News Facts:

• Snort recently hit major milestones celebrating its tenth anniversary, reaching 3.7 million downloads and more than 244,000 registered users.
• 80 percent of Fortune 100 and 42 percent of Global 500 companies use Snort to protect their networks.
• The Sourcefire Vulnerability Research Team^TM (VRT) has written a high performance Snort rules set, protecting users against more than 4,700 unique vulnerabilities.
• The Snorty pig has become a cult figure in the security community and is widely collected by security professionals for the levity he brings to a very serious industry.
• Sourcefire^(R) recently awarded the fifth annual Snort Scholarship. Sourcefire created the Snort Scholarship program in 2005, awarding two $5,000 scholarships to university and college students with the aim of developing the next generation of security innovators. To date, $50,000 worth of scholarships have been awarded.

What's Next for Snort?

• Sourcefire is partnering with Intel on the next generation of Snort technology to ensure optimal performance of the Snort engine on the Intel architecture.
• Sourcefire will deliver Snort-based virtual appliances for customers during 2009.
• Snort 2.8.5 - a release candidate is now available for download at http://snort.org/downloads. Snort 2.8.5 will provide:
  • Policy-per-VLAN functionality, so administrators can apply different security policies to distinct traffic sets.
  • Rate-based attack prevention, for blocking potentially malicious network communications.
  • Improved handling of SSH traffic.

Snort Milestones

• 1998 - Martin Roesch creates and releases Snort in December, as an open source project to provide users with increased threat detection and network security.
• 1999 - The Snort 1.5 release provides the basic architecture that is the foundation for the current version of Snort.
• 2001 - Sourcefire founded by Martin Roesch to deliver commercial products based on pairing the Snort detection engine with value-add software on purpose built appliances.
• 2003 - Sourcefire releases 1gig versions of Snort-based appliances.
• 2005 - Sourcefire releases multi-gig versions of Snort-based appliances.
• 2007 - Sourcefire goes public on NASDAQ trading under the symbol FIRE. Sourcefire was the first security company to IPO since 2002 and the first open source company since 1998.
• 2007 - Sourcefire was first to market with a 10gig solution, continuing to push the envelope at the high-end of the market.
• 2008 - Beta versions of Snort 3.0 are released at http://www.snort.org/downloads/snort-3-0.
• Snort 2.8.4 - is now available for download at http://www.snort.org/downloads/.
  • Improved support for preventing attacks over IPv6.
  • A new DCERPC preprocessor provides more powerful inspection of NetBIOS traffic.
  • Enhanced protection against advanced evasions with Adaptive Profiles.
  • Prefiltering of uninspected traffic in order to improve performance.
• 2009 - Sourcefire unveils a new Snort.org web site to accommodate the growing community and the different types of Snort users worldwide.

10 Years as the De Facto Standard

• Sourcefire VRT Certified Snort Rules are usually the first rules released on Microsoft Tuesday and provide extensive coverage on the same day as the advisory.
• The Snort community has translated Snort documentation into 10 languages.
• More than a dozen books have been written on Snort (http://snort.org/docs/snort-books).
• Snort and Sourcefire VRT Rules are integrated into dozens of commercial products.
• Snort has a large open source community developing add-ons and tools. More than 140 add-on projects are listed on SourceForge.net. Some of the most popular third-party projects and add-ons listed on Snort.org include:
  • BASE - a Snort analysis tool
  • Squil - a network security monitoring console
  • Oinkmaster - a tool for automating Snort rule updates
• Below are a few of the commercial organizations or universities that teach Snort courses in addition to those courses taught by Sourcefire Education.
  • Deakin University, Australia
  • Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM in Mexico)
  • Kocaeli University, Turkey
  • National University of Rwanda
  • New York University
  • Oregon State University
  • SANS
  • University of Maryland University College
  • Washington University in St. Louis

Snort Resources

• www.snort.org
• www.sourcefire.com/products/snort
• http://vrt-sourcefire.blogspot.com/
• www.twitter.com/VRT_Sourcefire
• www.twitter.com/mroesch
• Free Snort Training Webcasts, include:
  • What's New in Snort 2.8.4
  • Intro to SNORT
  • Writing Effective Rules, Part I
  • Common Mistakes with Snort and How to Fix Them
  • Writing Effective Rules, Part II
  • Using the Host Attribute Table in Snort
  • Effective Problem Reporting: How to Get Your Problems Noticed and Fixed

• TheAcademyPro.com
• Copies of the 2009 Snort Calendar are available from Sourcefire or online at the Snort store

About Sourcefire

Sourcefire, Inc. (Nasdaq:FIRE), Snort creator and open source innovator, is a world leader in Cyber Security solutions. Sourcefire is transforming the way Global 2000 organizations and government agencies manage and minimize network security risks. Sourcefire's IPS and Real-time Adaptive Security solution equips customers with an efficient and effective layered security defense - protecting network assets before, during and after an attack. Through the years, Sourcefire has been consistently recognized for its innovation and industry leadership by customers, media and industry analysts alike - with more than 40 awards and accolades. Today, the names Sourcefire and founder Martin Roesch have grown synonymous with innovation and network security intelligence. For more information about Sourcefire, please visit http://www.sourcefire.com.

SOURCEFIRE(R), SNORT(R), the Sourcefire logo, the Snort and Pig logo, SECURITY FOR THE REAL WORLD(TM), SOURCEFIRE DEFENSE CENTER(R), SOURCEFIRE 3D(R), RNA(R), DAEMONLOGGER(TM), CLAMAV(R), SOURCEFIRE SOLUTIONS NETWORK(TM), and certain other trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sourcefire, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

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SOURCE: Sourcefire, Inc.

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