Category: Networking

Host Intrusion Detection

Monitoring your network includes trying to keep the bad guys out. Unfortunately, unless you disconnect your computer and keep it in a locked vault, there’s no real way to ensure that your system is 100% hack proof. So, in addition to securing your network, you need to monitor for intrusions as well. It’s better to be able to catch an intruder early rather than find out after they’ve done a huge amount of damage.

Intrusion detection systems (IDS) are designed to detect possible intrusion attempts. There are a number of different IDS types, but this post concentrates on the Host Intrusion Detection System (HIDS).

My preferred HIDS of choice is Osiris. Osiris uses a client/server architecture, making it one of the more unique HIDS out there. The server stores all of the configurations and databases, and triggers the scanning process. SSL is used between the client and server to ensure communication integrity.

Once a new client is added, the server performs an initial scan. A configuration file is pushed to the client which then scans the computer accordingly, reporting the results back to the server. This first scan is then used as a baseline database for future comparisons.

The host periodically polls the clients and requests scans. The results of those scans are compared to the baseline database and an alert is sent if there are differences. An administrator can then determine if the changes were authorized and take appropriate action. If the changes are ok, Osiris is updated to use the new results as the baseline database. If the changes are suspect, the administrator can look further into them.

Osiris is very configurable. Scanning intervals can be set, allowing you fine-grained control over the time between scans. Multiple administrators can be set up to monitor and accept changes. Emails can be sent for each and every scan, regardless of changes.

The configuration file allows you to pick and choose what files on the client system are to be monitored. Fine-grain control over this allows the administrator to specify whole directories, or individual files. A filtering system can prevent erroneous results to be sent. For instance, some backup systems change the ctime to reflect when the file was last backed up. Without a filter, Osiris would report changes to all of the files each time a backup is run. Setting up a simple filter to ignore ctime on a file allows the administrator to ignore the backup process.

Overall, Osiris is a great tool for monitoring your server. Be prepared, though, monitoring HIDS can get cumbersome, especially with a large number of servers. Every update, change, or new program installed can trigger a HIDS alert.

There are other HIDS packages as well. I have not tested most of these, but they are included for completeness :

  • OSSEC
  • OSSEC is an actively maintained HIDS that supports log analysis, integrity checking, rootkit detection, and more.
  • AFICK
  • AFICK is another actively maintained HIDS that offers both CLI and GUI based operation
  • Samhain
  • Samhain is one of the more popular HIDS that offers a centralized monitoring system similar to that of Osiris.
  • Tripwire
  • Tripwire is a commercial HIDS that allows monitoring of configurations, files, databases and more. Tripwire is quite sophisticated and is mostly intended for large enterprises.
  • Aide
  • Aide is an open-source HIDS that models itself after Tripwire

Network Monitoring

I’ve been working a lot with network monitoring lately.  While mostly dealing with utilization monitoring, I do dabble with general network health systems as well.

There are several ways to monitor a network and determine the “health” of a given element.  The simple, classic example is the ICMP echo request.  Simply ping the device and if it responds, it’s alive and well.

This doesn’t always work out, however.  Take, for instance, a server.  Pinging the server simply indicates that the TCP/IP stack on the server is functioning properly.  But what about the processes running on the server?  How do you make sure those are running properly?

Other “health” related items are utilization, system integrity, and environment.  When designing and/or implementing a network health system, you need to take all of these items into account.

 

I have used several different tools to monitor the health of the networks I’ve dealt with.  These tools range from custom written tools to off-the-shelf products.  Perhaps at some point in the future I can release the custom tools, but for now I’ll focus on the freely available tools.

 

For general network monitoring I use a tool called Argus.  Argus is a pretty robust monitoring system written in Perl.  It’s pretty simple to set up and the config file is pretty self explanatory.  Monitoring capabilities include ping (using fping), SNMP, http, and DNS.  You can monitor specific ports on a device, allowing you to determine the health of a particular service.

Argus also has some unique capabilities that I haven’t seen in many other monitoring systems.  For instance, you can monitor a web page and detect when specific strings within that webpage change.  This is perfect for monitoring software revisions and being alerted to new releases.  Other options include monitoring of databases via the Perl DBI module.

The program can alert you in a number of different manners such as email or paging (using qpage).  Additional notification methods are certainly possible with custom code.

The program provides a web interface similar to that older versions of What’s Up Gold.  There is a fairly robust access control system that allows the administrator to lock users into specific sections of the interface with custom lists of available elements.

Elements can be configured with dependencies, allowing alerts to be suppressed for child elements.  Each element can also be independently configured with a variety of options to allow or suppress alerts, modify monitoring cycle times, send custom alert messages, and more.  Check out the documentation for more information.  There’s also an active mailing list to help you out if you have additional questions.

 

In future posts I’ll touch on some of the other tools I have in my personal toolkit such as host intrusion detection systems, graphing systems, and more.  Stay tuned!

Whois Query Fun

network

I ran across a really neat way to use the whois tool in Linux the other day. There is apparently a lot more information available than I knew about! Check out the full article for more.

Basically, in addition to the normal owner/tech contact data that you can get from the standard whois servers, and the IP block assignment information you can get from ARIN, there’s also some additional IP information you can get from Cymru. Specifically, you can run queries against ‘whois.cymru.com’ to determine what ISP hosts/owns the netblock. Check it out :

[user@localhost ~]$ whois -h whois.cymru.com 204.10.167.1

[Querying whois.cymru.com]
[whois.cymru.com]
AS | IP | AS Name

33241 | 204.10.167.1 | EMCS-AS – Endless Mountain Cyb

In addition to that, you can also check another server, ‘v4-peer.whois.cymru.com’ to check for upstream peers. Extremely useful for determining how “connected” a provider is when you’re looking for new service. Or, for determining what providers you need to talk to for help in blocking possible attacks. Check it out :

[user@localhost ~]$ whois -h v4-peer.whois.cymru.com 204.10.167.1


[Querying v4-peer.whois.cymru.com]
[v4-peer.whois.cymru.com]
PEER_AS | IP | AS Name
3593 | 204.10.167.1 | EPIX – EPIX
3737 | 204.10.167.1 | PTD-AS – PenTeleData Inc.

Overall, I find this to be quite useful and I’ll definitely be using it! I hope you find it just as useful…