Network Protocols and Algorithms ISSN 1943-3581 2012, Vol. 4, No. 3 www.macrothink.org/npa 46 Function and Data Parallelization of Wu-Manber Pattern Matching for Intrusion Detection Systems Mazen Kharbutli, Monther Aldwairi, and Abdullah Mughrabi Faculty of Computer and Information Technology Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan E-mail:{kharbutli,munzer,atmughrabi07}@just.edu.jo Received: July 7, 2012 Accepted: August 10, 2012 Published: September 29, 2012 DOI: 10.5296/npa.v4i3.2069 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ npa.v4i3.2069 Abstract The safeguarding of networks from malicious activities and intrusions continues to be one of the most important aspects in network security. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) play a fundamental role in network protection. Unfortunately, the speeds of existing IDSs are unable to keep up with the rapid increases in network speeds and attack complexities. Fortunately, parallel computing on multi-core systems can lend a helping hand mitigating this performance gap. In this paper, novel and effective parallel implementations of the Wu-Manber (WM) algorithm for signature-based detection systems are proposed, implemented, and evaluated. The proposed function and data parallel algorithms prove to be effective in terms of execution time reduction and load balancing, thus providing swift intrusion detection at increased network bandwidths. The algorithms achieve an optimal load balance and an average speedup of 2x for four cores. Keywords: Intrusion detection, pattern matching, parallel programming, Snort, Wu-Manber.