AppSensor Developer Guide

AppSensor Developer Guide

The AppSensor Project describes an application layer intrusion detection system. There is a Java implementation of this system whose basic usage can be found in the Getting Started guide. This document describes in more technical detail for developers how to use and extend AppSensor for a specific environment and application.

Developer Overview

AppSensor is an application layer intrusion detection system. The concept in implementation is roughly analogous to an intrusion detection (and prevention) system in the network security world. However, this concept can be applied in a more specific way that (importantly) reduces false positives, which is an issue that often plagues network intrusion detection systems. This means that the core of the AppSensor system performs detection, monitoring, and (possibly) response depending on configuration settings.

AppSensor has been built to be quite extensible from the ground up. Most of the system can be appreciably modified to your needs by simply extending certain key interfaces. This extensible design makes it possible for various configurations to be applied depending upon the application. For instance, in a small application, you may choose to use a simple file-based model for storing intrusions that are detected, whereas for a larger application, you may have a relational database serving as your data store. See the Extending AppSensor section below for specifics on what can be extended.