Snort 2.8.6 is finally out.  It's been in beta and RC for awhile now, but here it is!  Sourcefire (the company I work for), the makers of Snort have been working on several of the features you see below for awhile, and we have plenty more in store.  So go update now!

[*] New Additions
* HTTP Inspect now splits requests into 5 components -
Method, URI, Header (non-cookie), Cookies, Body.
Content and PCRE rule options can now search one or more of these buffers.

HTTP server-specific configurations to normalize the HTTP header and/or cookies have been added.

Support gzip decompression across multiple packets.

* Added a Sensitive Data preprocessor, which performs detection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).  A new rule option is available to define new PII.  See README.sensitive_data and the Snort Manual for configuration details.

* Added a new pattern matcher and related configurations.  The new pattern matcher is optimized to use less memory and perform at AC speed.

[*] Improvements
* Addressed problem to resolve output obfuscation affecting packets when Snort is inline.

* Preprocessors with memcap settings can now be configured in a "disabled" state.  This allows you to configure that memcap globally, but only enable the preprocessor in targeted configurations.

Go to http://www.snort.org to download the latest release!  I have two more posts that will be coming out later today with further updates, so make sure you read those as well. One of the posts, about rule updates, is huge and will affect everyone who uses Snort, so make sure you stay tuned!  Also, make sure you read the VRT blog for further information: http://vrt-sourcefire.blogspot.com

-- Joel Esler | http://blog.joelesler.net | http://twitter.com/joelesler