High performance session state management scheme for stateful packet inspection

Abstract

This paper relates to a method for performing Stateful Packet Inspection(SPI) in real time using a session table management scheme that allows more efficient generation of session state information. SPI is an important technique to reduce false positive alerts in network intrusion detection system(NIDS). As the number of session increases, this technique requires a higher processing speed, thereby causing performance problems. However, existing software-based solutions cannot perform real-time packet inspection ensuring the wire speed. To guarantee both performance and functionality with respect to statefulness, we designed and implemented SPIbased intrusion detection module in a FPGA to help alleviating a bottleneck in network intrusion detection systems in this paper. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.