Thanks to the hard work of Arturo Borrero Gonzalez, Suricata has just been added to the Debian ‘backports’ repository. This allows users of Debian stable to run up to date versions of Suricata.

The ‘Backports’ repository makes the Suricata and libhtp packages from Debian Testing available to ‘stable’ users. As ‘testing’ is currently in a freeze, it may take a bit of time before 2.0.5 and libhtp 0.5.16 appear.

Anyway, here is how to use it.

Install

First add backports repo to your sources:

# echo "deb http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy-backports main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
# apt-get update

As explained here http://backports.debian.org/Instructions/, this will not affect your normal packages.

To prove this, check:

# apt-get install suricata -s
Conf libhtp1 (0.2.6-2 Debian:7.7/stable [amd64])
Conf suricata (1.2.1-2 Debian:7.7/stable [amd64])

Not what we want, as that is still the old version.

To install Suricata from backports, we need to specify the repo:

# apt-get install -t wheezy-backports suricata -s
Conf libhtp1 (0.5.15-1~bpo70+1 Debian Backports:/wheezy-backports [amd64])
Conf suricata (2.0.4-1~bpo70+1 Debian Backports:/wheezy-backports [amd64])

Let’s do it!

# apt-get install -t wheezy-backports suricata
...
Setting up suricata (2.0.4-1~bpo70+1) ...
[FAIL] suricata disabled, please adjust the configuration to your needs ... failed!
[FAIL] and then set RUN to 'yes' in /etc/default/suricata to enable it. ... failed!

Suricata 2.0.4 is now installed, but it’s not yet running.
To see what features have been compiled in, run:

# suricata --build-info
This is Suricata version 2.0.4 RELEASE

Suricata Configuration:
  AF_PACKET support:                       yes
  PF_RING support:                         no
  NFQueue support:                         yes
  NFLOG support:                           no
  IPFW support:                            no
  DAG enabled:                             no
  Napatech enabled:                        no
  Unix socket enabled:                     yes
  Detection enabled:                       yes

  libnss support:                          yes
  libnspr support:                         yes
  libjansson support:                      yes
  Prelude support:                         yes
  PCRE jit:                                yes
  LUA support:                             yes
  libluajit:                               yes
  libgeoip:                                no
  Non-bundled htp:                         yes
  Old barnyard2 support:                   no
  CUDA enabled:                            no

  Suricatasc install:                      yes

It has Luajit enabled, libjansson for the JSON output, NFQ and AF_PACKET IPS modes, NSS for MD5 checksums and unix sockets. Quite a good feature set.

Run

To get it running, we need a few more steps:

Edit /etc/default/suricata:

1. Change RUN=no to RUN=yes
2. Change LISTENMODE to “af-packet”:

Now lets start it.

# service suricata start
Starting suricata in IDS (af-packet) mode... done.

And confirm that it’s running.

# ps aux|grep suricata
root     20295  1.8  4.1 200212 42544 ?        Ssl  00:50   0:00 /usr/bin/suricata -c /etc/suricata/suricata-debian.yaml --pidfile /var/run/suricata.pid --af-packet -D

Check if we’re seeing traffic:

# tail /var/log/suricata/stats.log -f|grep capture
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth01                | 406
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth01                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth01                | 411
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth01                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth01                | 417
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth01                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth01                | 587
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth01                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth01                | 593
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth01                | 0
capture.kernel_packets    | RxAFPeth11                | 0
capture.kernel_drops      | RxAFPeth11                | 0

Logging

As the init script starts Suricata in daemon mode, we need to enable logging to file:

Edit /etc/suricata/suricata-debian.yaml and go to the “logging:” section, there change the “file” portion to look like:

  - file:
      enabled: yes
      filename: /var/log/suricata/suricata.log

Note: in the YAML indentation matters, so make sure it’s exactly right.

Rules

Oinkmaster is automatically installed, so lets use that:

First create the rules directory:

mkdir /etc/suricata/rules/

Open /etc/oinkmaster.conf in your editor and add:

url = https://rules.emergingthreats.net/open/suricata-2.0/emerging.rules.tar.gz

Then run:

# oinkmaster -C /etc/oinkmaster.conf -o /etc/suricata/rules
Loading /etc/oinkmaster.conf
Downloading file from https://rules.emergingthreats.net/open/suricata-2.0/emerging.rules.tar.gz... done.
...

Edit /etc/suricata/suricata-debian.yaml and change “default-rule-path” to:

default-rule-path: /etc/suricata/rules

Finally, restart to load the new rules:

# service suricata restart

Validate

Now that Suricata is running with rules, lets see if it works:

# wget http://www.testmyids.com
--2015-01-08 01:21:30--  http://www.testmyids.com/
Resolving www.testmyids.com (www.testmyids.com)... 82.165.177.154

This should trigger a specific rule:

# tail /var/log/suricata/fast.log 
01/08/2015-01:21:30.870346  [**] [1:2100498:7] GPL ATTACK_RESPONSE id check returned root [**] [Classification: Potentially Bad Traffic] [Priority: 2] {TCP} 82.165.177.154:80 -> 192.168.122.181:59190

Success! 🙂

Thanks

Thanks to Arturo Borrero Gonzalez for taking on this work for us. Also many thanks for Pierre Chifflier for maintaining the Suricata and libhtp packages in Debian.