A fast pattern matching algorithm with multi-byte search unit for high-speed network security

A signature-based intrusion detection system identifies intrusions by comparing the data traffic with known signature patterns. In this process, matching of packet strings against signature patterns is the most time-consuming step and dominates the overall system performance. Many signature-based network intrusion detection systems (NIDS), e.g., the Snort, employ one or multiple pattern matching algorithms to detect multiple attack types. So far, many pattern matching algorithms have been proposed. Most of them use single-byte standard unit for search, while a few algorithms such as the Modified Wu-Manber (MWM) algorithm use typically two-byte unit, which guarantees better performance than others even as the number of different signatures increases. Among those algorithms, the MWM algorithm has been known as the fastest pattern matching algorithm when the patterns in a rule set rarely appear in packets. However, the matching time of the MWM algorithm increases as the length of the shortest pattern in a signature group decreases.In this paper, by extending the length of the shortest pattern, we minimize the pattern matching time of the algorithm which uses multi-byte unit. We propose a new pattern matching algorithm called the L⁺¹-MWM algorithm for multi-pattern matching. The proposed algorithm minimizes the performance degradation that is originated from the dependency on the length of the shortest pattern. We show that the L⁺¹-MWM algorithm improves the performance of the MWM algorithm by as much as 20% in average under various lengths of shortest patterns and normal traffic conditions. Moreover, when the length of the shortest pattern in a rule set is less than 5, the L⁺¹-MWM algorithm shows 38.87% enhancement in average. We also conduct experiments on a real campus network and show that 12.48% enhancement is obtained in average. In addition, it is shown that the L⁺¹-MWM algorithm provides a better performance than the MWM algorithm by as much as 25% in average under various numbers of signatures and normal traffic conditions, and 20.12% enhancement in average with real on-line traffic.