Hey y'all, Phil Coburn from Product Enablement here, with a friendly announcement for our MX64/65 owners!
In May 2025 we released firmware 18.1.7.13 for the MX64/65 security appliances. There were several updates and fixes in this version, but the primary change was that our MX team bumped the version of Snort 2 -- the MX security appliance's IDS and IPS -- to 2.9.20. This provided MX security appliances with updated rule sets, protecting them against newly discovered vulnerabilities.
However, just a week ago Snort announced that other versions of Snort 2, like 2.9.18.1 and 2.9.19.0, are deprecated and will no longer be supported as of 12/18/2025. Since older versions of MX firmware (before 18.1.7.13) use these soon-to-be deprecated versions of the Snort 2 engine, if your MX64/65 security appliances aren't upgraded to the latest stable MX firmware release they will not have the latest Snort 2 IDS/IPS rules... and the last thing you want is for your IDS/IPS to be out of date.
If you'd like to keep your MX64/65s up to date with the latest IDS/IPS rules (yes, you do), then upgrade to the latest stable firmware release. As always, you can find this under Organization > Monitor > Firmware Upgrades. Good luck, and stay safe!
