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<H1><A NAME="SECTION00070000000000000000">
<SPAN CLASS="arabic">6</SPAN> Testing Methodologies</A>
</H1>

<P>
A topic which comes up regularly, is how to use tcpreplay to test
products like intrusion detection/prevention devices (IDS/IPS) and
deep inspection firewalls. Generally, I hear people suggest three
things:

<P>

<OL>
<LI>Use security scanners like Nessus
</LI>
<LI>Use ``real attacks'' like those generated by Metasploit
</LI>
<LI>Use a replay tool like tcpreplay to generate attack traffic
</LI>
</OL>
First, let me say that security scanners like Nessus do a really crappy
job of testing the effectiveness of IDS/IPS and firewalls. The simple
reason is that security scanners don't try to exploit vulnerabilities
because it creates problems on the network. IT managers don't like
it when their servers start rebooting or routers crash, so scanners
use other non-agressive techniques like banner grabbing to find potentially
vulnerable systems. Simply put, these non-agressive techniques often
look nothing like a real attack.

<P>
That leaves generating ``real attacks'' and replay tools. 

<P>
Advantages of real attacks:

<P>

<UL>
<LI>It's clear when you have a valid test case because the target system
is compromised
</LI>
<LI>Exploit code and attack tools are widely available for many attacks
</LI>
</UL>
Disadvantages of real attacks:

<P>

<UL>
<LI>After the test case is run, the target system may be unstable or corrupted,
requiring a reboot or re-install
</LI>
<LI>Generally requires two systems: a target (often running VMWare) and
an attacker system
</LI>
<LI>Installing, configuring and managing various operating systems and
applications to attack is a lot of work
</LI>
<LI>Difficult to automate test cases since there is no standardized interface
to these tools
</LI>
<LI>You have to be careful about trojaned exploit code or worms which
escape your lab
</LI>
</UL>
Advantages of replay tools:

<P>

<UL>
<LI>Since both the victim and attacker are virtual, there is no need to
reboot/re-install systems after each test
</LI>
<LI>A complete test bed requires only a single system with two NIC's
</LI>
<LI>Once you have a library of pcap files, there is virtually zero management
overhead
</LI>
<LI>Replay tools provide a common interface to emulating any attack against
any OS/application making automation simple
</LI>
<LI>Pcap files are not executable, so trojans and escaping worms aren't
an issue
</LI>
</UL>
Disadvantages of replay tools;

<P>

<UL>
<LI>There are trust issues regarding pcap files. Are you 100% sure that
pcap file is correct (not corrupted, doesn't have truncated packets,
actually contains the valid exploit)
</LI>
<LI>There are few publicly available pcap's which contain attacks useful
for testing so you must create your own
</LI>
</UL>

<P>

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<ADDRESS>
Aaron Turner
2006-08-07
</ADDRESS>
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