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Re: [Snort-users] Alert payloads not matching alert rules

To: Marc Norton <mnorton@sourcefire.com>, Joel Esler <joel.esler@sourcefire.com>, snort-users@lists.sourceforge.net <snort-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Snort-users] Alert payloads not matching alert rules
From: <spagno_f@ifrance.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:12:01 +0100 (CET)
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Ok thank you for this hint, I will try this option.

Somebody asked for a 'top' output. I will try to send this to the list, but as 
I am not onsite, it may take some time. To answer another question I had : no, 
I am not using any specific option in snort.conf. It is mainly the original 
snort.conf file. I only configured some parameters (servers...) and 
enabled/disabled some preprocessors.

For Joel's question : is there any reliable way to get know much traffic is 
dropped ? Does this information appear in the output of the "performance" 
preprocessor ?

Fabien

Marc Norton:
> On Snort 2.6.0, if your reassembling port 1521 traffic in stream4 you 
> might want to use the stream4 zero_flush_buffers options to wipe any 
> empty buffer space clean so you don't false positive.  That often clears 
> up this symptom, its worth a shot.
> 
> Joel Esler wrote:
> > Are you dropping any packets?  It seems that with 3 processes of Snort, on 
> > the same box, with only 2 Gigs of RAM trying to analyze that much traffic, 
> > you are probably dropping packets in addition to Snort overwriting its own 
> > memory.
> >
> > J
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 07:54:34PM +0100, it looks like 
> > spagno_f@ifrance.com sent me:
> >   
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> The machine is a dual Opteron with 2GB of RAM. It runs 3 instances of 
> >> snort. Each snort process sends logs to a specific log directory. Each 
> >> snort process has its barnyard process processing its logs/alerts to the 
> >> mysql DB. Each snort process listens on its own interface. Each interface 
> >> is attached to the SPAN port of a gigabit switch.
> >>
> >> Fabien
> >>
> >> Joel Esler:
> >>     
> >>> How much RAM do you have in your machine?
> >>>
> >>> Joel
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 06:48:22PM +0100, it looks like 
> >>> spagno_f@ifrance.com sent me:
> >>>       
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>>
> >>>> We encounter a strange problem with snort 2.6.0, Barnyard, BASE, all 
> >>>> compiled from source files. 
> >>>>
> >>>> We have alerts which do not match the alert rules generating the alert. 
> >>>> Actually, by looking at the payload, we cannot find content we should 
> >>>> see. It seems several people already complained about this problem 
> >>>> before, without any real answer 
> >>>> (http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=snort-users&m=112505975311791&w=2)
> >>>>
> >>>> Here is an example below. 
> >>>> We have this rule generating alerts we see in BASE :
> >>>>
> >>>> alert ip $EXTERNAL_NET any -> $HOME_NET any (msg:"SHELLCODE x86 NOOP";
> >>>> content: "|90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90|"; depth: 128;
> >>>> reference:arachnids,181; classtype:shellcode-detect; sid:648; rev:4;)
> >>>>
> >>>> Alert generated by this rule, in BASE :
> >>>>
> >>>> #(6 - 56146) [2006-09-29 15:27:22] [arachnids/181] [local/648] 
> >>>> [snort/:648]
> >>>> SHELLCODE x86 NOOP
> >>>> IPv4: 172.16.5.27 -> 172.16.5.12
> >>>>       hlen=5 TOS=0 dlen=155 ID=59197 flags=2 offset=0 TTL=128 
> >>>> chksum=45271
> >>>> TCP:  port=3563 -> dport: 1521  flags=***AP*** seq=831827579
> >>>>       ack=2816413717 off=5 res=0 win=16370 urp=0 chksum=12348
> >>>> Payload:  length = 115
> >>>>
> >>>> 000 : 00 73 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 03 5E 98 20 80 00   .s.........^. ..
> >>>> 010 : 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 0C 00 00 00 00   ................
> >>>> 020 : 01 00 00 00 00 E8 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
> >>>> 030 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
> >>>> 040 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
> >>>> 050 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
> >>>> 060 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 07 05 C4 05   ................
> >>>> 070 : 31 0B 07                                          1..
> >>>>
> >>>> As you can see there is no '90' bytes, as we should see in the payload. 
> >>>>
> >>>> This not the only rule with this problem. Others have the same problem 
> >>>> too (sometimes eevn preprocessors like http_inspect too).
> >>>>
> >>>> While looking at the ASCII dump.log file generated by barnyard I have 
> >>>> also came accross a similar exemple (below). For this alert, we should 
> >>>> see a "user" somewhere in the payload, but we don't :
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> [**] [1:2650:2] ORACLE user name buffer overflow attempt [**]
> >>>> [Classification: Attempted User Privilege Gain] [Priority: 1]
> >>>> [Xref => http://www.appsecinc.com/Policy/PolicyCheck62.html]
> >>>> Event ID: 62662     Event Reference: 62662
> >>>> 11/21/06-17:16:04.892127 172.16.0.136:34833 -> 172.16.5.12:1521
> >>>> TCP TTL:64 TOS:0x0 ID:32755 IpLen:20 DgmLen:100 DF
> >>>> ***AP*** Seq: 0xB700F908  Ack: 0xF1594793  Win: 0x3309  TcpLen: 32
> >>>> TCP Options (3) => NOP NOP TS: 2796076485 835448929 
> >>>> 00 30 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 03 68 FB 01 00 00  .0.........h....
> >>>> 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
> >>>> 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 01  ................ 
> >>>>
> >>>> With this problem Snort becomes almost unusable since, when we try to 
> >>>> analyse an alert to see if this is a false positive or not, we cannot 
> >>>> have the correct payload which generated the alert. We don't know if 
> >>>> this is a Snort or a Barnyard problem. Unfortunately, for now, I was not 
> >>>> able to do a tcpdump of one of these packets.
> >>>>
> >>>> Have you noticed the same behavior ?
> >>>>
> >>>> What could be the cause of the problem ? What solution to apply ?
> >>>>
> >>>> Thank you for your help 
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> ________________________________________________________________________
> >>>> iFRANCE, exprimez-vous !
> >>>> http://web.ifrance.com
> >>>>         
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> >>>>         
> >>> +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
> >>> joel esler          senior security consultant         1-706-627-2101
> >>> Sourcefire    Security for the /Real/ World -- http://www.sourcefire.com
> >>>        Snort - Open Source Network IPS/IDS -- http://www.snort.org
> >>>          gpg key: http://demo.sourcefire.com/jesler.pgp.key
> >>> +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
> >>>
> >>>       
> >> ________________________________________________________________________
> >> iFRANCE, exprimez-vous !
> >> http://web.ifrance.com
> >>     
> >
> >   
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> >>     
> >
> >   
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> >>     
> >
> > +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
> > joel esler          senior security consultant         1-706-627-2101
> > Sourcefire    Security for the /Real/ World -- http://www.sourcefire.com
> >        Snort - Open Source Network IPS/IDS -- http://www.snort.org
> >          gpg key: http://demo.sourcefire.com/jesler.pgp.key
> > +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> >   
> 
> 
> -- 
> Marc Norton      Snort Team Lead
> Sourcefire,Inc   410-423-1924
> www.snort.org    www.sourcefire.com 
> 
> 


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