What are the Benefits of Suricata?

Suricata vs Snort? Choosing between these two incredibly popular open-source intrusion detection systems (IDS) can be difficult. To make the most informed decision, it is important to have a good understanding of how Suricata works, what it is used for, and its advantages and disadvantages.

What is the purpose of Suricata?

The overall purpose of Suricata is to provide network security support by identifying or blocking malicious traffic entering the network. Whether it is used in IDS or IPS mode, Suricata is one of the best open-source IDS/IPS options providing a layer of defense using:

• Threat Detection: Suricata constantly examines network traffic for malicious patterns. It compares this traffic to a vast database of known attack signatures and pre-defined Suricata rules. These signatures are like the fingerprints of specific threats, allowing Suricata to identify malware, exploit attempts, and suspicious network activity.
• Deep Packet Inspection: Suricata inspects data packets, analyzing not just the source and destination, but also the content itself. This allows it to detect hidden threats within encrypted traffic or files being transferred.
• Protocol Analysis: Suricata can analyze a wide range of network protocols, understanding how different types of communication work. This lets it identify suspicious behavior within specific protocols, like unusual data transfers or attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in certain communication methods.
• Network Traffic Baselining: Suricata can be used to establish a baseline of what "normal" traffic looks like on your network. By monitoring activity over time, a machine learning engine can use the data produced by Suricata to learn the typical patterns and identify significant deviations that might indicate a potential attack.
• Threat Hunting: Suricata's detailed logs and analysis capabilities are valuable for security professionals. They can use Suricata's data to investigate suspicious activity, identify trends, and proactively hunt for hidden threats within the network.

How does Suricata work?

Suricata has become one of the best open-source intrusion detection tools by monitoring traffic and issuing alerts whenever that traffic matches the signature of a known threat. Here is a more detailed breakdown:

1. 1. Network Traffic Acquisition: Suricata operates in a sniffing or promiscuous mode on a designated network interface. This allows it to capture all network traffic flowing through that interface, regardless of its intended recipient.
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3. 2. Packet Parsing and Analysis: Suricata employs packet capture libraries to collect network traffic in the form of raw data packets. It then utilizes packet parsing libraries to dissect these packets into headers, payloads, and protocol-specific data structures.
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5. 3. Signature Matching: Suricata is programmed with a rule set or signature database. These signatures define patterns that match specific network activity associated with known threats. Suricata employs pattern-matching techniques to compare the extracted data from the packets against the signatures in the rule set.
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7. 4. Deep Packet Inspection (Optional): Suricata can be configured for deep packet inspection (DPI). During DPI, Suricata examines the payload portion of the packet beyond the headers. This enables the detection of threats that might hide malicious content within the data while also providing a robust set of network security monitoring (NSM) data.
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9. 5. Action and Logging: Upon detecting a match or anomaly, Suricata triggers pre-defined actions based on its configuration. These actions can include logging the event for further investigation, generating alerts for security personnel, or even blocking the traffic flow if Suricata is deployed in Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) mode.
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The effectiveness of Suricata depends on two main factors:

• Maintained Rule Sets: The signature database requires regular updates to incorporate the latest threats. Fortunately, Suricata benefits from a community that actively contributes to maintaining and expanding the available signatures.
• Configuration and Customization: Suricata offers a high degree of configurability. Security teams can tailor its operation to focus on specific network traffic types or ports. They can even develop custom rules to address unique threats specific to their network environment.

What are the advantages of Suricata?

Suricata offers a compelling set of benefits that make it a valuable tool for fortifying your network security. Here are some of the key advantages:

• Speed: Unlike some other IDS tools, Suricata is multi-threaded, meaning it can use multiple CPU cores simultaneously. This allows it to handle complex tasks and analyze vast amounts of traffic in real time, ensuring threats are detected quickly without compromising network performance. Suricata is also designed to manage memory efficiently, minimizing resource consumption and maximizing processing speed.
• Scalability: Suricata can easily adapt to your organization’s needs as it grows. It can be deployed in a distributed fashion, with sensors strategically placed across your network. This allows for wider network coverage and the ability to scale processing power by adding more sensors as your network expands. It can then be configured to prioritize specific network segments or workloads, ensuring optimal performance for critical areas while efficiently handling less sensitive traffic. Because Suricata is so efficient, it can run effectively even on modest hardware. As your organization’s needs grow, you can upgrade hardware or leverage distributed deployments for continued scalability.
• Flexibility: Suricata offers a high degree of customization through extensive rule sets and indicators of compromise (IOCs). Suricata supports various rule sets from multiple sources, including Emerging Threats and Snort rules. You can also create custom rules to address specific vulnerabilities or concerns. Additionally, Suricata can be configured to detect specific indicators associated with known threats, such as malicious IP addresses, URLs, or file hashes. This allows for highly targeted threat detection.
• NSM Functionality: Suricata goes beyond basic IDS/IPS functionalities, tracking network flows to provide valuable insights into network activity patterns and identifying suspicious connections. Suricata can collect various network telemetry data, including packet size, source and destination information, protocol details, and more. This comprehensive data aids in network behavior analysis and threat detection.
• Depth of Data: Suricata provides a wealth of valuable data for various security purposes, including detailed packet inspection, flow data, alert logs, and more. This data is invaluable for forensic analysis after a security breach and can be used for security audits and compliance purposes. Additionally, the detailed data Suricata provides can be fed into your organization’s SIEM, other dedicated security analytics platforms, or a network detection and response (NDR) system to be leveraged by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) engines for advanced threat detection and automated incident response.

What are the disadvantages of Suricata?

Unfortunately, no security system is perfect. Like any security tool, Suricata does have some distinct disadvantages:

• Complexity: Suricata offers a high degree of flexibility, but this can also translate to complexity. Setting up, configuring, and maintaining Suricata effectively requires a good understanding of network security concepts, IDS/IPS functionalities, and potentially scripting languages for rule customization. This can be a challenge for organizations with limited security expertise.
• False Positives: Suricata relies on predefined rules and signatures to identify threats. Overly strict or outdated rules can lead to false positives, where legitimate traffic gets flagged as suspicious. This can create unnecessary alerts and waste valuable security personnel time investigating non-existent threats.
• Performance Overhead: While Suricata is known for its speed, it can still consume significant CPU and memory resources, especially when dealing with very high-bandwidth networks. This might necessitate upgrading hardware or implementing distributed deployments to ensure optimal performance.
• Limited Support: Suricata being open-source offers cost advantages, but it also means there's no guaranteed vendor support. While the community is active and helpful, organizations might require additional resources or expertise to troubleshoot complex issues or integrate Suricata with other security tools. A solution to this could be implementing a Suricata-based network detection and response (NDR) system like the Stamus Security Platform.
• Security Expertise Needed: Extracting the most value from Suricata requires skilled security professionals. You'll need personnel who understand threat detection, rule management, and interpreting the vast amount of data Suricata collects. This can be a challenge for organizations with limited security staff.
• Alert Fatigue: Suricata can generate a significant number of alerts, especially in complex network environments. Without proper filtering and prioritization, security personnel can become overwhelmed by alert fatigue, potentially missing critical threats amidst the noise.

Suricata is a powerful and versatile tool, but it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. Consider the complexity, potential for resource consumption, and the need for security expertise when evaluating Suricata for your specific needs. If you organization wants to begin using Suricata, you could also consider deploying a network detection and response (NDR) system built on top of the Suricata engine, such as the Stamus Security Platform.

Learn More About Suricata

To begin learning more about Suricata, we recommend downloading the open-source book published by Stamus Networks titled “The Security Analyst’s Guide to Suricata” — the first practical guide to threat detection and hunting using Suricata, the world’s most popular open-source network security engine.

Written for security operations center (SOC) analysts and threat hunters who use Suricata to gain insights into what is taking place on their networks, the book provides vital information on entry points and an in-depth analysis of the most important Suricata features.

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