OSSEC
Developer(s) | Daniel B. Cid |
---|---|
Stable release | 2.8.1 / October 9, 2014 |
Operating system | Cross-platform |
Type | Security / HIDS |
License | GNU GPL v2 |
Website | www.ossec.net |
OSSEC is a free, open-source host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS). It performs log analysis, integrity checking, Windows registry monitoring, rootkit detection, time-based alerting, and active response. It provides intrusion detection for most operating systems, including Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows. OSSEC has a centralized, cross-platform architecture allowing multiple systems to be easily monitored and managed. It was written by Daniel B. Cid and made public in 2004.
History
In June 2008, the OSSEC project and all the copyrights owned by Cid, the project leader, were acquired by Third Brigade, Inc. They promised to continue to contribute to the open source community and to extend commercial support and training to the OSSEC open source community.
In May 2009, Trend Micro acquired Third Brigade and the OSSEC project, with promises to keep it open source and free.
It is compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requirements.
Software Components
OSSEC consists of a main application, a Windows agent, and a web interface:
- Main Application: The main application, OSSEC, is required for distributed network or stand-alone installations. It is supported by Linux, Solaris, BSD, and Mac environments.
- Windows Agent: The Windows Agent is provided for Microsoft Windows environments. The main application needs to be installed and configured for server mode to support the Windows Agent.
- Web Interface: A separate web interface application provides a graphical user interface. Like the main application, it is supported by Linux, Solaris, BSD, and Mac environments.
Capabilities
OSSEC has a log analysis engine that is able to correlate and analyze logs from multiple devices and formats. The following are currently supported:
- FTP servers:
- ProFTPd
- Pure-FTPd
- vsftpd
- Microsoft FTP Server
- Solaris ftpd
- Mail servers:
- Imapd and pop3d
- Postfix
- Sendmail
- vpopmail
- Microsoft Exchange Server
- Databases:
- Web servers:
- Apache HTTP Server (access log and error log)
- IIS web server (NSCA and W3C extended)
- Zeus Web Server errors log
- Web applications:
- Horde IMP
- SquirrelMail
- Modsecurity
- Firewalls:
- Iptables firewall
- Solaris IPFilter firewall
- AIX ipsec/firewall
- Netscreen firewall
- Windows Firewall
- Cisco PIX
- Cisco FWSM
- Cisco ASA
- Others:
- Named (BIND)
- Squid proxy
- Zeus eXtensible Traffic Manager (now Riverbed Stingray Traffic Manager)
- Windows event logs (logins, logouts, audit information, etc.)
- Windows Routing and Remote Access logs
- Generic Unix authentication (adduser, logins, etc.)
See also
References
- OSSEC Documentation
- OSSEC blog
- OSSEC Project acquired
- Third Brigade Acquires OSSEC Open Source HIDS Project
- Trend Micro Acquires Third Brigade and OSSEC