A look at Whisker's anti-IDS tactics

Anti-Intrusion Detection System (IDS) tactics were one of the original key features of my whisker web scanner. The goal of any anti-IDS tactic is to mutate a request so much that the ID systems will get confused, but the web server will still be able to understand it, hence the subtitle "just how bad can we ruin a good thing?"

This paper is aimed at explaining the thought process and implementation behind various anti-IDS tactics whisker uses to avoid web scan detection. While I specifically have ID systems in mind, this also applies to monitors, sniffers, log parsers and anything else trying to interpret web traffic and/or requests. The methods, analysis and theories presented within this document can also be applied to other protocols and concepts--however, HTTP is my focus due to the implementation of whisker.