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Host-Based Intrusion Detection Systems
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Intrusion Detection System (IDS):
- A software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations.
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Host-based Intrusion Detection Systems (HIDS):
- Software installed directly on an OS that monitors changes in file integrity.
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Examples of HIDS applications:
- Trend Micro OSSEC:
- https://ossec.github.io/index.html
- Verisys:
- https://www.ionx.co.uk/products/verisys
- Tripwire:
- https://www.tripwire.com/products/tripwire-file-integrity-monitoring/
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Two types of monitoring can be performed by an IDS:
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Statistical Anomaly (Heuristic) Monitoring:
- A baseline (based on normal network traffic) is established, and compared to sampled traffic.
- Traffic outside the set baseline parameters triggers a notification.
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Signature-Based Monitoring:
- Traffic is matched against patterns of known malicious code snippets known as signatures.
- These signatures are stored in a database that must be updated regularly.
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Four types of traffic identification are possible. This is not exclusive to an IDS:
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True Positive:
- An attack is correctly identified as malicious and filtered (discarded)
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True Negative:
- Non-threatening traffic is correctly identified as legitimate and permitted
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False Positive:
- Non-threatening traffic is incorrectly identified as malicious and filtered (discarded)
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False Negative:
- An attack is incorrectly identified as legitimate and permitted
- Malicious activities and violations are typically reported either to an administrator or collected centrally using a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system.
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Host-Based Intrusion Prevention Systems
- Software designed not only to detect incidents and attacks, but also to attempt to prevent them from doing any real damage to the computer or to the network.
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Providers:
- McAfee
- Symantec
- There are also downloadable implementations for Linux that prevent malicious code from executing, such as Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux). It is a set of kernel modifications originally developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) but was released to the open source community for download.