Exist : Web App For Aggregating & Analyzing Cyber Threat Intelligence

EXIST is a web application for aggregating and analyzing CTI (cyber threat intelligence). It is written by the following software.

  • Python 3.5.4
  • Django 1.11.22

It automatically fetches data from several CTI services and Twitter via their APIs and feeds. You can cross-search indicators via the web interface and the API.

If you have servers logging network behaviors of clients (e.g., logs of DNS and HTTP proxy servers, etc.), you will be able to analyze the logs by correlating with data on EXIST. If you implement some programs by using the API, you will realize automated CTI-driven security operation center.

Also Read – RTTM : Real Time Threat Monitoring Tool

Use Cases

Case1: Investigate domain detected by IDS

Just type domain in the search form.

Case2: Access the malicious URL on behalf of the user and acquire the display image of the browser and the contents to be downloaded

Just type url in the search form.

Case3: Monitor cyber threats

Just add keywords in the Threat Hunter or Twitter Hunter.

Features

Tracker

Tracker automatically collects data feeds from several CTI services.

  • Threat Tracker
  • Reputation Tracker
  • Twitter Tracker
  • Exploit Tracker
  • News Tracker
  • Vuln Tracker

Hunter

Hunter enables us to set queries for gathering data from several CTI services and Twitter.

  • Twitter Hunter
  • Threat Hunter
  • News Hunter

Lookup

Lookup retrieves information related to specific information (e.g. IP address, domain) from several internet services (e.g. whois).

  • IP Address
  • Domain
  • URL
  • File Hash

Web API

Provide data stored in the EXIST database by Web API.

  • reputation
  • twitter
  • exploit
  • threatEvent
  • threatAttribute
  • news
  • vuln

Getting Started

After that I assume the environment of CentOS 7 or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Please at your own when deploying to other environment.

Install python modules

$ sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

Install MariaDB

  • CentOS 7

$ curl -sS https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup | sudo bash
$ sudo yum install MariaDB-server MariaDB-client

  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

$ sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client

Run database

$ sudo systemctl start mariadb
$ sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Database Setting

Migrate Database

$ python manage.py makemigrations exploit reputation threat threat_hunter twitter twitter_hunter news news_hunter vuln
$ python manage.py migrate

Install Redis server

Reputation tracker uses redis as the Celery cache server backend.

  • CentOS 7

$ sudo yum install redis
$ sudo systemctl start redis
$ sudo systemctl enable redis

  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

$ sudo apt install redis-server
$ sudo systemctl start redis-server
$ sudo systemctl enable redis-server

Setup Celery

Reputation tracker uses Celery as an asynchronous task job queue.

  • Create a celery config. I recommend that the config is set on the following paths:
    • CentOS 7: /etc/sysconfig/celery
    • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS: /etc/celery.conf 
# Name of nodes to start
# here we have a single node
CELERYD_NODES="w1"
# or we could have three nodes:
#CELERYD_NODES="w1 w2 w3"

# Absolute or relative path to the 'celery' command:
CELERY_BIN="/path/to/your/celery"

# App instance to use
# comment out this line if you don't use an app
CELERY_APP="intelligence"
# or fully qualified:
#CELERY_APP="proj.tasks:app"

# How to call manage.py
CELERYD_MULTI="multi"

# Extra command-line arguments to the worker
CELERYD_OPTS="--time-limit=300 --concurrency=8"

# - %n will be replaced with the first part of the nodename.
# - %I will be replaced with the current child process index
# and is important when using the prefork pool to avoid race conditions.
CELERYD_PID_FILE="/var/run/celery/%n.pid"
CELERYD_LOG_FILE="/var/log/celery/%n%I.log"
CELERYD_LOG_LEVEL="INFO"
  • Create a celery service management script on /etc/systemd/system/celery.service. Also, you must set your celery config path to EnvironmentFile.
[Unit]
Description=Celery Service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
User=YOUR_USER
Group=YOUR_GROUP
EnvironmentFile=/etc/sysconfig/celery
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/your/exist
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c '${CELERY_BIN} multi start ${CELERYD_NODES} \
-A ${CELERY_APP} --pidfile=${CELERYD_PID_FILE} \
--logfile=${CELERYD_LOG_FILE} --loglevel=${CELERYD_LOG_LEVEL} ${CELERYD_OPTS}'
ExecStop=/bin/sh -c '${CELERY_BIN} multi stopwait ${CELERYD_NODES} \
--pidfile=${CELERYD_PID_FILE}'
ExecReload=/bin/sh -c '${CELERY_BIN} multi restart ${CELERYD_NODES} \
-A ${CELERY_APP} --pidfile=${CELERYD_PID_FILE} \
--logfile=${CELERYD_LOG_FILE} --loglevel=${CELERYD_LOG_LEVEL} ${CELERYD_OPTS}'

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
  • Create Celery log and run directories.

$ sudo mkdir /var/log/celery; sudo chown YOUR_USER:YOUR_GROUP /var/log/celery
$ sudo mkdir /var/run/celery; sudo chown YOUR_USER:YOUR_GROUP /var/run/celery

  • Create a configuration file in /etc/tmpfiles.d/exist.conf

#Type Path Mode UID GID Age Argument
d /var/run/celery 0755 YOUR_USER YOUR_GROUP –

  • Run Celery

$ sudo systemctl start celery.service
$ sudo systemctl enable celery.service

Run web server

$ python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

  • Access to http://[YourWebServer]:8000 with your browser.
  • WebAPI: http://[YourWebServer]:8000/api/

Note: I recommend to use Nginx and uWSGI when running in production environment.

Collect feed

Scripts for inserting feed into database are scripts/insert2db/*/insert2db.py.

Configure insert2db

  • Configuration files are scripts/insert2db/conf/insert2db.conf. Create it in reference to insert2db.conf.template.
  • If you use MISP, write MISP URL and API key to insert2db.conf.
  • If you use Malshare, write your API key to insert2db.conf.
  • Create your Twitter API account in https://developer.twitter.com/ for tracking with EXIST.
  • Create an App for EXIST.
  • Get Consumer API key (CA), Consumer API secret key (CS), Access token (AT), access token secret (AS).
  • Write CA, CS, AT, AS to insert2db.conf.

Run scripts

$ python scripts/insert2db/reputation/insert2db.py
$ python scripts/insert2db/twitter/insert2db.py
$ python scripts/insert2db/exploit/insert2db.py
$ python scripts/insert2db/threat/insert2db.py
$ python scripts/insert2db/news/insert2db.py
$ python scripts/insert2db/vuln/insert2db.py

Note: To automate information collection, write them to your cron.

Setting Hunter

Twitter Hunter

Twitter Hunter can detect tweets containing specific keywords and user ID. And you can notify slack if necessary.

  • Configuration files are scripts/hunter/conf/hunter.conf. Create it in reference to hunter.conf.template.
  • If you use slack, write your slack token to hunter.conf.
  • Create your Twitter API account in https://developer.twitter.com/.
  • Create 18 Apps for EXIST.
  • Get 18 Consumer API key (CA), Consumer API secret key (CS), Access token (AT), access token secret (AS).
  • Write CA, CS, AT, AS to auth-hunter[00-18] to hunter.conf.
  • Make scripts/hunter/twitter/tw_watchhunter.py run every minute using cron to make Twitter Hunter persistent.

Threat Hunter

Threat Hunter can detect threat events containing specific keywords. And you can notify slack if necessary.

  • Configuration files are scripts/hunter/conf/hunter.conf. Create it in reference to hunter.conf.template.
  • If you use slack, write your slack token to hunter.conf.
  • Make scripts/hunter/threat/th_watchhunter.py run every minute using cron to make Threat Hunter persistent.

Other Requirement Tools & Settings

VirusTotal API

EXIST uses VirusTotal API.

  • Create your VirusTotal account.
  • Write your API-key to conf/vt.conf.

Note: You get more information if you have private API key.

GeoIP DB

Lookup IP / Domain uses GeoLite2 Database.

wkhtmltopdf and Xvfb

Lookup URL uses wkhtmltopdf and Xvfb.

$ sudo yum install xorg-x11-server-Xvfb

If you deploy EXIST on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, you can install these packages by using apt.

$ sudo apt install wkhtmltopdf xvfb

Flush Old Data

  • Configuration files are scripts/url/url.conf. Create it in reference to url.conf.template.
  • Make scripts/url/delete_webdata.sh run every day using cron to flush old Lookup URL data.
  • Make scripts/url/delete_oldtaskresult.sh run every day using cron to flush old Celery data.

Credit: MaxMind

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