crowdsec has always struck me as a really odd approach to security. You give out your logs to strangers and block IPs based on their say-so.
The cause and effect are so far removed that I can't wrap my head about how it's supposed to be efficient. It's been proven in real-world tests that it lags badly behind the first waves of new vulnerabilities and by the time it starts blocking IPs that were related to those attacks the attackers have moved on and there are also patches available.
The "thousands of IPs blocked" image reminds me of that WWII airplane bullet-holes image.
It is pretty good
I use it on many machines.
You install it on your machine with a reverse proxy, it then analyses the traffic logs for malicious activity or for known bad IPs and then creates iptable block rules.
The web interface is the cloud interface that it connects to, because as the name implies, it works by using log data from all members to block bad actors efficiently
You can use crowdsec without a reverse proxy and just block offending IPs using a firewall. However, you can optionally configure a reverse proxy to enforce decisions made by crowdsec, e.g. by serving error pages or by serving captchas. See Remediation Components (formally "Bouncers")
That's really cool. Would you mind posting a few sentences about how you redirected your specific solution and what it's protecting. That would be super helpful.
8 replies
crowdsec has always struck me as a really odd approach to security. You give out your logs to strangers and block IPs based on their say-so.
The cause and effect are so far removed that I can't wrap my head about how it's supposed to be efficient. It's been proven in real-world tests that it lags badly behind the first waves of new vulnerabilities and by the time it starts blocking IPs that were related to those attacks the attackers have moved on and there are also patches available.
The "thousands of IPs blocked" image reminds me of that WWII airplane bullet-holes image.
Do you have a source on the real world tests?
Tell us more about how crowdsec works (for you)!
(Didn't even know it had a web ui)
It is pretty good I use it on many machines. You install it on your machine with a reverse proxy, it then analyses the traffic logs for malicious activity or for known bad IPs and then creates iptable block rules. The web interface is the cloud interface that it connects to, because as the name implies, it works by using log data from all members to block bad actors efficiently
Why with a reverse proxy? I don't see this mentioned as the default installation method. https://doc.crowdsec.net/u/user_guides/building/
You can use crowdsec without a reverse proxy and just block offending IPs using a firewall. However, you can optionally configure a reverse proxy to enforce decisions made by crowdsec, e.g. by serving error pages or by serving captchas. See Remediation Components (formally "Bouncers")
Oh yeah I remember that! Never felt the need for it.
That's really cool. Would you mind posting a few sentences about how you redirected your specific solution and what it's protecting. That would be super helpful.