An example of communication between security tools: iptables - snort

Two of the most used tools in the area of computer security are the firewalls and the Intrusion Detection Systems. Both of them fulfill the task for which they were designed for but unfortunately their response to an attack can be limited. The communication of both tools increases the response capacity of the system, but we need a protocol to communicate them. In this paper we present how is to communicate two security tools: snort and Iptables. The communication is based on the Intrusion Detection Message Exchange Format (IDMEF) proposed by the Intrusion Detection Working Group (IDWG).