Skip to content

Hardware Configuration

gradius edited this page Sep 21, 2017 · 1 revision

Network Hardware Configuration

Essentially, you'll need the ability to get network traffic from the ports you want to monitor to the monitoring port on the IDS system. This can be done a few different ways, either with hardware or software (if your router has the ability).

With hardware, you can use a switch to span/mirror the port going to your WAN. This way, you're capturing all traffic that comes into and leaves your network. One downside to spanning the WAN is that you miss traffic that never crosses the WAN, but we still see most traffic including malware callbacks, C&C, etc (the things you want to spot).

With hardware, you can also build a network tap that goes between your LAN and WAN. I'm not using this method, so I don't have documentation for this approach. I personally don't like this approach, as it puts our system inbetween LAN and WAN traffic, and if it fails incorrectly, the network can be taken offline. I'll collect some network tap guides for a later update for those that want to try this approach.

With software (if your router hardware supports it), you could use iptables to mirror all traffic to another device on the network. I haven't tried this method yet, but I know people have successfully used this approach in the past. Currently, I don't have any documentation for this approach, but I'll collect some guides for a later update.

TL;DR - Get the traffic you want to see on the IDS to a network port on the IDS system. I'm currently using a Ubiquiti 8 port PoE switch, mirroring the WAN port to the second NIC of my IDS box. If your router supports iptables, you can also mirror the traffic using iptables rules. You can also use a hardware network tap.

PC Hardware Configuration

You'll want a system that matches your network throughput. A key requirement is multiple NICs - one as the management interface, and one for traffic monitoring from your mirror port.

For a rough baseline, on a 200Mbs down/20Mbs up Internet connection, I'm using a Shuttle Mini PC with a Core i5 and 8GB of RAM, along with a 128GB SSD. Even while running a full Elastic stack along with Suricata, it's not struggling to keep up. The only real limitation you'll have to pay attention to is how long you'll want to retain PCAP files, as that's all about storage.

Clone this wiki locally