HOWTO : Suricata on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server

Suricata is an Open Source Next Generation Intrusion Detection and Prevention Engine. This engine is not intended to just replace or emulate the existing tools in the industry, but will bring new ideas and technologies to the field.



There is an Ubuntu PPA of Suricata for Ubuntu 10.04 to 13.04 and the Ubuntu 13.04 is included Suricata in her repositories too. Meanwhile, those packages have IPS mode through NFQUEUE enabled. In addition, Suricata supports nVidia CUDA which requires to recompile the source code with suitable parameter.



Suricata not only can installed on servers but also on desktops and laptops. It performs quiet well on an Intel Atom ITX machine.



For the features, please read here for details.



The following is a basic and general setup of Suricata. For more advanced settings, please refer to the Reference below.





Step 1 :



sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oisf/suricata-stable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install suricata htp



Step 2 :



To get the Emerging Threats rules :



cd /etc/suricata/



sudo wget https://rules.emergingthreatspro.com/open/suricata/emerging.rules.tar.gz



sudo tar -xvzf emerging.rules.tar.gz



sudo ln -s /etc/suricata/rules/reference.config /etc/suricata/reference.config



sudo ln -s /etc/suricata/UbuntuPPA-configs/classification.config /etc/suricata/classification.config



sudo cp /etc/suricata/UbuntuPPA-configs/suricata-ppa-1.4-6ubuntu6.yaml /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml



*** You can use reference.config and classification.config at /etc/suricata/rules.



sudo mkdir /var/log/suricata

sudo touch /etc/suricata/threshold.config



Step 3 :



sudo nano /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml



Locate the following lines :



default-log-dir: /usr/local/var/log/suricata/

default-rule-path: /usr/local/etc/suricata/rules

classification-file: /usr/local/etc/suricata/classification.config

reference-config-file: /usr/local/etc/suricata/reference.config

#pid-file: /var/run/suricata.pid

#- rule-reload: true

#threshold-file: /usr/local/etc/suricata/threshold.config



- drop

enable: no



Replace with the following lines :



default-log-dir: /var/log/suricata/

default-rule-path: /etc/suricata/rules

classification-file: /etc/suricata/classification.config

reference-config-file: /etc/suricata/reference.config

pid-file: /var/run/suricata.pid

- rule-reload: true

threshold-file: /usr/local/etc/suricata/threshold.config



- drop

enable: yes



To test if it work or not :



sudo suricata -c /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml -i eth0



Several minutes later, check the /var/log/suricata/stats.log and /var/log/suricata/http.log to see if there are some entries or not.



Step 4 :



sudo iptables -A INPUT -j NFQUEUE

sudo iptables -A OUTPUT -j NFQUEUE

sudo iptables -A FORWARD -j NFQUEUE



To test if it work or not :



sudo suricata -c /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml -q 0



Step 5 :



sudo apt-get install oinkmaster



sudo nano /etc/oinkmaster.conf



Append the following line :



url = https://rules.emergingthreatspro.com/open/suricata/emerging.rules.tar.gz



sudo oinkmaster -C /etc/oinkmaster.conf -o /etc/suricata/rules



Step 6 :



When everything is working fine, you can put them in the /etc/rc.local just right above "exit 0" :



#iptables -F

iptables -A INPUT -j NFQUEUE

iptables -A OUTPUT -j NFQUEUE

iptables -A FORWARD -j NFQUEUE



/etc/suricata/ips



Then create a file /etc/suricata/ips :



sudo nano /etc/suricata/ips

suricata -D -c /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml -q 0

oinkmaster -C /etc/oinkmaster.conf -o /etc/suricata/rules

kill -USR2 `pidof suricata`



chmod +x /etc/suricata/ips



Then you can write a cron job to update Emerging Threats Rules everyday.



sudo crontab -e



Append the following :



@daily /etc/suricata/update-rules



Then create the update-rule



sudo nano /etc/suricata/update-rules



oinkmaster -C /etc/oinkmaster.conf -o /etc/suricata/rules

kill -USR2 `pidof suricata`



sudo chmod +x /etc/suricata/update-rules





Remarks :



If you want to create a user-interface for the IPS, you can refer to the "Reference" item [12].



If the Suricata acts as IPS gateway, it requires to bridge 2 NICs and 1 NIC for management purpose. In addition, you need to do some changes on the configure files.



If you have 4-cores CPU, you need to change the settings as the following :



iptables -A INPUT -j NFQUEUE --queue-balance 0:3

iptables -A OUTPUT -j NFQUEUE --queue-balance 0:3

iptables -A FORWARD -j NFQUEUE --queue-balance 0:3



suricata -D -c /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml -q 0 -q 1 -q 2 -q 3











Reference



[1] OISF - Open Information Security Foundation

[2] Ubuntu PPA

[3] Suricata - Features

[4] Suricata Rules

[5] Rules reload

[6] Rule Management with Oinkmaster

[7] SmoothSec 2.1 (Suricata IDS distribution)

[8] Setting up IPS/inline for Linux

[9] Installation with CUDA on Ubuntu Server

[10] Suricata, Snorby and Barnyard2 setup guide

[11] Kill process in Linux or terminate a process in UNIX or Linux systems

[12] Installing Snorby on Ubuntu 12.04

[13] Suricata.yaml

[14] Suricata IPS information

[15] Suricata - Windows

[16] Suricata - Mac OSX

[17] Suricata - FreeBSD



That's all! See you.