HP-UX Host Intrusion Detection System Version 4.3 administrator guide
Table Of Contents
- HP-UX Host Intrusion Detection System Version 4.3 administrator guide
- Table of Contents
- About This Document
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Configuring HP-UX HIDS
- 3 Getting Started with HP-UX HIDS
- 4 Using the System Manager Screen
- Starting the HP-UX HIDS System Manager
- Stopping the HP-UX HIDS System Manager
- System Manager Components
- Starting HP-UX HIDS Agents
- Getting the Status of Agent Hosts
- Resynchronizing Agent Hosts
- Activating Schedules on Agent Hosts
- Stopping Schedules on Agent Hosts
- Halting HP-UX HIDS Agents
- Accessing Other Screens
- 5 Using the Schedule Manager Screen
- The Schedule Manager
- Configuring Surveillance Schedules
- Configuring Surveillance Groups
- Configuring Detection Templates
- Setting Surveillance Schedule Timetables
- Configuring Alert Aggregation
- Configuring Monitor Failed Attempts
- Configuring Duplicate Alert Suppression
- Viewing Surveillance Schedule Details
- Predefined Surveillance Schedules and Groups
- 6 Using the Host Manager Screen
- 7 Using the Network Node Screen
- 8 Using the Preferences Screen
- A Templates and Alerts
- Alert Summary
- UNIX Regular Expressions
- Limitations
- Template Property Types
- Buffer Overflow Template
- Race Condition Template
- Modification of files/directories Template
- Changes to Log File Template
- Creation and Modification of setuid/setgid File Template
- Creation of World-Writable File Template
- Modification of Another User’s File Template
- Login/Logout Template
- Repeated Failed Logins Template
- Repeated Failed su Commands Template
- Log File Monitoring Template
- B Automated Response for Alerts
- C Tuning Schedules and Generating Alert Reports
- D The Agent Configuration File
- E The Surveillance Schedule Text File
- F Error Messages
- G Troubleshooting
- Troubleshooting
- Agent and System Manager cannot communicate with each other
- Agent complains that idds has not been enabled, yet lsdev shows /dev/idds is present
- Agent does not start on system boot
- Agent halts abnormally, leaving ids_* files and message queues
- Agent host appears to hang and/or you see message disk full
- Agent needs further troubleshooting
- Agent does not start after installation
- Agents appear to be stuck in polling status
- Agent displays error if hostname to IP mapping is not registered in name service
- Aggregated alerts targets or details field are truncated and the same aggregated alert has several entries logged in the IDS_ALERTFILE
- Alert date/time sort seems inconsistent
- Alerts are not being displayed in the alert browser
- Buffer overflow triggers false positives
- Duplicate alerts appear in System Manager
- Getting several aggregated alerts for the same process
- GUI runs out of memory after receiving around 19,000 alerts
- The idsadmin Command needs installed agent certificates
- The idsadmin Command notifies of bad certificate when pinging a remote agent
- IDS_checkInstall fails with a kmtune error
- IDS_genAdminKeys or IDS_genAgentCerts does not complete successfully
- IDS_genAdminKeys or idsgui quits early
- Large files in /var/opt/ids
- Log files are filling up
- No Agent Available
- Normal operation of an application generates heavy volume of alerts
- Reflection X rlogin produces multiple login and logout alerts
- Schedule Manager timetable screen appears to hang
- SSH does not perform a clean exit after idsagent is started
- System Manager appears to hang
- System Manager does not let you save files to specific directories
- System Manager does not start after idsgui is started
- System Manager starts with no borders or title bar in X client programs on Windows
- System Manager times out on agent functions such as Activate and Status Poll
- UNKNOWN program and arguments in certain alert messages
- Using HP-UX HIDS with IPFilter and SecureShell
- Unable to Generate Administrator Keys and Agent Certificates on PA–RISC 1.1 Systems
- Troubleshooting
- H HP Software License

IMPORTANT: Specifying a program’s relative path name to ignore alerts is unsafe, whether the
path name refers to a script or an executable program. An attacker can construct an attack script
or program with the same relative path name, and alerts for that program are filtered if the
relative path name is specified as the value in a path names / program pair.
NOTE: To filter alerts triggered by scripts that are invoked in one of the following ways, the
pathname of the script itself and not the shell should be specified in a programs_X property:
<shell> <script pathname>
<shell> -c <script pathname>
<shell> -c exec <script pathname>
For example, to filter the following alert:
User with uid 0 opened for modification/truncation
/etc/passwd (type=1,inode=5416,device=1073741827) when
executing
/usr/bin/sh(type=1,inode=13748,device=1073741829), invoked
as follows:
"sh -c /usr/local/bin/change_passwd.sh", as process with pid 28379
and ppid 28300 and running with effective uid=0 and with
effective gid=3
the following filter rules should be used:
pathnames_X | ^/etc/passwd$
programs_X | ^/usr/local/bin/change_passwd\.sh$
HIDS treats the first string of the program invocation as the pathname of the program that
triggered the alert. However, if the string is a pathname of a valid shell as defined by shells(4),
it filters based on the script pathname.
Type III: User Names/UIDs
Type III property values consists of lists of user names or user IDs that specify critical users or
users that the template is to explicitly take into account (type IIIa) or explicitly ignore (type IIIb).
The following template property specifies three critical user IDs and three user names that
determine the severity of an alert:
priv_user_list | 22 | 1 | 43
priv_user_list | root | bin | daemon
The following template property specifies that alerts are not generated if the following three user
IDs or user names are encountered:
users_to_ignore | 21 | 3 | 53
users_to_ignore | root | bin | daemon
Type IV: User Name/UID Pairs
Type IV property values include pairs of user names or user IDs. This property type is currently
used only in the Modification of Another User’s File Template. The two members of each pair
are separated by a comma. When an event is received for a file that is being monitored, the
following criteria are applied for every pair in the list:
• The effective user ID of the process modifying the file corresponds to the first member of
the pair.
• The owner of the file corresponds to the second member of the file.
If both of these conditions are met, no alert is issued.
Following is an example of this type of property value:
118 Templates and Alerts