Introduction

In this chapter, we will cover all of the steps necessary to complete a functioning Snort intrusion detection system (IDS) install. Due to the overwhelming amount of Linux distributions available today, installation instructions can vary from distribution to distribution, and are beyond the scope of this chapter. For this reason, we will cover the information specific to installation on the Red Hat 8.0 platform for the Linux portions of the chapter. We have chosen Red Hat because it is the most commonly used Linux distribution in the world, and serves as a good starting point on which to base further installations. Most of what we cover here should apply to most other popular distributions without a huge amount of modification; if the instructions do vary, it will be minimal. We will go into a bit more detail later in this introduction. As a side note, if you would like to acquire Red Hat Linux to use as a test bed for the exercises in this book, you can download it from one of their mirrors free of charge at www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html. Alternately, you can purchase the full package, complete with support, from most computer software retailers. As advocates of Linux and free software, we recommend the latter if you really enjoy the product. Your contributions help to keep the whole thing going, and at less than $40.00 USD, you can't go wrong.

Let's take a moment to introduce you to the way we approached this chapter. We know that not...