AlienVault: the Future of Security Information Management

<directive id="101"
           name="Unauthorized Access to Web Server"
           priority="5">
   <rule type="detector"
         name="NMAP Scan from Foreign host"
         from="ANY"
         to="web.server.ip.address"
         port_from="ANY"
         port_to="22"
         reliability="1"
         occurrence="1"
         plugin_id="1001"
         plugin_sid="2000537,2000545"
         sticky="true"
         sticky_different="SRC_IP">
      <rules>
         <rule type="detector"
               name="Too Many Logins"
               from="web.server.ip.address"
               to="ANY"
               port_from="ANY"
               port_to="ANY"
               reliability="+2"
               occurrence="2"
               time_out="86400"
               plugin_id="7010"
               plugin_sid="5716"/>
      </rules>
   </rule>
</directive>

To generate an alarm, log on to the XP client and download Nmap. Run four scans against the CentOS server using the zenmap GUI and the quick scan option. Then, ssh to the same server and attempt to log in as root, but enter an incorrect password five times. You should see a new alarm in the Unresolved Alarms link at the top of the page. Access this link and find the alarm triggered by your test directive (Figure 10). Identify the row with your test alarm and click on the icon resembling a sheet of paper in the Action column to open a new Alarm Incident (Figure 11). A new window will pop up and display basic information about the incident that will be used to create a ticket. Click OK to confirm the information, and the full ticket editor will load. Add a description and any other pertinent information to this page, and click on the Add ticket button. You should see a new Unresolved Ticket on the indicator at the top of the page. To edit a ticket, navigate to the Tickets link in the Incidents section of the navigation pane. From here you can add notes, attach files and change the status of your tickets. A ticket will no longer show in the list once its status is set to Closed. Although quite simple, this built-in ticketing system contains the necessary functionality to satisfy most enterprises' incident-response needs. OSSIM also contains a knowledge base that you can use to link tickets and external documents that adds another layer of depth to its incident response system.

Figure 10. Test Directive Generating an Alarm

Figure 11. A New Ticket Generated by the Alarm

This brief walk-through barely touches on the power of OSSIM. Its correlation abilities and its multitude of plugins make it an intriguing alternative to the traditional SIM. If you factor in the ability to write your own plugins, you have a tool that is fully customizable for any environment and whose value is limited only by your creativity. The makers of OSSIM have given SIMs a new intelligence that hopefully will drive innovation in the field and take security management to the next level.