Suricata Intrusion Detection System: Part One

The global settings tab in Suricata.

Suricata is an open source-based intrusion detection system (IDS). There are several advantages to running Suricata. [1] It is multi-threaded, so you can run one instance and it will balance the load processing across every processor. [2] The most common protocols are automatically recognized by Suricata as the stream starts, allowing rule writers to write a rule to the protocol, not to the port expected. [3] Suricata can identify thousands of file types on your network, and you can tag files for extraction so the file will be written to disk with a metadata file describing the capture situation and flow. Another advantage of Suricata is that it is compatible with Snort rules, so while it is an alternative to Snort, you can still use Snort updates. Suricata has been available as a pfSense package since March 2014; you must be running pfSense 2.1 or later to install the Suricata pfSense package.

Suricata Installation and Configuration

Suricata can easily be downloaded, compiled and installed under FreeBSD (the underlying OS for pfSense). The installation instructions can be found at the official Suricata website for FreeBSD 8 and later. Fortunately, if you are running pfSense 2.1 or later, you can just install Suricata from the package menu and configure it from the GUI. In this case, just navigate to System -> Packages, scroll down to Suricata in the package listing, and press the “plus” button on the right side of the row. On the next screen, press “Confirm” to confirm installation. It will take several minutes for the package installer to download, install and configure Suricata.

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Once the package installer is done, there will be a new option on the “Services” menu called “Suricata”. You can now navigate to Services -> Suricata and begin configuration. The first step is to configure global settings, which you can do by clicking on the “Global Settings” tab. The first part of the page configures which rules you want to download. The first setting is “Install Emerging Threats rules“, which allows you to install ETOpen and ETPro. ETOpen is an open source set of Snort rules, while ETPro for Snort offers daily updates and extensive coverage of current malware threats. ETPro offers more extensive coverage of threats, but costs $500 a year. The “Install Snort VRT rules” check box allows you to install either Snort VRT free registered user or paid subscriber rules. The next option is “Install Snort Community rules“. Checking this check box will install the Snort Community Ruleset – a GPLv2 VRT-certified ruleset that is distributed free of charge without any VRT License restrictions. [If you are a Snort VRT paid subscriber, the community ruleset is already built into the Snort VRT rules, so you don’t need to install this.]

Next is the “Rules Update Settings” section. In the “Update Interval” dropdown box, you can select the interval for rule updates. Choosing NEVER disables auto-updates. The options range from 6 hours to 28 days, as well as never for no updates. Below that is the “Update Start Time” edit box, where you can enter the rule update start time in 24-hour format (the default is 00:30). Finally, the “Live Rule Swap on Update” check box, if checked, enables a “live swap” reload of the rules after downloading an update instead of a hard restart. [If you encounter problems with live reloads, you should probably uncheck this option.]

The final section on the “Global Settings” tab is “General Settings“. The “Remove Blocked Hosts Interval” dropdown box allows you to select the amount of time you would like hosts to be blocked (values run from 15 minutes to 28 days; never is also an option). The “Log to System Log” check box enables copying of Suricata mesages to the firewall system log. The “Keep Suricata Settings After Disinstall” checkbox, if checked will not remove any changed settings during package deinstallation. Press the “Save” button at the bottom of the page to save settings.

In the next article, we will continue our look at Suricata settings.

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