Snort 2.9.5.6 pkg v3.0.4 Update – Release notes and change log

[Ramosel]

The "Installed Packages" dashboard widget correctly showed the update available under the new version and after install the new version is showing.  Thanks Bill!!

Rick

[BBcan177]

@bmeeks:

An update to the Snort package has been posted.

New Features

Bug Fixes

Bill

New Features

All new features work for me. I think the "Disable Rule" icon should have a prompt asking to continue, as it could be hit by accident.
The new Setup is very slick. Fantastic work Bill!!  ;D

Bugs

1  & 3 - I never had an issue with
2 & 4 - Fixes worked as expected.  ;D

[bmeeks]

@BBcan17:

@bmeeks:

An update to the Snort package has been posted.

New Features

Bug Fixes

Bill

New Features

All new features work for me. I think the "Disable Rule" icon should have a prompt asking to continue, as it could be hit by accident.
The new Setup is very slick. Fantastic work Bill!!  ;D

Bugs

1  & 3 - I never had an issue with
2 & 4 - Fixes worked as expected.  ;D

Thank you.  You are right, I need to add an "are you sure" dialog for the rule disable icon when clicked.  Will put that in the next update when 2.9.6.0 is posted.  Should be toward the middle or end of March.

Bill

[daniev]

I get this error and Snort does not start:

snort[36042]: FATAL ERROR: Failed to load /usr/pbi/snort-amd64/lib/snort/dynamicrules/web-misc.so: /usr/pbi/snort-amd64/lib/snort/dynamicrules/web-misc.so: invalid file format

Edit: the above was after updating a running Snort. I uninstalled and then installed and then it started up without errors.

[bmeeks]

@daniev:

I get this error and Snort does not start:

snort[36042]: FATAL ERROR: Failed to load /usr/pbi/snort-amd64/lib/snort/dynamicrules/web-misc.so: /usr/pbi/snort-amd64/lib/snort/dynamicrules/web-misc.so: invalid file format

Could be a problem with one of the Snort VRT rule updates.  That indicates a Shared Object rule, and those come down precompiled by the Snort VRT in the Snort rules tarball.  For now, disable (uncheck) that rule set on the CATEGORIES tab and see if that will fix the problem.

I will test in one of my VMs as well.

UPDATE: I tested this in a VM and could not reproduce the problem.  All of the Snort web-*.so rules loaded fine for me.  Try forcing a new rules download on your end and see if that helps.  Here's how:

1.  Go to Diagnostics…Edit on the pfSense menu.

2.  Browse to /usr/pbi/snort-amd64/etc/snort and open the snort rules snapshot MD5 file located there.

3.  Make any kind of change in the content (for example, just change the last 3 digits to zeros) and save the change.

4.  Now go to the Rules Update tab and download the rules again.  Altering the content of the MD5 file should force a new set of Snort rules to come down.

I am using the Snort paid subscriber rules.  If you still have the issue after downloading the rules update again, and you are using the free registered user Oinkcode, you might need to contact the Snort VRT at snort.org and let them know.

Bill

[daniev]

Bill, sorry but before I saw your reply I unchecked the Save configuration option and uninstalled Snort. I re-installed and all is running fine. I have a paid Snort subscription. Thanks!

[bmeeks]

@daniev:

Bill, sorry but before I saw your reply I unchecked the Save configuration option and uninstalled Snort. I re-installed and all is running fine. I have a paid Snort subscription. Thanks!

OK.  Glad it worked out for you.  Something in that file must have gotten corrupted during the original download and install.  As I said, that file is actually part of the downloaded rules tarball from snort.org.

Bill

[A Former User]

@bmeeks:

New Features

• The ALERTS tab now features a "Rule Disable" icon in the SID column alongside the "Add to Suppress List" icon. Clicking the "Rule Disable" icon will force-disable the rule and prevent traffic being evaluated against the rule. Note this will result in the rule being completely removed from the enforcing rule set; as opposed to suppressing the alert, which simply prevents future alerts but the rule still inspects traffic.

Nice one! Thank you very much for this.
@bmeeks:

• The Snort GUI now provides the ability to manage all rules including the decoder and preprocessor rules on the RULES tab. Users can force-disable (or force-enable) any rules from the decoder.rules, preprocessor.rules and sensitive-data.rules files. Snort now generates a single enforcing rules file (snort.rules) that contains all the rules including the preprocessor rules that were formerly loaded separately from a different sub-directory. A beneficial side-effect to this is that now the sid-msg.map file is complete and contains the preprocessor rules. This is helpful with third-party logging tools such as Barnyard2 that depend on the sig-msg.map file.

Does this mean I can finally get rid of the double decoding attack alert (I thought IIS was banned from industry use by now…)? And does this mean smaller suppress lists? Even less power wasted evaluating useless rules? THANK YOU!!!
On the downside, I have to post an update to the blueprint now :P

[bmeeks]

@jflsakfja:

Does this mean I can finally get rid of the double decoding attack alert (I thought IIS was banned from industry use by now…)? And does this mean smaller suppress lists? Even less power wasted evaluating useless rules? THANK YOU!!!
On the downside, I have to post an update to the blueprint now :P

Yep.  The user now has total control of the decoder and preprocessor rules via the RULES tab.  Just select them in the drop-down list and disable away as you desire.

I have a plan for the future to continue improvements with rules management including the ability to use PCREs to selectively enable/disable rules.  In short, I plan to incorporate the functionality of the enablesid.conf, disablesid.conf and/or modifiysid.conf files afforded by PulledPork and Oinkmaster.

Bill

[BBcan177]

Hi Bill,

Could you take a look at the attached png file?

The Alerts page is showing alerts for the "Disabled Rules". Is this normal?

Would that mean that all of the rules are loaded into memory? Memory is not an issue for me, however, I never noticed that before.

If this is Normal, than I guess atleast I'm seeing the alerts that are not being blocked?


[bmeeks]

@BBcan17:

Hi Bill,

Could you take a look at the attached png file?

The Alerts page is showing alerts for the "Disabled Rules". Is this normal?

Would that mean that all of the rules are loaded into memory? Memory is not an issue for me, however, I never noticed that before.

If this is Normal, than I guess atleast I'm seeing the alerts that are not being blocked?

You are probably seeing "history".  The view on the ALERTS tab is simply the first "nnn" records read from the alerts log.  The "nnn" value is the numeric setting on the tab for how many alerts to show.  So the alert should have happened in the past, you disabled the rule, but the original entry is still in the alerts log and will be read and shown in the list.  To see if my theory is correct, reduce the number of alerts to display to something like 3 or 4 and see if the disabled ones disappear.  If not post back.

The new code should be disabling the rule, performing an enforcing rules file rebuild for the interface, and then doing a "live rule reload" for the interface all when you click the X.  From that point forward, you should get no new alerts from the disabled rule.  But because of the history aspect in the logs as I described above, you might see them listed on the tab (but with the lighter-colored icon to show the rule is disabled).  Depending on how many alerts you get per unit time, and the setting of how many alert log entries to display, the alerts from disabled rules should eventually disappear from the tab.

Bill

[BBcan177]

@bmeeks:

You are probably seeing "history".

So the alert should have happened in the past, you disabled the rule, but the original entry is still in the alerts log and will be read and shown in the list.  To see if my theory is correct, reduce the number of alerts to display to something like 3 or 4 and see if the disabled ones disappear.  If not post back.

These are fresh events. See attached png files. Those rules have been disabled for a long time now.


[bmeeks]

@BBcan17:

@bmeeks:

You are probably seeing "history".

So the alert should have happened in the past, you disabled the rule, but the original entry is still in the alerts log and will be read and shown in the list.  To see if my theory is correct, reduce the number of alerts to display to something like 3 or 4 and see if the disabled ones disappear.  If not post back.

These are fresh events. See attached png files. Those rules have been disabled for a long time now.

OK, one more question.  Did you try manually restarting Snort after disabling the rule?  That should not be required, but maybe something is not working with live reload.  Also, did you disable the rule from the new ALERTS tab icon or from the RULES tab?  If on the RULES tab, you need to click APPLY after disabling the rule in order for a new rule set to build.

I will test this in a virtual machine again.  It was working (or at least I thought it was working… :-[).

Bill

[BBcan177]

Hi Bill,

I didn't add or remove any rules today. Those rules were disabled months ago.  :(

[bmeeks]

@BBcan17:

Hi Bill,

I didn't add or remove any rules today. Those rules were disabled months ago.  :(

Hmm…OK, one more question.  Look in your config.xml file using Diagnostics…Edit File.  The path to the file is /conf/config.xml.  Scroll down and find all the Snort parameters.  The section title will start with <snortglobal>.  You will see collections of data for each configured interface.  For the interface in question, find the tag element for <rule_sid_off>and look at the values stored there.  You should have pairs of numbers separated colons.  These are the GID:SID values for the rule.  Each GID:SID pair should be delimited by " || " double-pipe symbols.  Let me know if anything other than what I described is in there.

It's late where I am, so I will test this in a VM tomorrow and see if I goofed it up someplace.

Bill</rule_sid_off></snortglobal>

[BBcan177]

Hi Bill,

It looks ok to me…

Let me know if you want me to send it to you?

Thanks.

[VipIT]

Hi,

I updated the snort package today, but when starting snort with the block option I get the following error:
"Feb 20 10:09:13 snort[7254]: FATAL ERROR: pf.conf => Table snort2c don't exists in packet filter: No such file or directory"

I searched the net, and found a previous post about the same issue but for an older version, so the resolution is not the same.
Can you please tell me how to make this work again? I highly rely on the auto block option as we see a lot of russian botnets trying to attack or scan our servers.

PS I tried reinstalling the package and uninstalling and installing it again. Although with saving options, as I deselected some of the rules

Thanks in advance
K.R.

Ruben Vanhoutte

[bmeeks]

@VipIT:

Hi,

I updated the snort package today, but when starting snort with the block option I get the following error:
"Feb 20 10:09:13 snort[7254]: FATAL ERROR: pf.conf => Table snort2c don't exists in packet filter: No such file or directory"

I searched the net, and found a previous post about the same issue but for an older version, so the resolution is not the same.
Can you please tell me how to make this work again? I highly rely on the auto block option as we see a lot of russian botnets trying to attack or scan our servers.

PS I tried reinstalling the package and uninstalling and installing it again. Although with saving options, as I deselected some of the rules

Thanks in advance
K.R.

Ruben Vanhoutte

Whoa!  That is a strange error message.  What version of pfSense are you running?  Seems like maybe an old one?  The <snort2c>alias table it is complaining about is part of the base pfSense install and is not added or removed by the Snort package.  The fact that table is reported as missing seems to indicate maybe you have a very old pfSense version.

If you have version older than 2.0.x, then I strongly recommend updating.  If you have a version equal to or newer than 2.0.x, then something very bad has happened to the installation and a complete re-install is likely required to fix it.

Bill</snort2c>

[A Former User]

Reporting that the rule disable button on the alerts tab works as expected.

Preprocessor rules are also working as expected. It might be me, or the reduced suppression list but the systems feel faster.

Over and out :P

[bmeeks]

@jflsakfja:

Reporting that the rule disable button on the alerts tab works as expected.

Preprocessor rules are also working as expected. It might be me, or the reduced suppression list but the systems feel faster.

Over and out :P

Thanks for the feedback.  I was investigating BBcan17's issue posted above where he said a disabled rule was still firing for him, and was so far I am unable to reproduce.  Your confirmation the rules disable feature is working for you as intended is helpful.

On the faster front, could be the update to Snort 2.9.5.6 is helping as well.  The Snort VRT folks are still making various "under-the-hood" updates now and then.

Bill