Suricata is a network Intrusion Detection System, Intrusion Prevention System and Network Security Monitoring engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata community.
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Victor Julien 422e4892cc proto-detect: improve midstream support
When Suricata picks up a flow it assumes the first packet is
toserver. In a perfect world without packet loss and where all
sessions neatly start after Suricata itself started, this would be
true. However, in reality we have to account for packet loss and
Suricata starting to get packets for flows already active be for
Suricata is (re)started.

The protocol records on the wire would often be able to tell us more
though. For example in SMB1 and SMB2 records there is a flag that
indicates whether the record is a request or a response. This patch
is enabling the procotol detection engine to utilize this information
to 'reverse' the flow.

There are three ways in which this is supported in this patch:

1. patterns for detection are registered per direction. If the proto
   was not recognized in the traffic direction, and midstream is
   enabled, the pattern set for the opposing direction is also
   evaluated. If that matches, the flow is considered to be in the
   wrong direction and is reversed.

2. probing parsers now have a way to feed back their understanding
   of the flow direction. They are now passed the direction as
   Suricata sees the traffic when calling the probing parsers. The
   parser can then see if its own observation matches that, and
   pass back it's own view to the caller.

3. a new pattern + probing parser set up: probing parsers can now
   be registered with a pattern, so that when the pattern matches
   the probing parser is called as well. The probing parser can
   then provide the protocol detection engine with the direction
   of the traffic.

The process of reversing takes a multi step approach as well:

a. reverse the current packets direction
b. reverse most of the flows direction sensitive flags
c. tag the flow as 'reversed'. This is because the 5 tuple is
   *not* reversed, since it is immutable after the flows creation.

Most of the currently registered parsers benefit already:

- HTTP/SMTP/FTP/TLS patterns are registered per direction already
  so they will benefit from the pattern midstream logic in (1)
  above.

- the Rust based SMB parser uses a mix of pattern + probing parser
  as described in (3) above.

- the NFS detection is purely done by probing parser and is updated
  to consider the direction in that parser.

Other protocols, such as DNS, are still to do.

Ticket: #2572
7 years ago
.github github: update codeowners 8 years ago
benches
contrib tile: remove files 8 years ago
doc doc: add http.location and http.server 7 years ago
ebpf ebpf: include files in make dist 8 years ago
etc
lua lua output: Update example script to match style of user doc examples 8 years ago
m4
python autoconf/python: check for distutils 8 years ago
qa coccinelle: add missing tests to make dist 8 years ago
rules rules: fix event names for ikev2 (weak authentication and DH parameters) 8 years ago
rust proto-detect: improve midstream support 7 years ago
scripts check-setup: fix script names for .sh to .py 8 years ago
src proto-detect: improve midstream support 7 years ago
suricata-update autoconf/python: check for distutils 8 years ago
.gitignore suricata-update: bundle suricata update 9 years ago
.travis.yml travis: call make check in qa/coccinelle 8 years ago
COPYING
ChangeLog changelog: update for 4.1.2 release 8 years ago
LICENSE
Makefile.am lua: add lua dir with example to make dist 8 years ago
Makefile.cvs
README.md doc: README.md minor fixes 8 years ago
acsite.m4
appveyor.yml windows: msys/mingw based appveyor support 8 years ago
autogen.sh
classification.config Added new classifications to classification.conf 8 years ago
config.rpath
configure.ac configure.ac: update lzma check and misc doc 7 years ago
doxygen.cfg
reference.config
suricata.yaml.in suricata.yaml: fix name of encryption-handling var 8 years ago
threshold.config

README.md

Suricata

Introduction

Suricata is a network IDS, IPS and NSM engine.

Installation

https://redmine.openinfosecfoundation.org/projects/suricata/wiki/Suricata_Installation

User Guide

You can follow the Suricata user guide to get started.

Our deprecated (but still useful) user guide is also available.

Contributing

We're happily taking patches and other contributions. Please see https://redmine.openinfosecfoundation.org/projects/suricata/wiki/Contributing for how to get started.

Suricata is a complex piece of software dealing with mostly untrusted input. Mishandling this input will have serious consequences:

  • in IPS mode a crash may knock a network offline;
  • in passive mode a compromise of the IDS may lead to loss of critical and confidential data;
  • missed detection may lead to undetected compromise of the network.

In other words, we think the stakes are pretty high, especially since in many common cases the IDS/IPS will be directly reachable by an attacker.

For this reason, we have developed a QA process that is quite extensive. A consequence is that contributing to Suricata can be a somewhat lengthy process.

On a high level, the steps are:

  1. Travis-CI based build & unit testing. This runs automatically when a pull request is made.

  2. Review by devs from the team and community

  3. QA runs

Overview of Suricata's QA steps

Trusted devs and core team members are able to submit builds to our (semi) public Buildbot instance. It will run a series of build tests and a regression suite to confirm no existing features break.

The final QA run takes a few hours minimally, and is started by Victor. It currently runs:

  • extensive build tests on different OS', compilers, optimization levels, configure features
  • static code analysis using cppcheck, scan-build
  • runtime code analysis using valgrind, DrMemory, AddressSanitizer, LeakSanitizer
  • regression tests for past bugs
  • output validation of logging
  • unix socket testing
  • pcap based fuzz testing using ASAN and LSAN

Next to these tests, based on the type of code change further tests can be run manually:

  • traffic replay testing (multi-gigabit)
  • large pcap collection processing (multi-terabytes)
  • AFL based fuzz testing (might take multiple days or even weeks)
  • pcap based performance testing
  • live performance testing
  • various other manual tests based on evaluation of the proposed changes

It's important to realize that almost all of the tests above are used as acceptance tests. If something fails, it's up to you to address this in your code.

One step of the QA is currently run post-merge. We submit builds to the Coverity Scan program. Due to limitations of this (free) service, we can submit once a day max. Of course it can happen that after the merge the community will find issues. For both cases we request you to help address the issues as they may come up.

FAQ

Q: Will you accept my PR?

A: That depends on a number of things, including the code quality. With new features it also depends on whether the team and/or the community think the feature is useful, how much it affects other code and features, the risk of performance regressions, etc.

Q: When will my PR be merged?

A: It depends, if it's a major feature or considered a high risk change, it will probably go into the next major version.

Q: Why was my PR closed?

A: As documented in the Suricata Github workflow here https://redmine.openinfosecfoundation.org/projects/suricata/wiki/Github_work_flow, we expect a new pull request for every change.

Normally, the team (or community) will give feedback on a pull request after which it is expected to be replaced by an improved PR. So look at the comments. If you disagree with the comments we can still discuss them in the closed PR.

If the PR was closed without comments it's likely due to QA failure. If the Travis-CI check failed, the PR should be fixed right away. No need for a discussion about it, unless you believe the QA failure is incorrect.

Q: the compiler/code analyser/tool is wrong, what now?

A: To assist in the automation of the QA, we're not accepting warnings or errors to stay. In some cases this could mean that we add a suppression if the tool supports that (e.g. valgrind, DrMemory). Some warnings can be disabled. In some exceptional cases the only 'solution' is to refactor the code to work around a static code checker limitation false positive. While frustrating, we prefer this over leaving warnings in the output. Warnings tend to get ignored and then increase risk of hiding other warnings.

Q: I think your QA test is wrong

A: If you really think it is, we can discuss how to improve it. But don't come to this conclusion to quickly, more often it's the code that turns out to be wrong.

Q: do you require signing of a contributor license agreement?

A: Yes, we do this to keep the ownership of Suricata in one hand: the Open Information Security Foundation. See http://suricata-ids.org/about/open-source/ and http://suricata-ids.org/about/contribution-agreement/