UPDATE: Snort 2.9.9.x has been released. Please see the updated series of articles here or my quick install guide here.

I am leaving this older guide online for anyone who wants to install this older version of Snort on Ubuntu, but you really should be using the updated guide for the 2.9.9.x version of Snort, since support for older versions of Snort are set to expire, and the updated guide is kept more up to date and includes BASE instead of Snorby for a Web GUI.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Installing Snort
2. Configure Snort to Run as a NIDS
3. Writing and Testing a Single Rule With Snort
4. Installing Barnyard2
5. Installing PulledPork
6. Creating Upstart Scripts for Snort
7. Creating systemD Scripts for Snort
8. Installing Snorby on Ubuntu 12
9. Installing Snorby on Ubuntu 14
10. Installing Snorby on Ubuntu 15
11. Conclusion

Onwards

In the previous two sections of this article, we installed Snort and configured it to work as a NIDS with Barnyard2 processing packets that generated alerts based on a rule. In this article, we are going to install a Perl script called PulledPork, which will automatically download the latest rulesets from the Snort website.

Oinkcode

To download the main free ruleset from Snort, you need an oinkcode. Register on the Snort website and save your oinkcode before continuing, as the oinkcode is required for the most popular free ruleset.

Installing PulledPork

Install the PulledPork pre-requisites:

sudo apt-get install -y libcrypt-ssleay-perl liblwp-useragent-determined-perl

Note on PulledPork Version: The command below installs the 0.7.2 version of PulledPork as it was on November 12, 2015 (fixing issue #194). There are issues with the base 0.7.2 version of PulledPork that are fixed with later patches, but a version release (0.7.3) hasn’t been created that includes those patches yet. I don’t want to use the 0.7.2 version of PulledPork because of the issues, and I don’t want to install the current Master version of PulledPork because it may change after the release of this guide (breaking this guide), so I’ve compromised by linking to a current (as of the time of this writing) version that works well and won’t change. As newer releases come out, they should work, but you will need to test if you choose something different. If you have issues running PulledPork, you may need to install newer versions than what I’m using, as they are actively working on the code at this time.

Download PulledPork and install. Here we copy the actual perl file to /usr/local/bin and the needed configuration files to /etc/snort:

cd ~/snort_src
wget https://github.com/finchy/pulledpork/archive/66241690356d54faa509625a78f80f326b75c339.tar.gz -O pulledpork-0.7.2-194.tar.gz
tar xvfvz pulledpork-0.7.2-194.tar.gz
mv pulledpork-66241690356d54faa509625a78f80f326b75c339 pulledpork-0.7.2-194

cd pulledpork-0.7.2-194/
sudo cp pulledpork.pl /usr/local/bin
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/pulledpork.pl
sudo cp etc/*.conf /etc/snort

Test that PulledPork runs by running the following command, looking for the output below:

user@snortserver:~$ /usr/local/bin/pulledpork.pl -V
PulledPork v0.7.2 - E.Coli in your water bottle!

user@snortserver:~$

Now that we are sure that PulledPork works, we need to configure it:

sudo vi /etc/snort/pulledpork.conf

Make the following changes to the pulledpork.conf file. Anywhere you see ‹oinkcode› enter your oinkcode from the Snort website.  I have included line numbers to help you identify the location of these lines in the configuration file.

Line 19 & 26:  enter your oinkcode where appropriate (or comment out if no oinkcode)
Line 29:  Un-comment for Emerging threats ruleset (not tested with this guide)

Line 74:  change to: rule_path=/etc/snort/rules/snort.rules
Line 89:  change to: local_rules=/etc/snort/rules/local.rules
Line 92:  change to: sid_msg=/etc/snort/sid-msg.map
Line 96:  change to: sid_msg_version=2

Line 119:  change to: config_path=/etc/snort/snort.conf

Line 133:  change to: distro=Ubuntu-12-04

Line 141:  change to: black_list=/etc/snort/rules/iplists/black_list.rules
Line 150:  change to: IPRVersion=/etc/snort/rules/iplists

We want to run PulledPork once manually to make sure it works. We use the following flags:

 -c /etc/snort/pulledpork.conf      the location of the snort.conf file
 -l                                 Write detailed logs to /var/log

Run the following command:

sudo /usr/local/bin/pulledpork.pl -c /etc/snort/pulledpork.conf -l 

After this command runs (it takes some time), you should now see snort.rules in /etc/snort/rules, and .so rules in /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules. Pulled Pork combines all the rulesets that it downloads into these two files. You need to make sure to add the line: include $RULE_PATH/snort.rules to the snort.conf file, or the pulled pork rules will never be read into memory when Snort starts:

sudo vi /etc/snort/snort.conf

Add the following line to enable snort to use the rules that PulledPork downloaded (line 547), after the line for local.rules:

include $RULE_PATH/snort.rules

Since we have modified snort.conf, we should test that Snort loads correctly in NIDS mode with the PulledPork rules included:

sudo snort -T -c /etc/snort/snort.conf -i eth0

Once that is successful, we want to test that Snort and Barnyard2 load correctly when run manually as daemons:

sudo /usr/local/bin/snort -u snort -g snort -c /etc/snort/snort.conf -i eth0 -D
sudo barnyard2 -c /etc/snort/barnyard2.conf -d /var/log/snort -f snort.u2 -w /var/log/snort/barnyard2.waldo -g snort -u snort -D

As before, ping the IP address of the Snort eth0 interface, and then check the database for more events (remember to use the MYSQLSNORTPASSWORD):

mysql -u snort -p -D snort -e "select count(*) from event"

The number of events reported should be greater than what you saw the last time you ran this command. Now that we are sure that PulledPork runs correctly, we want to add PulledPork to root’s crontab to run daily:

sudo crontab -e

Choose any editor if prompted, then add the following line and save:

01 04 * * * /usr/local/bin/pulledpork.pl -c /etc/snort/pulledpork.conf -l

Stop the running daemons from earlier testing:

user@snortserver:~$ ps aux | grep snort
snort     1296  0.0  2.1 297572 43988 ?        Ssl  03:15   0:00 /usr/local/bin/snort -q -u snort -g snort -c /etc/snort/snort.conf -i eth0 -D
user      1314  0.0  0.0   4444   824 pts/0    S+   03:17   0:00 grep --color=auto snort
user@snortserver:~$ sudo kill 1296

user@snortserver:~$ ps aux | grep barnyard2
snort     1298  0.0  2.1 297572 43988 ?        Ssl  03:15   0:00 barnyard2 -c /etc/snort/barnyard2.conf -d /var/log/snort -f snort.u2 -w /var/log/snort/barnyard2.waldo -g snort -u snort -D
user      1316  0.0  0.0   4444   824 pts/0    S+   03:17   0:00 grep --color=auto barnyard2
user@snortserver:~$ sudo kill 1298

Note: Snort needs to be reloaded to see the new rules. This can be done with kill -SIGHUP snort-pid, or you can restart the snort service (once that’s created in a later part of this guide).

Additional note about shared object rules: In addition to regular rules, The above section will download Shared object rules. Shared object rules are also known as ”Shared Object rules”, ”SO rules”, ”pre-compiled rules”, or ”Shared Objects”. These are detection rules that are written in the Shared Object rule language, which is similar to C.

These rules are pre-compiled by the provider of the rules, and allow for more complicated rules, and allow for obfuscation of rules (say to detect attacks that haven’t been patched yet, but the vendor wants to allow detection without revealing the vulnerability). These rules are compiled by the vendor for specific systems. One of these systems is Ubuntu 12, and luckily these rules also work on Ubuntu 14 and 15.

Congratulations, if you have output similar to the above then you have successfully Configured PulledPork. Continue to the next section to install startup scripts for Snort and Barnyard2. Choose one of the two following links, depending on your version of Ubuntu. You will create an Upstart scripts for Ubuntu 12 and 14, and a systemD scripts for Ubuntu 15.

Choose One of the following to continue:
Ubuntu 12 and 14: Creating Upstart Scripts for Snort and Barnyard2
Ubuntu 15: Creating systemD Scripts for Snort