Does Snort support target-based intrusion detection?

About the author
Richard Bejtlich is director of incident response at General Electric Company in Manassas, Va. and blogs at Bejtlich.net and TaoSecurity.com. Listen to the rest of Richard's answers on Snort by downloading our Snort podcast.
Target-based intrusion detection is a process by which the detection engine customizes its behavior based on the characteristics of the target of an attack. For example, it does not make sense for an IDS to treat an Apache Web server on FreeBSD 7.0 the same as an IIS Web server on Windows Server 2003 when an intruder attacks it. Ideally the IDS would understand the differences in the two computer's network stacks and other features affecting detection choices. Snort indeed supports various forms of target-based intrusion detection techniques, and the tool is a leader in this respect.

Return to the Snort FAQ guide and read the rest of Richard's expert responses.


This was first published in January 2008

Join the conversationComment

Share
Comments

    Results

    Contribute to the conversation

    All fields are required. Comments will appear at the bottom of the article.