HP-UX Host Intrusion Detection System Version 4.4 Administrator Guide (5900-1634, April 2011)

Setting Up HP-UX HIDS Secure Communications
HP-UX HIDS provides a secure communication environment between the System Manager and the
agent processes through the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol.
To ensure secure communication, both the System Manager process that runs on the administration
system and the HP-UX HIDS agent process that runs on each participating agent system must have
a certificate associated with the agent process. A separate certificate is required for the components
to identify themselves and to authenticate that any information received from another HP-UX HIDS
component is genuine and not initiated by an unauthorized outsider. HP-UX HIDS provides a toolset
to generate X.509 certificates. The System Manager does not start until you establish secure
communication.
Table 2 lists and describes the IDS scripts you can use to set up an SSL environment.
Table 2 IDS Scripts Used to Set Up Secure Communications
Resulting ProductLocationScript
Root Certification Authority and Administration SSL
certificate
Administration systemIDS_genAdminKeys
A bundle of signed certificates for each agent system.Administration systemIDS_genAgentCerts
Agent SSL certificateAgent systemsIDS_importAgentKeys
NOTE: HP-UX HIDS certificate management is self-contained and does not require a pre-existing
public key infrastructure (PKI). However, HIDS certificate requests can be signed by an external
PKI and the resulting signed certificate can then be imported by the IDS_importAgentKeys
command. Contact HP Support for details.
To set up the SSL environment, follow these steps:
24 Configuring HP-UX HIDS