Packet space analysis of intrusion detection signatures

Abstract

It is often the case that more than one signature is triggered on a given group of packets, depending on the signature database used by the IDS. For performance reasons, network IDSs often impose an alert limit (i.e., they restrict) on the number of signatures that can be triggered on a given group of packets. Thus, it is possible that some signatures that should be triggered to properly identify attacks are not verified by the IDS and lead to an IDS Evasion attack. In this poster, we introduce the concept of packet space analysis as a solution to address these problems. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.