I've reinstalled Suricata, allows the settings to be removed with package uninstall, and reinstall it. Running it for a few hours, it seems to work correctly, including graphs.

@bmeeks Okay Bill, that did it, thank you, all is good!

@styxl Thanks - have posted there as well.. Now the System/ Package Manager/ Available Packages does not show any packages for me to install...

@rtw915 said in Snort custom variables: @bmeeks said in Snort custom variables: You don't really need a Pass List with Inline Mode because you are not blocking an IP. You are just dropping individual packets when they match. Over dinner I read through the snort inline thread and the adjustability of the rules so you can alert or block is huge. I can see so much value with running snort inline. However, I was pretty bummed out to see the limitations with lag and VLANS. I use both of those technologies when architecting highly available networks. It got me thinking though, that the inline mode and the custom output plugin you wrote really provide two different strategies. Along with some of the other posts you've written I'm starting to question my IPS approach. My approach has been to identify bad actors in any way possible so that they can be blocked to prevent future harm. So say for example a bad actor is attacking using an ActiveX vulnerability and even though our environment doesn't use ActiveX I still have those rules enabled. This way if the same attacker moves on to use a SQL injection attack they are already blocked, as they don't become unblocked in my case for an extended period of time. At which point I'm hoping they'll just move on. The limitation with VLANs and LAGG is due to the way the netmap kernel device is plumbed within FreeBSD. It's not a Snort limitation. The netmap idea had great promise when it was introduced a few years ago into FreeBSD and Linux, but some of the grand plans have not taken shape. Thus the various limitations of the technology. You can read up on netmap via Google searches. As for IDS/IPS strategy, there are as many opinions on what is "right" as there are IDS admins. But generally I favor keeping the workload on my firewall as light as possible while still affording protection. The reality is that almost any firewall today is pretty darn secure. This is especially true if you limit the amount of third-party stuff (such as packages) that you install on it. Remember each installed package brings in a bunch of shared libraries that may, in turn, bring in still more shared libraries. And any of these libraries can harbor vulnerabilities. So the fewer packages, the better. As for blocking, as I stated, I'm not a fan of putting in specific blocks for the world. Put in Pass rules for explicitly what you want to come in (unsolicited), and then let the default deny rule take care of everything else. If you don't trust your firewall to be secure on its own and by default, why are you using it? (Rhetorical question, not an accusation ... ). For IDS/IPS, run the rules that protect the exposures you have. Don't waste CPU and RAM resources on rules that protect against threats you are not vulnerable to. Spend your time and effort keeping your internal machines patched with the latest security hotfixes. That is 99% of cyber security right there! And it's much more effective than running every pfBlockerNG IP list or Snort rule in existence.

In general you should NEVER monkey with the HOME_NET or EXTERNAL_NET variables in Snort on pfSense. The defaults are fine for almost every case I can think of. I think sometimes folks make incorrect assumptions about what those variables actually are. HOME_NET is the IP networks or hosts you want to "Protect". They are where your jewels are stored so to speak. EXTERNAL_NET is where the bad guys live. That is assumed to NOT be inside your protected networks. Thus EXTERNAL_NET defaults to !HOME_NET (or all addresses NOT contained in HOME_NET). That is a logical choice. Do not confuse HOME_NET or EXTERNAL_NET with Pass Lists. Those are completely separate things! Pass Lists are assigned and used to prevent certain hosts from being blocked. That has nothing to do with HOME_NET or EXTERNAL_NET directly. The only time I can imagine where you might want to monkey with HOME_NET is if you have downstream networks not directly associated with a pfSense interface that you want to mark as "protected". In this case you would need to create a custom HOME_NET, but you would want to be sure that you included the default networks in that list. The PASS LIST tab is for creating customized lists. And lists created there are usually assigned as Pass Lists, and thus that's how the tab got its name because there is almost never a reason to monkey with HOME_NET or EXTERNAL_NET. However, for the rare time when you may need to monkey with HOME_NET, you would do so by creating an IP list under the PASS LIST tab and then assigning that list name under the HOME_NET drop-down. HOME_NET and EXTERNAL_NET are special variables used in many of the Snort rules. If you get the wrong IP addresses or networks defined in there, you can totally neuter your Snort traffic inspection. That's why I tell folks not to mess with the defaults unless you are an IDS/IPS admin expert with lots of experience. You need to know exactly what you are doing when messing with either of those two variables.

Still doing testing, but it looks like this rule has been causing issues: 2003315 udp 1024:65535 $HOME_NET 1024:65535 ET P2P Edonkey Search Reply Any history of change on this rule? I'll post more later if I narrow down any other rules.

@mikekoke Hello! I am not a suricata user, but looking at the default log format from a test install, the following might be a crude starting point... grep ^`date -v-1d +"%m/%d/%Y"` /var/log/suricata/suricata_igb0*/alerts.log | awk -F "\\[\\*\\*\\]" '{a[$2]++;} END {for(i in a) print a[i]" "i}' | sed 's/"//g' | sort -r ; echo The delimiters are not great, so there is some noise in the report. This has not been tested. John

@crunch-0 said in blocking p2p traffic: @bmeeks Hi thanks for the snort rule. Yeah my test machine can catch it. So it proves that snort works and i have no alternate path to the internet. I see drop alerts in the alert tab and i cannot ping (Request timeout). Then that indicates the p2p rules you are using are insufficient to stop all of the Bit Torrent stuff. It is catching part of the conversation between client and peer, but not everything, so the client is still able to make the connection and download. It's not a problem with Snort itself. Instead, it is a problem with the rule or rules attempting to detect the traffic. The rules are apparently not picking up everything. The PUA rules are really designed to detect the presence of the target application and not necessarily to block it totally. You may need other rules to completely block the traffic. Try a Google search for "blocking p2p with snort" to get some links. I found a few. Several are old, but some are newer. Here is a newer one: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334213518_Interception_of_P2P_Traffic_in_a_Campus_Network. Here is a SANS Institute paper from 2009 about detecting Bit Torrent with Snort: https://www.sans.edu/student-files/presentations/Pres_R_Wanner_Torrents_Snort_V2.pdf. Blocking stuff like this is a whack-a-mole game. The developers of the torrent clients strive to make their traffic indistinguishable from regular network traffic (and thus unblockable). And the IDS/IPS rules creators strive to create new detection rules that trigger on the latest evasion techniques - and around and around it goes .... .

@bmeeks said in Snort Pass Lists + pfBlockerNG ingestion: Something pretty much like you said you needed is coming soon. Look for the update in the pfSense DEVEL snapshots in the near future. Here is a post I made describing the new feature: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/160771/new-often-requested-snort-feature-coming-soon. Thank you so much! That looks amazing.

@n8rfe said in Netgate XG-7100 SFP+ ports inline mode compatibility: @bmeeks Thanks for the information. The SG-7100 is using the ix nics for its 10GB SFP+. Once configured both WAN and LAN to use these inline mode worked correctly with the obvious hardware checksum options enabled. Thanks for the feedback. It will help others who might have the same question in the future.

@mxczxakm said in Ubuntu failing to update with Suricata enabled.: apt-get doesn't work with Suricata enabled. It's in my firewall logs. It places the server IP's needed in the snort2c table. Hi, Delete the entry (es) from snort2c and disable the rule or rules which causes...this [https://doc.emergingthreats.net/bin/view/Main/2013504](link url) as an example: [image: 1612811581149-2021-02-08_19h10_17.jpg]

@bmeeks Thanks for clarifying. Was hoping to find some resolution on these boards. Planning to delete Suricata plugin for now, will try it again in future probably next update!!

@stauraum said in Is OpenAppID dead?: @nogamer @bmeeks Ok, I've found my services in "odp/appMapping.data" which was updated in november 2020. So i can create custom rules to block these services in my network. I hope so that this file is updated in the future. I think there is some interest in updating the file from another party, but I can't say who for now. Perhaps they will choose to takeover maintaining the OpenAppID text rules going forward. In the meantime, you can certainly create your own custom OpenAppID rules to supplement those available in the standard archive. You found the proper location for identifying application names (in /usr/local/etc/snort/appid/odp/appMapping.data).

@nogbadthebad said in A funny thing about IDS/IPS.... /DNS related: @bmeeks Yup it had me baffled for ages as I couldn't see any lookups from my LAN interface to the offending FQDNS. Yes, the firewall itself sources the connection for the DNS lookup, and that traffic will exit the WAN on the way to either the DNS root servers or whatever DNS forwarder might be configured. So the IDS rules on the WAN see the traffic and alert. Since it's on the WAN, and the IDS sits beyond the firewall, the IDS sees your firewall's public WAN IP as the "source". The natural inclination is to assume the traffic originated on your LAN, but it actually did not.

@terminalhit said in Suricata SIGHUP every 5 minutes: @bmeeks, If I had to guess it's the EVE.JSON file which i'm ingesting into ELK for dashboards. In the Log Size and Retention Limits configuration the max size is 10MB, but I currently have a file in there "eve.json" that is 1.2GB The idea is for the log to rotate and get a new name with a UNIX timestamp appended to it. Then a new empty log file is opened for Suricata. The SIGHUP is supposed to tell Suricata to reopen log files. Unfortunately, the Suricata binary can only rotate certain logs natively. So without the GUI attempting to rotate the others, they will grow to impossibly large sizes. Do you have any eve.json logs that have a UNIX timestamp on the end? If not, the log rotation is not actually working. That would be why it keeps trying each time the cron task runs (every 5 minutes). You might have a duplicate Suricata zombie process attempting to use the log file. If you can, stop Suricata on the interface for more than 5 minutes. This will allow the cron task to run and hopefully rotate that huge file. Then restart Suricata on the interface. If stopping Suricata for more than 5 minutes does not result in the file rotating, then manually rename it yourself (the big 1.2 GB file) to something else and then restart Suricata.

@bmeeks Impressive, Thanks.

@bmeeks You gotta teach me :)

@volnodumcev said in Suricata failed to setup thread module: SC_ERR_LUA_ERROR(212)] - failed to setup thread module I'm getting this error in suricata.log but didn't find anything neither about this error nor about how to fix it. Can anyone help? Never seen that error before. Please share some information about your installation such as: Version of pfSense you are running Version of the Suricata package you are running Is this a fatal error? Does Suricata start and run, or is it failing to start? List of any other installed packages (including any you may have installed from a non-pfSense repository)

@pfsense7515 said in Snort blocking pass list: @bmeeks Hello thank you for your reply. About your questions did you restart Snort on that interface? yes, I tried several times but without success. Do you need to restart services SNORT ? -How did you even install that version of Snort ? We setup integrated packages includes on pfsense We are aware that it is necessary to update. Do you have any idea other suggestions please ? Thanks a lot No, I have no other suggestions if you have done all of the following: Open the INTERFACE SETTINGS tab for the affected Snort interface and select the desired Pass List by name in the drop-down selector for Pass List assignment. SAVE that change and return to the INTERFACES tab in Snort. Click the icon on the affected interface to restart Snort. If Snort has already previously blocked a particular IP address, then you must manually remove that block by going to the BLOCKED tab and deleting the address from the list (or just clear all blocks). Snort hands off blocking to pfSense, so restarting Snort or stopping Snort will not unblock a previoulsy blocked IP address. Just pointing that out because some folks think otherwise. Snort is not dynamic. It only reads a Pass List when starting, and it can't "unblock" anything. When a Snort alert triggers, Snort extracts the IP from the triggering packet and sends it to the firewall for blocking. After that, pfSense itself holds the block, not Snort. You really need to update your firewall. Running out of date software on a critical component such as a network firewall is not wise.