m_atk3_set0_t0.pcap
Hello,
I am trying to run Bro in PCAP read mode on PCAPs that contain flooding attacks created in a lab environment. I installed Bro from source and did not modify the local.bro. The command I am using is:
“bro -r .pcap -C local --time”
This returns the following output:
"WARNING: No Site::local_nets have been defined. It’s usually a good idea to define your local networks.
initialization 2.756138
initialization 59M/49M
Killed"
I have attached the PCAP. My initial reaction is that the PCAP is too big as this happens to only PCAPs containing DOS attacks. However, the attached PCAP is 69 MB and Bro successfully runs on other PCAPs that are around 73 MB. Can anyone explain why Bro is terminating itself?
Any insight you can provide is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Jeremy
Possibly just out of memory? That pcap has – according to wireshark – 678714 IPv6 conversations. So bro will create that many connection table entries. Those entries are not small and a number of related structures get created too, so you end up with a ton of memory used by bro. And the packets are all “received” within a few seconds so none of the connection table entries will have timed out by the time you get to the end.
It’s traditional on linux that the kernel allows memory to be “overcommitted” but then if the kernel runs out of memory for critical functions, it chooses a fat process to kill. References here:
https://linux-mm.org/OOM_Killer
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/153585/how-the-oom-killer-decides-which-process-to-kill-first
So it’s not that the pcap itself is too large – bro basically reads and processes one packet at a time – it’s that processing it takes more memory than you have available.
Thank you for explaining in-depth, Jeff.
It does seem like Bro ran out of memory, but the VM I used to run Bro had 4 GB of RAM. I tried running it with 10 GB of RAM, and initially, it does seem to finish the process. If Bro is having such a hard time, how is this type of failure to be avoided in real life? Is taking down a Bro server really as simple as generating millions of conversations?
Is this just a design flaw in Bro?