Snort Report 9 Posted

My 9th Snort Report on Snort's Stream5 and TCP overlapping fragments is now available online. From the start of the article:

It's important for value-added resellers and consultants to understand how Snort detects security events. Stream5 is a critical aspect of the inspection and detection equation. A powerful Snort preprocessor, Stream5 addresses several aspects of network-centric traffic inspection. Sourcefire calls Stream5 a "target-based" system, meaning it can perform differently depending on the directives passed to it. These directives tell Stream5 to inspect traffic based on its understanding of differences of behavior in TCP/IP stacks. However, if Stream5 isn't configured properly, customers may end up with a Snort installation that is running but not providing much real value. In this edition of Snort Report I survey a specific aspect of Stream5, found in Snort 2.7.x and 2.8.x.

I'm working on the next Snort Report, which will look at new features in Snort 2.8.