Scalable Programmable Appliance-based Network Intrusion Detection Architecture

网络入侵检测系统（IDS）是安全专业人员用来检测和响应安全漏洞的几种工具之一。 通常，IDS是通过窃听网络并将每个网络消息的副本转移到传感器来实现的。通常，传感器是一台运行软件的通用计算机，它会检查它接收到的每个数据包。这种IDS方法很容易实现，因为它依赖于现成的硬件和软件。然而，由通用操作系统引起的开销和大多数PC和工作站体系结构的有限I/O吞吐量限制了这样的IDS到低和中等带宽的网络。另一方面，专用IDS平台可以被优化以处理高带宽流量，但是缺乏灵活性和定制硬件和软件的高成本使得这种方法在实践中不可行。最近，存在通过在多个通用机器上分发网络数据包来操作高带宽流量的并行和分布式IDS架构。这种方法结合了现成的硬件和软件的灵活性与并行处理的高性能。这种方法的可扩展性的系统研究以及合适的数据包分发策略的分析还没有完成。因为这样的集群体系结构在所需的空间和功率方面付出了潜在的代价，因为它们本质上是一组完整的计算机系统，它们占用机架或机架空间，消耗功率，并且需要耗时的管理和配置，它们具有高的空间和电力成本。本项目的目标是开发可扩展的并行设备-的网络入侵检测系统，能够可靠地监测高带宽的网段，但成本效益高，并保留了通用的基于IDS的灵活性。高性能是通过在一系列低成本传感器之间分配网络流量来实现的，这种方式不会影响入侵检测的质量，同时最大限度地提高可用并发性并最大限度地减少传感器之间所需的通信。利用现成的单板计算机导致一个廉价和紧凑的设计，需要更少的功率比相当数量的完整的工作站或PC。并行入侵检测平台架构的关键组成部分是网络数据包分布在传感器的方法。因此，系统设计将通过对网络流量特性的系统分析来指导，这些特性将为高级模型和模拟提供输入。为了验证和评估所产生的架构的性能和可扩展性，将主要基于低成本的现成硬件和软件实施一个原型系统。通过使用现成的组件解决IDS问题，可以快速开发出帮助解决安全漏洞的产品。 这可能会对一个重要的网络话题产生巨大的直接影响。

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) are one of several tools used by security professionals to detect and respond to security breaches. Typically an IDS is implemented by tapping a network and diverting a copy of every network message to a sensor. Usually, the sensor is a general-purpose computer running software that examines every packet that it receives. This approach to IDS is easy to implement as it relies on off-the-shelf hardware and software. However, the overhead incurred by the general-purpose operating system and the limited I/O throughput of most PC and workstation architectures restrict such IDS to low and medium bandwidth networks. Special-purpose IDS platforms, on the other hand, can be optimized to handle high-bandwidth traffic, but the lack of flexibility and the high cost of custom hardware and software make this approach not viable in practice.Recently, parallel and distributed IDS architectures exist that operate on high bandwidth traffic by distributing network packets over a number of general-purpose machines. This approach combines the flexibility of off-the-shelf hardware and software with the high performance of parallel processing. A systematic study of the scalability of this approach as well as an analysis of suitable packet distribution strategies has not been done. Because such clustered architectures pay a potential penalty in terms of space and power required as they are essentially a set of complete computer systems that occupy shelf or rack space, consume power, and require time consuming management and configuration they have space and power costs that are high.The goal of this project is to develop a scalable parallel appliance-based architecture for network intrusion detection systems that is able to reliably monitor high-bandwidth network segments, yet is cost-efficient and retains the flexibility of general-purpose based IDS. High performance is achieved by distributing network traffic among an array of low-cost sensors in a way that does not impact the quality of intrusion detection, while maximizing the available concurrency and minimizing required communication among sensors. Utilizing off-the-shelf single-board computers leads to an inexpensive and compact design that requires less power than a comparable number of complete workstations or PCs.The key component of a parallel intrusion detection platform architecture is the approach by which network packets are distributed across the sensors. As a result, the system design will by guided by a systematic analysis of network traffic characteristics which will provide input into high-level models and simulations. To verify and evaluate the performance and scalability of the resulting architecture, a prototype system will be implemented based primarily on low-cost off-the-shelf hardware and software. By addressing IDS issues using off the shelf components, a product to assist in security breaches may be quickly developed. This could have large, immediate impact on an important network topic.