Chapter 5:

Implementing Intrusion Prevention

CCNA Security v2.0

 5.0 Introduction
5.1 IPS Technologies
5.2 IPS Signatures
5.3 Implement IPS
5.4 Summary

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 Upon completion of this section, you should be able to:
• Explain zero-day attacks.

• Understand how to monitor, detect and stop attacks.

• Describe the advantages and disadvantages of IDS and IPS.

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 Advantages of an IDS:
• Works passively

• Requires traffic to be mirrored

in order to reach it
• Network traffic does not pass
through the IDS unless it is
mirrored

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 IPS:
• Implemented in an inline mode

• Monitors Layer 3 and Layer 4

traffic
• Can stop single packet attacks
from reaching target
• Responds immediately, not
allowing any malicious traffic to
pass

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 Advantages IDS: Advantages IPS:
• No impact on network • Stops trigger packets

• No network impact if there is a • Can use stream normalization

sensor failure techniques
• No network impact if there is a
sensor overload

Disadvantages IDS: Disadvantages IPS:

• Response action cannot stop • Sensor issues might affect
trigger network traffic
• Correct tuning required for • Sensor overloading impacts the
response actions network
• More vulnerable to network • Some impact on network
security evasion techniques

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 Cisco IPS AIM and Network
Module Enhanced (IPS NME)

Cisco ASA AIP-SSM

Cisco IPS 4300 Series Sensors

Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series IDSM-2

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 Factors affecting the IPS sensor selection and deployment:
• Amount of network traffic

• Network topology

• Security budget

• Available security staff to manage IPS

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 Promiscuous Mode

Inline Mode

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 Traffic Sniffing Using
a Hub

Traffic Sniffing Using

a Switch

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 Cisco SPAN Commands:
• Monitor session command – used to associate a source port and a destination
port with a SPAN session.

• Show monitor command – used to verify the SPAN session.

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 Upon completion of the section, you should be able to:
• Understand IPS signature characteristics

• Explain IPS signature alarms

• Manage and monitor IPS

• Understand the global correlation of Cisco IPS devices

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 A signature is a set of rules that an IDS and an IPS use to detect typical
intrusion activity.
Signatures have three distinct attributes:
• Type

• Trigger (alarm)

• Action

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 Signatures are categorized as either:
• Atomic – this simplest type of signature consists of a single packet, activity, or
event that is examined to determine if it matches a configured signature. If
yes, an alarm is triggered and a signature action is performed.
• Composite – this type of signature identifies a sequence of operations
distributed across multiple hosts over an arbitrary period of time.

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 • As new threats are identified, new signatures must be created and
uploaded to an IPS.
• A signature file contains a package of network signatures.

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 Cisco IOS defines five micro-engines:
• Atomic – Signatures that examine simple packets.

• Service – Signatures that examine the many services that are attacked.

• String - Signatures that use regular expression-based patterns to detect

intrusions.
• Multi-string – Supports flexible pattern matching and Trend Labs signatures.

• Other – Internal engine that handles miscellaneous signatures.

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 Benefits:
• It uses underlying routing
infrastructure to provide an
additional layer of security.
• It is inline and is supported on a
broad range of routing platforms.
• It provides threat protection at all
entry points to the network when
used in combination with Cisco
IDS, Cisco IOS Firewall, VPN,
and NAC solutions
• The size of the signature
database used by the devices
can be adapted to the amount of
available memory in the router.

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 Understanding Alarm Types:

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 Summary of Action Categories:

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 Generating an Alert:

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 Logging the Activity:

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 Dropping or Preventing the Activity:

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 Resetting the Connection and Blocking the Activity:

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 IPS Planning and Monitoring Considerations:
• Management method

• Event correlation

• Security staff

• Incident response plan

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 Goals of global correlation:
• Dealing intelligently with alerts to improve effectiveness

• Improving protection against known malicious sites

• Sharing telemetry data with the SensorBase Network to improve visibility of

alerts and sensor actions on a global scale
• Simplifying configuration settings

• Automatic handling of security information uploads and downloads

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 Network participation gathers the following data:
• Signature ID

• Attacker IP address

• Attacker port

• Maximum segment size

• Victim IP address

• Victim port

• Signature version

• TCP options string

• Reputation score

• Risk rating

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 Upon completion of this section, you should be able to:
• Understand how to configure Cisco IOS IPS with CLI

• Explain how to verify and monitor IPS

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 Step 1. Download the IOS IPS files.
Step 2. Create an IOS IPS configuration directory in Flash.
Step 3. Configure an IOS IPS crypto key.
Step 4. Enable IOS IPS.
Step 5. Load the IOS IPS signature package to the router.

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 Retiring an Individual Signature:

Retiring a Signature Category:

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 Show commands to verify the IOS IPS configuration:
• show ip ips

• show ip ips all

• show ip ips configuration

• show ip ips interfaces

• show ip ips signatures

• show ip ips statistics

Clear commands to disable IPS:

• clear ip ips configuration

• clear ip ips statistics

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 Chapter Objectives:
• Describe IPS technologies and how they are implemented.

• Explain IPS Signatures.

• Describe the IPS implementation process.

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Thank you.
• Remember, there are
helpful tutorials and user
guides available via your
NetSpace home page. 1
(https://www.netacad.com) 2
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