One way to detect and thwart a network attack is to compare each incoming packet with predefined patterns, also Called an attack pattern database, and raise an alert upon detecting a match. This article presents a novel pattern-matching Engine that exploits a memory-based, programmable state machine to achieve deterministic processing rates that are Independent of packet and pattern characteristics. Our engine is a self addressable memory based finite state machine (samFsm), whose current state coding exhibits all its possible next states. Moreover, it is fully reconfigurable in that new attack Patterns can be updated easily. A methodology was developed to program the memory and logic. Specifically, we merge “non-equivalent” states by introducing “super characters” on their inputs to further enhance memory efficiency without Adding labels. This is the most high speed self addressable memory based fsm.sam-fsm is one of the most storage-Efficient machines and reduces the memory requirement by 60 times. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the Validity of sam-fsm.
RECONFIGURABLE SELF-ADDRESSABLE MEMORY-BASED FSM A SCALABLE INTRUSION DETECTION ENGINE
