Why Anomaly Based Intrusion Detection Systems are a Hax0rs Best Friend

Why Anomaly Based Intrusion Detection Systems are a Hax0rs Best Friend

This presentation was given at Summer DefCon 2003 in Las Vegas. The author has run one of the leading stand-alone anomaly IDS products within a large University environment to form an opinion on how well it protects and what value it provides.

This presentation gives an overview and background on anomaly based IDS and how it compares to signature based IDS. Diving into what are the strengths and weaknesses. Organizations trying to replace their signature based IDS with an anomaly based IDS will be setting themselves up for failure. After listening and understanding this presentation, it becomes easier to see why the anomaly IDS works best if integrated together with standard IDS, but can not live on its own.

http://www.issadvisor.com/viewtopic.php?t=390

Haven't had time to study it in detail yet, but it sems to follow through from the more conventional AV concepts? A pattern based system will detect patterns that we know, a behavioural based system will detect SOME patterns that we have not seen yet?. "Heuristics" seem to live somwhere inbetween?

Cheers

The paper has many good points. My solution is based on two signature based IDS units (one inside and one outside) and two hueristic (anomoly) based units configured the same way. I have a management console where I gather info from these appliances and from other devices such as firewalls, routers and a few other open source utilities where I can paint an exact picture of events both real time and historical. No, I won't give out the names of the products ;).