A packet analyzer, also known as packet sniffer, protocol analyzer, or network analyzer, is a computer program or computer hardware such as a packet capture appliance that can analyze and log traffic that passes over a computer network or part of a network. Packet capture is the process of intercepting and logging traffic. As data streams flow across the network, the analyzer captures each packet and, if needed, decodes the packet's raw data, showing the values of various fields in the packet, and analyzes its content according to the appropriate RFC or other specifications.
An intrusion detection system is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically either reported to an administrator or collected centrally using a security information and event management (SIEM) system. A SIEM system combines outputs from multiple sources and uses alarm filtering techniques to distinguish malicious activity from false alarms.
Network security consists of the policies, processes and practices adopted to prevent, detect and monitor unauthorized access, misuse, modification, or denial of a computer network and network-accessible resources. Network security involves the authorization of access to data in a network, which is controlled by the network administrator. Users choose or are assigned an ID and password or other authenticating information that allows them access to information and programs within their authority. Network security covers a variety of computer networks, both public and private, that are used in everyday jobs: conducting transactions and communications among businesses, government agencies and individuals. Networks can be private, such as within a company, and others which might be open to public access. Network security is involved in organizations, enterprises, and other types of institutions. It does as its title explains: it secures the network, as well as protecting and overseeing operations being done. The most common and simple way of protecting a network resource is by assigning it a unique name and a corresponding password.
Suricata is an open-source based intrusion detection system (IDS) and intrusion prevention system (IPS). It was developed by the Open Information Security Foundation (OISF). A beta version was released in December 2009, with the first standard release following in July 2010.
A host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) is an intrusion detection system that is capable of monitoring and analyzing the internals of a computing system as well as the network packets on its network interfaces, similar to the way a network-based intrusion detection system (NIDS) operates. HIDS focuses on more granular and internal attacks through focusing monitoring host activities instead of overall network traffic. HIDS was the first type of intrusion detection software to have been designed, with the original target system being the mainframe computer where outside interaction was infrequent.
Sguil is a collection of free software components for Network Security Monitoring (NSM) and event driven analysis of IDS alerts. The sguil client is written in Tcl/Tk and can be run on any operating system that supports these. Sguil integrates alert data from Snort, session data from SANCP, and full content data from a second instance of Snort running in packet logger mode.
Kismet is a network detector, packet sniffer, and intrusion detection system for 802.11 wireless LANs. Kismet will work with any wireless card which supports raw monitoring mode, and can sniff 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n traffic. The program runs under Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS. The client can also run on Microsoft Windows, although, aside from external drones, there's only one supported wireless hardware available as packet source.
In the field of computer network administration, pcap is an application programming interface (API) for capturing network traffic. While the name is an abbreviation of packet capture, that is not the API's proper name. Unix-like systems implement pcap in the libpcap library; for Windows, there is a port of libpcap named WinPcap that is no longer supported or developed, and a port named Npcap for Windows 7 and later that is still supported.
OSSIM (Open Source Security Information Management) is an open source security information and event management system, integrating a selection of tools designed to aid network administrators in computer security, intrusion detection and prevention.
A network monitoring interface card or NMIC is similar to a network card (NIC). However, unlike a standard network card, an NMIC is designed to passively listen on a network. At a functional level, an NMIC may differ from a NIC, in that the NMIC may not have a MAC address, may lack the ability to transmit and may not announce its presence on a network. Advanced NMICs have features that include an ability to offload CPU intensive processing from a system's CPU, accurate time measurement, traffic filtering, and an ability to perform other application specific processing.
Intrusion detection system evasion techniques are modifications made to attacks in order to prevent detection by an intrusion detection system (IDS). Almost all published evasion techniques modify network attacks. The 1998 paper Insertion, Evasion, and Denial of Service: Eluding Network Intrusion Detection popularized IDS evasion, and discussed both evasion techniques and areas where the correct interpretation was ambiguous depending on the targeted computer system. The 'fragroute' and 'fragrouter' programs implement evasion techniques discussed in the paper. Many web vulnerability scanners, such as 'Nikto', 'whisker' and 'Sandcat', also incorporate IDS evasion techniques.
Sourcefire, Inc was a technology company that developed network security hardware and software. The company's Firepower network security appliances were based on Snort, an open-source intrusion detection system (IDS). Sourcefire was acquired by Cisco for $2.7 billion in July 2013.
Network behavior anomaly detection (NBAD) is a security technique that provides network security threat detection. It is a complementary technology to systems that detect security threats based on packet signatures.
A bypass switch (or bypass TAP) is a hardware device that provides a fail-safe access port for an in-line active security appliance such as an intrusion prevention system (IPS), next generation firewall (NGFW), etc. Active, in-line security appliances are single points of failure in live computer networks because if the appliance loses power, experiences a software failure, or is taken off-line for updates or upgrades, traffic can no longer flow through the critical link. The bypass switch or bypass tap removes this point of failure by automatically 'switching traffic via bypass mode' to keep the critical network link up.
Martin Roesch founded Sourcefire in 2001 and was its Chief Technology Officer until the company was acquired by Cisco Systems on October 7, 2013 for $2.7B. Roesch now is CEO of Netography which raised $45M in Series A funding in November 2021. A respected authority on intrusion prevention, detection technology, and forensics, he was responsible for the technical direction and product development efforts of Sourcefire and Cisco Security before he moved into board roles and VC roles with Decibel Partners. Martin, has industry experience in network security and embedded systems engineering. He is also the author and lead developer of the Snort Intrusion Prevention and Detection System which formed the foundation for the Sourcefire firewall and IDS/IPS systems. Snort is still developed by Cisco Systems today and remains the most-used open source IDS technology.
Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis, and Response System (MARS) was a security monitoring tool for network devices. Together with the Cisco Security Manager (CSM) product, MARS made up the two primary components of the Cisco Security Management Suite.
Aanval is a commercial SIEM product designed specifically for use with Snort, Suricata, and Syslog data. Aanval has been in active development since 2003 and remains one of the longest running Snort capable SIEM products in the industry. Aanval is Dutch for "attack".
Sagan is an open source (GNU/GPLv2) multi-threaded, high performance, real-time log analysis & correlation engine developed by Quadrant Information Security that runs on Unix operating systems. It is written in C and uses a multi-threaded architecture to deliver high performance log & event analysis. Sagan's structure and rules work similarly to the Sourcefire Snort IDS/IPS engine. This allows Sagan to be compatible with Snort or Suricata rule management softwares and give Sagan the ability to correlate with Snort IDS/IPS data.
IPFire is a hardened open source Linux distribution that primarily performs as a router and a firewall; a standalone firewall system with a web-based management console for configuration.
Cisco Talos, or Cisco Talos Intelligence Group, is a cybersecurity technology and information security company based in Fulton, Maryland. It is a part of Cisco Systems Inc. Talos' threat intelligence powers Cisco Secure products and services, including malware detection and prevention systems. Talos provides Cisco customers and internet users with customizable defensive technologies and techniques through several of their own open-source products, including the Snort intrusion prevention system and ClamAV anti-virus engine.
