Thursday, January 26, 2012

Snort: 5 Steps to Install and Configure Snort on Linux


Snort is a free lightweight network intrusion detection system for both UNIX and Windows.
In this article, let us review how to install snort from source, write rules, and perform basic testing.

1. Download and Extract Snort

Download the latest snort free version from snort website. Extract the snort source code to the /usr/src directory as shown below.
# cd /usr/src

# wget -O snort-2.8.6.1.tar.gz http://www.snort.org/downloads/116

# tar xvzf snort-2.8.6.1.tar.gz
Note: We also discussed earlier about Tripwire (Linux host based intrusion detection system) and Fail2ban (Intrusion prevention framework)

2. Install Snort

Before installing snort, make sure you have dev packages of libpcap and libpcre.
# apt-cache policy libpcap0.8-dev
libpcap0.8-dev:
  Installed: 1.0.0-2ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.0.0-2ubuntu1

# apt-cache policy libpcre3-dev
libpcre3-dev:
  Installed: 7.8-3
  Candidate: 7.8-3
Follow the steps below to install snort.
# cd snort-2.8.6.1

# ./configure

# make

# make install

3. Verify the Snort Installation

Verify the installation as shown below.
# snort --version

   ,,_     -*> Snort! <*-
  o"  )~   Version 2.8.6.1 (Build 39)
   ''''    By Martin Roesch & The Snort Team: http://www.snort.org/snort/snort-team
           Copyright (C) 1998-2010 Sourcefire, Inc., et al.
           Using PCRE version: 7.8 2008-09-05

4. Create the required files and directory

You have to create the configuration file, rule file and the log directory.
Create the following directories:
# mkdir /etc/snort

# mkdir /etc/snort/rules

# mkdir /var/log/snort
Create the following snort.conf and icmp.rules files:
# cat /etc/snort/snort.conf
include /etc/snort/rules/icmp.rules

# cat /etc/snort/rules/icmp.rules
alert icmp any any -> any any (msg:"ICMP Packet"; sid:477; rev:3;)
The above basic rule does alerting when there is an ICMP packet (ping).
Following is the structure of the alert:
       (rule options)
Table: Rule structure and example
StructureExample
Rule Actionsalert
Protocolicmp
Source IP Addressany
Source Portany
Direction Operator->
Destination IP Addressany
Destination Portany
(rule options)(msg:”ICMP Packet”; sid:477; rev:3;)

5. Execute snort

Execute snort from command line, as mentioned below.
# snort -c /etc/snort/snort.conf -l /var/log/snort/
Try pinging some IP from your machine, to check our ping rule. Following is the example of a snort alert for this ICMP rule.
# head /var/log/snort/alert
[**] [1:477:3] ICMP Packet [**]
[Priority: 0]
07/27-20:41:57.230345 > l/l len: 0 l/l type: 0x200 0:0:0:0:0:0
pkt type:0x4 proto: 0x800 len:0x64
209.85.231.102 -> 209.85.231.104 ICMP TTL:64 TOS:0x0 ID:0 IpLen:20 DgmLen:84 DF
Type:8  Code:0  ID:24905   Seq:1  ECHO
Alert Explanation
A couple of lines are added for each alert, which includes the following:
  • Message is printed in the first line.
  • Source IP
  • Destination IP
  • Type of packet, and header information.
If you have a different interface for the network connection, then use -dev -i option. In this example my network interface is ppp0.
# snort -dev -i ppp0 -c /etc/snort/snort.conf -l /var/log/snort/

Execute snort as Daemon

Add -D option to run snort as a daemon.
# snort -D -c /etc/snort/snort.conf -l /var/log/snort/

Additional Snort information


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