Snort - Network Intrusion Detection & Prevention System

What is Snort?

Snort is the foremost Open Source Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) in the world. Snort IPS uses a series of rules that help define malicious network activity and uses those rules to find packets that match against them and generates alerts for users.

Snort can be deployed inline to stop these packets, as well. Snort has three primary uses: As a packet sniffer like tcpdump, as a packet logger — which is useful for network traffic debugging, or it can be used as a full-blown network intrusion prevention system. Snort can be downloaded and configured for personal and business use alike.

What are my options for buying and using Snort?

Once downloaded and configured, Snort rules are distributed in two sets: The “Community Ruleset” and the “Snort Subscriber Ruleset.”

The Snort Subscriber Ruleset is developed, tested, and approved by Cisco Talos. Subscribers to the Snort Subscriber Ruleset will receive the ruleset in real-time as they are released to Cisco customers. You can download the rules and deploy them in your network through the Snort.org website. The Community Ruleset is developed by the Snort community and QAed by Cisco Talos. It is freely available to all users.

For more information about Snort Subscriber Rulesets available for purchase, please visit the Snort product page.

Get Started

Step 1

Find the appropriate package for your operating system and install.

wget https://snort.org/downloads/snort/daq-2.0.7.tar.gz
                      
wget https://snort.org/downloads/snort/snort-2.9.16.1.tar.gz

tar xvzf daq-2.0.7.tar.gz
                      
cd daq-2.0.7
./configure && make && sudo make install

tar xvzf snort-2.9.16.1.tar.gz
                      
cd snort-2.9.16.1
./configure --enable-sourcefire && make && sudo make install

Downloads

yum install https://snort.org/downloads/snort/
                      
yum install https://snort.org/downloads/snort/snort-2.9.16.1-1.f32.x86_64.rpm

Downloads

snort-2.9.16.1-1.f32.x86_64.rpm

yum install https://snort.org/downloads/snort/
                      
yum install https://snort.org/downloads/snort/snort-2.9.16.1-1.centos8.x86_64.rpm

Downloads

snort-2.9.16.1-1.centos8.x86_64.rpm

pkg install snort

execute: Snort_2_9_16_1_Installer.x86.exe

Downloads

Snort_2_9_16_1_Installer.x86.exe

Step 2

Sign up and get your Oinkcode. We recommend that everyone subscribe to get the latest detections. For those unable to subscribe, creating an account on Snort.org will still give you access to the registered user rule packages.

Step 3

Stay current with the latest updates using PulledPork

wget https://snort.org/downloads/community/community-rules.tar.gz -O community-rules.tar.gz

tar -xvzf community-rules.tar.gz -C /etc/snort/rules

Downloads

opensource.gz

snort3-community-rules.tar.gz

community-rules.tar.gz

Download the rule package that corresponds to your Snort version, for more information on how to retreive your oinkcode.

wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-2983.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-2983.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-3000.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-3000.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29111.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29111.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29130.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29130.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29141.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29141.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29150.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29150.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29151.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29151.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29160.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29160.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29161.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29161.tar.gz

tar -xvzf snortrules-snapshot-<version>.tar.gz -C /etc/snort/rules

Downloads

opensource.gz

snortrules-snapshot-2983.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-3000.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29111.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29130.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29141.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29150.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29151.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29160.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29161.tar.gz

Download the rule package that corresponds to your Snort version, for more information on how to retreive your oinkcode.

wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-2983.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-2983.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-3000.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-3000.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29111.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29111.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29130.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29130.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29141.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29141.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29150.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29150.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29151.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29151.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29160.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29160.tar.gz
wget https://snort.org/rules/snortrules-snapshot-29161.tar.gz?oinkcode=<oinkcode> -O snortrules-snapshot-29161.tar.gz

tar -xvzf snortrules-snapshot-<version>.tar.gz -C /etc/snort/rules

Downloads

opensource.gz

snortrules-snapshot-2983.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-3000.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29111.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29130.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29141.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29150.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29151.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29160.tar.gz

snortrules-snapshot-29161.tar.gz

Step 4

Read Docs

For more details please reference our install guides on the documents page.

Documents

The following setup guides have been contributed by members of the Snort Community for your use. Comments and questions on these documents should be submitted directly to the author by clicking on the name below.

Official Documentation

Snort Users Manual (HTML)

Snort Team

Snort Users Manual

Snort Team

Registered vs. Subscriber

Joel Esler

Snort FAQ

Snort Team / Open Source Community

Additional Resources

Snort.conf examples

Joel Esler

How to find and use your Oinkcode

Joel Esler

What do the base policies mean?

Joel Esler

Webcast Slides

OpenAppId Detection Webinar

Costas Kleopa

Submit a False Positive

Please sign in and click the false positives tab in your account dashboard

Rule Docs

1-56088

This rule looks for HTTP traffic associated with Unix.Spyware.WellMess or Dos.Spyware.WellMess samples.

1-56086

This rule detects an attempted denial of service attack against vulnerable versions of Apache Tomcat by looking for a WebSocket header that supplies an overly large packet size.

1-56083

This rule looks for command injection characters in the vulnerable parameters of the 'WP Database Backup' Wordpress plugin.

New to Snort?

Find the appropriate package for your operating system and install.

Sign up and get your Oinkcode. We recommend that everyone subscribe to get the latest detections. For those unable to subscribe, creating an account on Snort.org will still give you access to the registered user rule packages.

Stay current with the latest updates using PulledPork

Download the rule package that corresponds to your Snort version, for more information on how to retreive your oinkcode.

Download the rule package that corresponds to your Snort version, for more information on how to retreive your oinkcode.

For more details please reference our install guides on the documents page.

Please sign in and click the false positives tab in your account dashboard

Please use this search to look for any rule by entering either a SID, a CVE, or simply entering any generic search text.