Snort - the de facto standard for intrusion detection/prevention
the de facto standard in IPS  
Got Source? About Snort About Sourcefire Snort FAQ
Sourcefire Network Security - the creators of Snort
Snort News Snort Downloads Snort Rules Snort Docs Snort Training Snort Forums Snort Community Snort Store
Search Site
Search Rules
Account
email
password
not registered?
can't login?
user preferences
next up previous contents
Next: Activate/Dynamic Rules Up: Rules Headers Previous: Port Numbers   Contents

The Direction Operator

The direction operator -$>$ indicates the orientation, or direction, of the traffic that the rule applies to. The IP address and port numbers on the left side of the direction operator is considered to be the traffic coming from the source host, and the address and port information on the right side of the operator is the destination host. There is also a bidirectional operator, which is indicated with a $<>$ symbol. This tells Snort to consider the address/port pairs in either the source or destination orientation. This is handy for recording/analyzing both sides of a conversation, such as telnet or POP3 sessions. An example of the bidirectional operator being used to record both sides of a telnet session is shown in Figure [*].

Also, note that there is no $<$- operator. In Snort versions before 1.8.7, the direction operator did not have proper error checking and many people used an invalid token. The reason the $<$- does not exist is so that rules always read consistently.

Figure: Snort rules using the Bidirectional Operator
\begin{figure}\begin{verbatim}log tcp !192.168.1.0/24 any <> 192.168.1.0/24 23\end{verbatim} \par\end{figure}

next up previous contents
Next: Activate/Dynamic Rules Up: Rules Headers Previous: Port Numbers   Contents
Steven Sturges 2006-12-08
site feedback | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | forum archives ©2008 Snort and Sourcefire are registered trademarks of Sourcefire, Inc. All rights reserved.