The instructions below show how to install OpenAppId in Snort 2.9.9.x on Ubuntu 14 and Ubuntu 16.

If you want a more in-depth explanation of the install steps, as well as instructions on how to configure and enhance Snort’s functionality, see my in-depth series for installing Snort on Ubuntu, or my Quick Install Guide for Snort 2.9.9.x on Ubuntu. If you want to test the new alpha version of Snort (Version 3.0 Alpha 4), please see my article: Installing Snort 3 Alpha in Ubuntu.

Let Us Get Started

So let’s get started. First we need tocreate a directory to save the downloaded tarball files:

mkdir ~/snort_src
cd ~/snort_src

Next we install all the Snort pre-requisites from the Ubuntu repositories:

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libpcap-dev libpcre3-dev libdumbnet-dev bison flex zlib1g-dev liblzma-dev

Snort 2.9.9.x needs the development libraries for Nghttp2. On Ubuntu 16 this is simple:

# Ubuntu 16 only (not Ubuntu 14)
sudo apt-get install -y libnghttp2-dev

On Ubuntu 14, we do this from scratch:

# Ubuntu 14 only (not Ubuntu 16)
sudo apt-get install -y autoconf libtool pkg-config
cd ~/snort_src
wget https://github.com/nghttp2/nghttp2/releases/download/v1.17.0/nghttp2-1.17.0.tar.gz
tar -xzvf nghttp2-1.17.0.tar.gz
cd nghttp2-1.17.0
autoreconf -i --force
automake
autoconf
./configure --enable-lib-only
make
sudo make install

Next we want to install the pre-requisites that are specific to OpenAppID:

sudo apt-get install -y libluajit-5.1-dev pkg-config openssl libssl-dev

Download and install Data Acquisition library (DAQ) from the Snort website:

cd ~/snort_src
wget https://www.snort.org/downloads/snort/daq-2.0.6.tar.gz
tar -xvzf daq-2.0.6.tar.gz
cd daq-2.0.6
./configure
make
sudo make install

Installing Snort

Now we are ready to install Snort from source. We use the ‑‑enable-open-appid option, which prepares Snort to be built with OpenAppID support. We also use the ‑‑enable-sourcefire option, which enables the Sourcefire-specific build options:

Now we are ready to install Snort from source:

cd ~/snort_src
wget https://snort.org/downloads/snort/snort-2.9.9.0.tar.gz
tar -xvzf snort-2.9.9.0.tar.gz
cd snort-2.9.9.0
./configure --enable-sourcefire --enable-open-appid
make
sudo make install

Run the following command to update shared libraries:

sudo ldconfig

Since the Snort installation places the Snort binary at /usr/local/bin/snort, it is common to create a symlink to /usr/sbin/snort:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/snort /usr/sbin/snort

We need to a few configuration things to prepare Snort for use. More detailed information on the steps below can be found here .

Create the needed directories and empty files:

# Create the Snort directories:
sudo mkdir /etc/snort
sudo mkdir /etc/snort/rules
sudo mkdir /etc/snort/rules/iplists
sudo mkdir /etc/snort/preproc_rules
sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules
sudo mkdir /etc/snort/so_rules

# Create some files that stores rules and ip lists
sudo touch /etc/snort/rules/iplists/black_list.rules
sudo touch /etc/snort/rules/iplists/white_list.rules
sudo touch /etc/snort/rules/local.rules
sudo touch /etc/snort/sid-msg.map

# Create our logging directories:
sudo mkdir /var/log/snort
sudo mkdir /var/log/snort/archived_logs

# Adjust permissions:
sudo chmod -R 5775 /etc/snort
sudo chmod -R 5775 /var/log/snort
sudo chmod -R 5775 /var/log/snort/archived_logs
sudo chmod -R 5775 /etc/snort/so_rules
sudo chmod -R 5775 /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules

Finally copy some files:

cd ~/snort_src/snort-2.9.9.0/etc/
sudo cp *.conf* /etc/snort
sudo cp *.map /etc/snort
sudo cp *.dtd /etc/snort
cd ~/snort_src/snort-2.9.9.0/src/dynamic-preprocessors/build/usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicpreprocessor/
sudo cp * /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicpreprocessor/

Comment out the rule files that are automatically loaded by Snort in snort.conf (since we don’t have any rule files downloaded at this time) by running the following command:

sudo sed -i 's/include \$RULE\_PATH/#include \$RULE\_PATH/' /etc/snort/snort.conf

Next we need to edit the /etc/snort/snort.conf Snort configuration file as root.

sudo vi /etc/snort/snort.conf

Line 45 of /etc/snort/snort.conf: the variable HOME_NET should match your internal (defended) network. In the below example our HOME NET is 10.0.0.0 with a 24-bit subnet mask (255.255.255.0):

ipvar HOME_NET 10.0.0.0/24

Still editing snort.conf, next we need to modify some file paths to match the lines below, beginning at line 104:

var RULE_PATH /etc/snort/rules
var SO_RULE_PATH /etc/snort/so_rules
var PREPROC_RULE_PATH /etc/snort/preproc_rules

var WHITE_LIST_PATH /etc/snort/rules/iplists
var BLACK_LIST_PATH /etc/snort/rules/iplists

Still editing snort.conf, next we need to enable the local.rules file by un-commenting (remove the hash symbol from the beginning) line 546 so it looks like the following:

include $RULE_PATH/local.rules

Once you have saved your edits to snort.conf, you should test that snort can load this configuration file without any errors. You do this by running snort with the -T flag to tell snort to test the file, the -c flag to identify the path of the snort.conf file, and the -i flag for a network interface that Snort will listen on (Note that Ubuntu 16 can have different interface names, which you can check with the ifconfig command). This is shown below. Output has been truncated to the final few lines to show success:

user@snortserver:~$ sudo snort -T -i eth0 -c /etc/snort/snort.conf
   (...)
   Snort successfully validated the configuration!
   Snort exiting
user@snortserver:~$

Download and Extract the Application Detector Package

Now we need to download the Application Detector Package, which contains the rules for detecting types of traffic. You can find this file on the Snort.org download page, listed as snort-openappid.tar.gz. You should download the latest version of this package, the version below is the latest as of writing, but will probably have changed, as the Snort team is updating regularly:

cd ~/snort_src
wget https://snort.org/downloads/openappid/4602 -O snort-openappid.tar.gz
tar -xvzf snort-openappid.tar.gz

The result of the above command will create a odp directory which holds all the application detector files. We want to move that folder under our Snort rules folder:

sudo cp -r ~/snort_src/odp/ /etc/snort/rules/

and create one folder for third-party developed application detectors:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/thirdparty

Editing snort.conf to enable OpenAppID

We need to enable the OpenAppID pre-processor, then we need to have Snort output the AppID data. The 2.9.9.0 release of snort doesn’t seem to create the default snort.conf correctly (which would include the necessary OpenAppID settings), so rather than enabling them by uncommeting them, we will need to add these lines manually. To enable the pre-processor, edit the snort.conf file (located at /etc/snort/snort.conf) as root, and add the following lines before the commented-out section 6 (line 513 for me):

preprocessor appid: app_stats_filename appstats-u2.log, \
   app_stats_period 60, \
   app_detector_dir /etc/snort/rules

This tells Snort the file name of the log to output statistics to (appstats-u2-log), how often to write to the log (every 60 seconds), and where to find the odf folder we downloaded earlier.

While still in the /etc/snort/snort.conf file, add the following lower down (below the commented-out section 6, around line 526 ):

output unified2: filename snort.u2, limit 128, appid_event_types

this directive tells Snort to output alerts in the unified2 binary format to the snort.log, the size of the log, and also to output AppID data to the same location.

Now test the Snort configuration file to verify there are no errors:

sudo /usr/local/bin/snort -T -c /etc/snort/snort.conf -i eth0

as above, you should see the text: Snort successfully validated the configuration! If not, fix the errors that are reported.

Collecting OpenAppID Data

Use the below command to start collecting packets (change the interface as needed), and use ctrl-c to stop the collection:

sudo /usr/local/bin/snort -c /etc/snort/snort.conf -i eth0
ctrl-c

To generate OpenAppID data while Snort is running as above, try browsing to a website, making sure the data is visible to the interface that snort is listening on, either by passing that data directly through the Snort interface, or by ensuring that your network infrastructure copies network traffic to the Snort server (span port, port mirroring, or promiscuous mode, for example).

Once you have collected data (remember that we are writing data out every 60 seconds, so wait longer than a minute before cancelling the collection), you should see file(s) in /var/log/snort/ with the name: appstats-u2.log.nnnnnnnnnn (where the n’s are numbers). these are the OpenAppID data files. We can process them with u2openappid, which is located in /usr/local/bin.

A simple example of this processing:

noah@snort:~$ sudo u2openappid /var/log/snort/appstats-u2.log.1483841898 
statTime="1449426240",appName="HTTP",txBytes="0",rxBytes="8152"
statTime="1449426300",appName="HTTP",txBytes="0",rxBytes="9542"
statTime="1449426240",appName="DNS",txBytes="301",rxBytes="0"
statTime="1449426240",appName="__unknown",txBytes="12376",rxBytes="1118"
statTime="1449426300",appName="DNS",txBytes="761",rxBytes="0"

In the above example, I used curl over the same interface snort was listening on to request www.xkcd.com. The various application detectors show the amount of traffic for each detector, DNS, HTTP, and the like.

An more complex example of this processing (from an older version of OpenAppID, but still valid):

noah@snort:~$ sudo /usr/local/bin/u2openappid /var/log/snort/appstats-u2.log.1428300780 
statTime="1428300720",appName="curl",txBytes="740",rxBytes="6894"
statTime="1428300720",appName="http",txBytes="1306",rxBytes="7384"
statTime="1428300720",appName="ubuntu",txBytes="566",rxBytes="490"
statTime="1428300720",appName="python_urllib",txBytes="566",rxBytes="490"
statTime="1428300780",appName="https",txBytes="777",rxBytes="1444"
statTime="1428300780",appName="https",txBytes="1040",rxBytes="2116"
statTime="1428300840",appName="google",txBytes="3001",rxBytes="4684"
statTime="1428300840",appName="facebook",txBytes="66705",rxBytes="1841294"
statTime="1428300840",appName="firefox",txBytes="9080",rxBytes="29282"
statTime="1428300840",appName="google_analytic",txBytes="2441",rxBytes="17912"
statTime="1428300840",appName="http",txBytes="10591",rxBytes="49907"
statTime="1428300840",appName="https",txBytes="68049",rxBytes="1846327"
statTime="1428300840",appName="ssl_client",txBytes="66013",rxBytes="1840694"
statTime="1428300840",appName="linux_mint",txBytes="955",rxBytes="2912"
statTime="1428300840",appName="python_urllib",txBytes="1511",rxBytes="20625"
statTime="1428300720",appName="dns",txBytes="380",rxBytes="538"
statTime="1428300720",appName="ssh",txBytes="10487",rxBytes="24943"
statTime="1428300720",appName="rtp",txBytes="592",rxBytes="0"
statTime="1428300780",appName="dhcp",txBytes="1368",rxBytes="0"
statTime="1428300780",appName="dns",txBytes="482",rxBytes="936"
statTime="1428300780",appName="vnc",txBytes="219685",rxBytes="5131591"
statTime="1428300780",appName="https",txBytes="210284",rxBytes="1373974"
statTime="1428300780",appName="mdns",txBytes="8316",rxBytes="0"
statTime="1428300840",appName="dns",txBytes="1754",rxBytes="5372"
statTime="1428300840",appName="facebook",txBytes="3109",rxBytes="11074"
statTime="1428300840",appName="https",txBytes="3109",rxBytes="11074"
statTime="1428300840",appName="ssl_client",txBytes="3109",rxBytes="11074"

If you have output similar to the above, then Snort is installed and works. To generate the above output, I browsed to xkcd.com with curl on one computer, and to facebook with firefox on another computer. Looking through the output, the applications listed with the same statTime are from the same request. When I used curl to request xkcd.com, snort detected the various types of traffic defined by the various detectors.

If you want to learn more about how to run Snort, and how to install additional software to enhance a Snort system, see my in-depth series on installing Snort on Ubuntu. If you have any feedback (recommendations or corrections), please let me know here.