fwsnort.8

.\" Process this file with
.\" groff -man -Tascii foo.1
.\"
.TH FWSNORT 8 "Jan, 2011" Linux
.SH NAME
.B fwsnort
\- Firewall Snort
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B fwsnort [options]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B fwsnort
translates SNORT rules into iptables rules on Linux systems and generates a
corresponding iptables policy in iptables-save format.  This ruleset allows
network traffic that matches Snort signatures (i.e.  attacks and other suspicious
network behavior) to
be logged and/or dropped by iptables directly without putting an interface
into promiscuous mode or queuing packets from kernel to user space.  Note
that fwsnort can also build an iptables policy that combines the string
match extension with the NFQUEUE or QUEUE targets to allow the kernel to
perform preliminary string matches that are defined within Snort rules
before queuing matching packets to a userspace snort_inline instance.  Because the bulk of
network communications are not generally malicious, this should provide a speedup
for snort_inline since the majority of packets do not then have to be
copied from kernel memory into user memory and subsequently inspected by
snort_inline.  There is a tradeoff here in terms of signature detection
however because snort_inline when deployed in this way does not have the
opportunity to see all packets associated with a session, so stream
reassembly and signature comparisons against a reassembled buffer do not
take place (the stream preprocessor should be disabled in the userspace
snort_inline instance).

As of
.B fwsnort-1.5
all iptables rules built by fwsnort are written out to the
.I /var/lib/fwsnort/fwsnort.save
file in iptables-save format.  This allows a long fwsnort policy (which may
contain thousands of iptables rules translated from a large Snort signature
set) to be quickly instantiated via the "iptables-restore" command.  A wrapper
script
.I /var/lib/fwsnort/fwsnort.sh
is also written out to make this easy.  Hence, the typical work flow for
fwsnort is to: 1) run fwsnort, 2) note the Snort rules that fwsnort was able
to successfully translate (the number of such rules is printed to stdout),
and then 3) execute the
.I /var/lib/fwsnort/fwsnort.sh
wrapper script to instantiate the policy in the running kernel.

.B fwsnort
(optionally) uses the IPTables::Parse CPAN module to parse
the iptables ruleset on the machine to determine which Snort rules are
applicable to the specific iptables policy.  After all, if iptables is
blocking all inbound http traffic from external addresses for example, it
is probably not of much use to try detecting inbound attacks against against
tcp/80.  By default fwsnort generates iptables rules that log Snort sid's
within a \-\-log-prefix to syslog where the messages can be analyzed with a
log analyzer such as
.B psad
(see http://www.cipherdyne.org/psad/).
.B fwsnort
relies on the iptables string match module to match Snort content fields
in the application portion of ip traffic.  Since Snort rules can contain
hex data in content fields (specified between pipe "|" characters), fwsnort
implements a patch against iptables (which has been accepted by the Netfilter
project as of iptables-1.2.7a) which adds a "\-\-hex-string" option.  This
allow iptables to accept content fields from Snort rules such as
"|0d0a5b52504c5d3030320d0a|" without any modification.
.B fwsnort
is able to translate approximately 60% of all rules from the Snort-2.3.3
IDS into equivalent iptables rules.  For more information about the
translation strategy as well as advantages/disadvantages of the method
used by fwsnort to obtain intrusion detection data, see the README
included with the fwsnort sources or browse to:
http://www.cipherdyne.org/fwsnort/

.B fwsnort
is able to apply Snort rules to IPv6 traffic by building an ip6tables policy
(see the "\-\-ip6tables" command line argument).
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.BR \-c ", " \-\^\-config\ \<configuration\ file>
By default fwsnort makes use of the configuration file
.B /etc/fwsnort/fwsnort.conf
for almost all configuration parameters.  fwsnort can be made to
override this path by specifying a different file on the command
line with the \-\-config option.  When fwsnort is not executed as root, then
a path to a readable fwsnort.conf file is required.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-update-rules
Download the latest Emerging Threats rules from http://www.emergingthreats.net
This will overwrite the  emerging-all.rules file in the
/etc/fwsnort/snort_rules/ directory.  Note that the automatic downloading
of Snort rules from http://www.snort.org/ as of March, 2005 is only offered
as a pay service.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-rules-url\ \ <url>
Specify the URL to use when updating the Emerging Threats rule set (or any
other rule set).  The default URL is: http://rules.emergingthreats.net/open/snort-2.9.0/emerging-all.rules
.TP
.BR \-6 ", " \-\^\-ip6tables
Enable
.B ip6tables
mode so that the fwsnort rule set is built into an ip6tables policy instead
of the iptables policy.  This allows fwsnort controls to apply to IPv6
traffic.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-include-type\ \ <rules\ type>
Restrict to processing snort rules of <rules type>.  Example rule
types would include "ddos", "backdoor", and "web-attacks".  This option
also supports a comma-separated list of types, e.g. "ddos,backdoor".
.TP
.BR \-\^\-exclude-type\ \ <rules\ type>
Exclude all Snort rules from of type <rules type> from the translation
process.  For example, if you don't want any rules from the file
emerging-all.rules to be translated, then use "emerging-all" as the
argument to this option.  A comma-separated list of types to exclude can
be specified.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-include-regex\ \ <regex>
Only translate Snort rules that match the specified regular expression. This
is useful to build
.B fwsnort
policies for Snort rules that have a common characteristic (such as a string
match on the word "Storm" for the Storm worm for example).
.TP
.BR \-\^\-exclude-regex\ \ <regex>
Translate all Snort rules except those that match the specified regular
expression.  This is useful to omit Snort rules from
.B fwsnort
policies that have a common characteristic (such as a string
match on "HTTP_PORTS" for example).
.TP
.BR \-\^\-include-re-caseless
Make the rule matching regular expression specified with
.I \-\-include\-regex
match case insensitively.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-exclude-re-caseless
Make the rule matching regular expression specified with
.I \-\-exclude\-regex
match case insensitively.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-snort-rdir\ <snort-rules-directory>
Manually specify the directory where the snort rules files are located.
The default is
.B /etc/fwsnort/snort_rules.
Multiple directories are supported as a comma-separated list.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-snort-rfile\ <snort-rules-file>
Manually specify a Snort rules file to translated into iptables rules.
Multiple files are also supported as a comma-separated list.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-snort-sid\ \<sid>
Generate an iptables ruleset for a single snort rule specified by
<sid>.  A comma-separated list of sids can be specified, e.g. "2001842,1834".
.TP
.BR \-\^\-exclude-sid\ \<sid>
Provide a list of Snort ID's to be excluded from the translation process.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-include-perl-triggers
Include
.I 'perl -e "print ..."'
commands as comments in the
.I fwsnort.sh
script.  These commands allow payloads that are designed to trigger snort
rules to easily be built, and when combined with netcat (or other software
that can send bytes over the wire) it becomes possible to test whether an
fwsnort policy appropriately triggers on matching traffic.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-script\ \<script\ file>
Specify the path to the iptables script generated by fwsnort.  The
default location is /var/lib/fwsnort/fwsnort.sh.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-check-capabilities
Check iptables capabilities and exit.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Last\-cmd
Run
.B fwsnort
with the same command line arguments as the previous execution.  This is a
convenient way of rebuilding the
.I /var/lib/fwsnort/fwsnort.sh
script without having to remember what the last command line args were.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-NFQUEUE
Build an
.B fwsnort
policy that sends packets that match Snort
.B content
or
.B uricontent
fields to userspace via the iptables NFQUEUE target for further analysis.  This is a
mechanism for reducing the signature inspection load placed on snort_inline.
A parallel set of Snort rules that are successfully translated are placed in
the /etc/fwsnort/snort_rules_queue directory.  This requires
CONFIG_NETFILTER_XT_TARGET_NFQUEUE support in the Linux kernel.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-QUEUE
Same as the
.B --NFQUEUE
command line argument except that the older QUEUE target is used instead of
the NFQUEUE target.  This requires CONFIG_IP_NF_QUEUE support in the Linux kernel.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-queue-num\ \<num>
Specify a queue number in \-\-NFQUEUE mode.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-queue-pre-match-max\ \<num>
In \-\-QUEUE or \-\-NFQUEUE mode, limit the number of content matches that are
performed within the kernel before sending a matching packet to a userspace
Snort instance.  This allows a level of tuning with respect to how much work
the kernel does to qualify a packet based on a signature match before having
Snort do the same thing.  The default is to perform all specified content
matches in the signature before queuing the packet to userspace because the
multiple in-kernel content matches is probably less expensive than sending a
packet to userspace by default.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-string-match-alg\ \<alg>
Specify the string matching algorithm to use with the kernel.  By default, this
is 'bm' for the 'Boyer-Moore' string matching algorithm, but 'kmp' may also be
specified (short for the 'Knuth–Morris–Pratt' algorithm).
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-apply
Execute the iptables script generated by fwsnort.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-exec
Synonym for \-\-ipt-apply.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-revert
Revert to a version of the iptables policy without any
.B fwsnort
rules.  Note that this reverts to the iptables policy as it was when
.B fwsnort
was originally executed.  So, it is not recommended to use this option if there
is a large amount of time between when fwsnort is run to translate Snort rules
vs. running it with this option.  For most purposes it is better to use
the \-\-ipt-flush option below.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-flush
Flush all
.B fwsnort
currently active iptables rules (flushes the fwsnort chains).
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-list
List all
.B fwsnort
currently active iptables rules (lists the fwsnort chains).
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-drop
For each logging rule generated by
.B fwsnort
add a corresponding DROP
rule.  Note that for TCP sessions using this option will cause retransmissions
as packets that are part of established sessions selectively dropped.
Remember that false positives are common occurrences for intrusion detection
systems, and so using this or the \-\-ipt-reject option may break things on
your network!  You have been warned.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-reject
For each logging rule generated by
.B fwsnort
add a corresponding REJECT rule.
Reset packets will be generated for TCP sessions through the use of
the "\-\-reject-with tcp-reset" option, and ICMP port unreachable messages will
be generated for UDP packets through the use of the
"\-\-reject-with icmp-port-unreachable" option.
.TP
.BR \-C ", " \-\^\-Conntrack-state\ \<state>
Specify a conntrack state in place of the "established" state that commonly
accompanies the Snort "flow" keyword.  By default, fwsnort uses the conntrack
state of "ESTABLISHED" for this.  In certain corner cases, it might be useful
to use "ESTABLISHED,RELATED" instead to apply application layer inspection to
things like ICMP port unreachable messages that are responses to real attempted
communications.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-log
By default fwsnort generates an iptables script that implements a logging
rule for each successfully translated snort rule.  This can be disabled
with the \-\-no-ipt-log option, but \-\-ipt-drop must also be specified.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-sync
This is a deprecated option since the default behavior is to translate as
many Snort rules into iptables rules as possible.  With
.B fwsnort
able to produce iptables rules in iptables\-save format, it is extremely fast
to instantiate a large set of translated Snort rules into an iptables policy.
A new \-\-ipt-sync option has been added to reverse this behavior (not
recommended).
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ipt-sync
Consult the iptables policy currently running on the machine
for applicable snort rules.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-test
Do not test the iptables build for existence of support for the LOG and
REJECT targets, and ascii and hex string matching.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-jumps
Do not jump packets from the built-in iptables INPUT, OUTPUT, and
FORWARD chains to the custom
.B fwsnort
chains.  This options is mostly useful to make it
easy to manually alter the placement of the jump rules in the iptables
ruleset.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-rule-nums
By default
.B fwsnort
includes the rule number within the logging prefix for each of the rules it
adds to the fwsnort chains.  E.g. the logging prefix for rule 34 would look
something like "[34] SID1242 ESTAB".  Use this option to not include the
rule number.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-comments
If the iptables "comment" match exists, then
.B fwsnort
puts the Snort "msg", "classtype", "reference", "priority", and "rev" fields
within a comment for each iptables rule.  Use this option to disable this.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-INPUT
Do not jump packets from the iptables INPUT chain to the
.B fwsnort
chains.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-OUTPUT
Do not jump packets from the iptables OUTPUT chain to the
.B fwsnort
chains.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-ipt-FORWARD
Do not jump packets from the iptables FORWARD chain to the
.B fwsnort
chains.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-fast-pattern-ordering
Cause
.B fwsnort
to not try to reorder pattern matches to process the longest pattern first.
The Snort
.I fast_pattern
keyword is also ignored if this option is specified.
.TP
.BR \-H ", " \-\^\-Home-net\ \<network/mask>
Specify the internal network instead of having
.B fwsnort
derive it from the HOME_NET keyword in the fwsnort.conf configuration
file.
.TP
.BR \-E ", " \-\^\-External-net\ \<network/mask>
Specify the external network instead of having
.B fwsnort
derive it from the EXTERNAL_NET keyword in the fwsnort.conf configuration
file.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-no-addresses
Disable all checks against the output of ifconfig for proper IP addresses.
This is useful if
.B fwsnort
is running on a bridging firewall.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Dump-conf
Print the fwsnort configuration on STDOUT and exit.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-debug
Run in debug mode.  This will cause all parse errors which are normally
written to the fwsnort logfile
.B /var/log/fwsnort.log
to be written to STDOUT instead.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-strict
Run fwsnort in "strict" mode.  This will prevent fwsnort from translating
snort rules that contain the keywords "offset", "uricontent", and "depth".
.TP
.BR \-U ", " \-\^\-Ulog
Force the usage of the ULOG target for all log messages instead of the
default LOG target.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-ulog-nlgroup
Specify the netlink group for ULOG rules.  Such rules are only added for
Snort rules that have an action of "log", or when
.B fwsnort
is run in
.B --Ulog
mode.
.TP
.BR \-l ", " \-\^\-logfile\ <logfile>
By default fwsnort logs all parse errors to the logfile
.B /var/log/fwsnort.log.
This path can be manually changed with the \-\-logfile option.
.TP
.BR \-v ", " \-\^\-verbose
Run fwsnort in verbose mode.  This will cause fwsnort to add the original
snort rule as a comment to the fwsnort.sh script for each successfully
translated rule.
.TP
.BR \-V ", " \-\^\-Version
Print the fwsnort version and exit.
.TP
.BR \-h ", " \-\^\-help
Print usage information on STDOUT and exit.
.SH FILES
.B /etc/fwnort/fwsnort.conf
.RS
The fwsnort configuration file.  The path to this file can be
changed on the command line with \-\-config.
.RE

.B /var/lib/fwnort/fwsnort.sh
.RS
The iptables script generated by fwsnort.  The path can be manually
specified on the command line with the \-\-ipt-script option.
.SH FWSNORT CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
This section describes what each of the more important fwsnort configuration
variables do and how they can be tuned to meet your needs.  These variables
are located in the fwsnort configuration file
.B /etc/fwsnort/fwsnort.conf
.TP
.BR HOME_NET
.B fwsnort
uses the same HOME_NET and EXTERNAL_NET variables as defined in Snort rules,
and the same semantics are supported.  I.e., individual IP addresses or networks
in standard dotted-quad or CIDR notation can be specified, and comma separated
lists are also supported.
.TP
.BR EXTERNAL_NET
Defines the external network.  See the HOME_NET variable for more information.
.SH EXAMPLES
The following examples illustrate the command line arguments that could
be supplied to fwsnort in a few situations:
.PP
Script generation in logging mode, parse errors written to the fwsnort
logfile, and iptables policy checking are enabled by default without
having to specify any command line arguments:
.PP
.B # fwsnort
.PP
Generate ip6tables rules for attacks delivered over IPv6:
.PP
.B # fwsnort -6
.PP
Generate iptables rules for ddos and backdoor Snort rules only:
.PP
.B # fwsnort --include-type ddos,backdoor
.PP
Generate iptables rules for Snort ID's 2008475 and 2003268 (from emerging-all.rules):
.PP
.B fwsnort --snort-sid 2008475,2003268
.PP
Generate iptables rules for Snort ID's 1834 and 2001842 but queue them to userspace
via the NFQUEUE target and restrict exclude the INPUT and OUTPUT chains:
.PP
.B fwsnort --snort-sid 1834,2001842 --NFQUEUE --no-ipt-INPUT --no-ipt-OUTPUT
.PP
Instruct
.B fwsnort
to only inspect traffic that traverses the eth0 and eth1 interfaces:
.PP
.B # fwsnort --restrict-intf eth0,eth1
.PP
Generate iptables rules for Snort rules that appear to be allowed by the local
iptables policy, and write original snort rules to the iptables script as a comment:
.PP
.B # fwsnort --ipt-sync --verbose
.SH DEPENDENCIES
.B fwsnort
requires that the iptables string match module be compiled into the
kernel (or as a loadable kernel module) in order to be able to match
snort signatures that make use of the "content" keyword.  Note that
the \-\-no-opt-test option can be specified to have fwsnort generate an
iptables script even if the string match module is not compiled in.
.PP
.B fwsnort
also requires the IPTables::Parse CPAN module in order to parse
iptables policies.  This module is bundled with the fwsnort sources in
the deps/ directory for convenience.
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
The \-\-debug option can be used to display on STDOUT any errors that
are generated as fwsnort parses each snort rule.  Normally these
errors are written to the fwsnort logfile /var/log/fwsnort.log
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR psad (8),
.BR iptables (8),
.BR snort (8),
.BR nmap (1)
.SH AUTHOR
Michael Rash <mbr@cipherdyne.org>
.SH CONTRIBUTORS
Many people who are active in the open source community have contributed to fwsnort;
see the
.B CREDITS
file in the fwsnort sources, or visit
.B http://www.cipherdyne.org/fwsnort/docs/contributors.html
to view the online list of contributors.

.B fwsnort
is based on the original
.B snort2iptables
script written by William Stearns.
.SH BUGS
Send bug reports to mbr@cipherdyne.org. Suggestions and/or comments are
always welcome as well.
.SH DISTRIBUTION
.B fwsnort
is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPLv2), and the latest
version may be downloaded from
.B http://www.cipherdyne.org/
Snort is a registered trademark of Sourcefire, Inc.