 is the absolute minimum for a sweep, otherwise, it is not a sweep (of one host or port). 40 is a practical maximum that must be enforced so that the sweep does not consume excess memory. More realistic values for unique range between 5 and 15.
TCP sweeps must have a TCP flag and mask specified to determine which sweep inspector slot in which to count the distinct connections. The ICMP sweeps must have an ICMP type specified to discriminate among the various types of ICMP packets.
Data Node
When an activity related to Sweep engine signatures is seen, the IPS uses a Data Node to determine when it should stop monitoring for a particular host. The Data Node contains various persistent counters and variables needed for cross-packet reassembly of streams and for tracking the inspection state on a per-stream/per-source/per-destination basis The Data Node containing the sweep determines when the sweep should expire. The Data Node stops a sweep when the Data Node has not seen any traffic for x number of seconds (depending on the protocol).
There are several adaptive timeouts for the Data Nodes. The Data Node expires after 30 seconds of idle time on the address set after all of the contained objects have been removed. Each contained object has various timeouts, for example, TCP Stream has a one-hour timeout for established connections. Most other objects have a much shorter expiration time, such as 5 or 60 seconds.
Table B-36 lists the parameters specific to the Sweep engine.
Sweep Other TCP Engine
The Sweep Other TCP engine analyzes traffic between two hosts looking for abnormal packets typically used to fingerprint a victim. You can tune the existing signatures or create custom signatures.
TCP sweeps must have a TCP flag and mask specified. You can specify multiple entries in the set of TCP flags. And you can specify an optional port range to filter out certain packets.
Table B-37 lists the parameters specific to the Sweep Other TCP engine.
Traffic Anomaly Engine
The Traffic Anomaly engine contains nine anomaly detection signatures covering the three protocols (TCP, UDP, and other). Each signature has two subsignatures, one for the scanner and the other for the worm-infected host (or a scanner under worm attack). When anomaly detection discovers an anomaly, it triggers an alert for these signatures. All anomaly detection signatures are enabled by default and the alert severity for each one is set to high.
When a scanner is detected but no histogram anomaly occurred, the scanner signature fires for that attacker (scanner) IP address. If the histogram signature is triggered, the attacker addresses that are doing the scanning each trigger the worm signature (instead of the scanner signature). The alert details state which threshold is being used for the worm detection now that the histogram has been triggered. From that point on, all scanners are detected as worm-infected hosts.
The following anomaly detection event actions are possible:
•Produce alert—Writes the event to the Event Store.
•Deny attacker inline—(Inline only) Does not transmit this packet and future packets originating from the attacker address for a specified period of time.
•Log attacker pairs—Starts IP logging for packets that contain the attacker address.
•Log pair packets—Starts IP logging for packets that contain the attacker and victim address pair.
•Deny attacker service pair inline—Blocks the source IP address and the destination port.
•Request SNMP trap—Sends a request to NotificationApp to perform SNMP notification.
•Request block host—Sends a request to ARC to block this host (the attacker).
Note You can edit or tune anomaly detection signatures but you cannot create custom anomaly detection signatures.
Table 38 lists the anomaly detection worm signatures.
Traffic ICMP Engine
The Traffic ICMP engine analyzes nonstandard protocols, such as TFN2K, LOKI, and DDoS. There are only two signatures (based on the LOKI protocol) with user-configurable parameters.
TFN2K is the newer version of the TFN. It is a DDoS agent that is used to control coordinated attacks by infected computers (zombies) to target a single computer (or domain) with bogus traffic floods from hundreds or thousands of unknown attacking hosts. TFN2K sends randomized packet header information, but it has two discriminators that can be used to define signatures. One is whether the L3 checksum is incorrect and the other is whether the character 64 `A' is found at the end of the payload. TFN2K can run on any port and can communicate with ICMP, TCP, UDP, or a combination of these protocols.
LOKI is a type of back door Trojan. When the computer is infected, the malicious code creates an ICMP Tunnel that can be used to send small payload in ICMP replies (which may go straight through a firewall if it is not configured to block ICMP.) The LOKI signatures look for an imbalance of ICMP echo requests to replies and simple ICMP code and payload discriminators.
The DDoS category (excluding TFN2K) targets ICMP-based DDoS agents. The main tools used here are TFN and Stacheldraht. They are similar in operation to TFN2K, but rely on ICMP only and have fixed commands: integers and strings.
Table B-39 lists the parameters specific to the Traffic ICMP engine.
Trojan Engines
The Trojan engines analyze nonstandard protocols, such as BO2K and TFN2K. There are three Trojan engines: Trojan BO2K, TrojanTFN2K, and Trojan UDP.
BO was the original Windows back door Trojan that ran over UDP only. It was soon superseded by BO2K. BO2K supported UDP and TCP both with basic XOR encryption. They have plain BO headers that have certain cross-packet characteristics.
BO2K also has a stealthy TCP module that was designed to encrypt the BO header and make the cross-packet patterns nearly unrecognizable. The UDP modes of BO and BO2K are handled by the Trojan UDP engine. The TCP modes are handled by the Trojan BO2K engine.
Note There are no specific parameters to the Trojan engines, except for swap-attacker-victim in the Trojan UDP engine.
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