Bro PSA provides network monitoring capabilities to end users. It can be used to monitor user's network traffic according to specified policies and log security related events, such as suspicious connections and suspected malicious files.
The list of capabilities supported by this PSA includes:
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Logging of established connections during certain time interval filtered based on source and/or destination addresses and ports. Log events can be configured to trigger only if the amount of specified events exceeds certain threshold within a time interval. This capability may be used, e.g., log network usage or detect abnormal network traffic.
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Scanning downloaded files for known malware. This PSA's malware detection capabilities are based on detecting certain types of files, e.g. PDFs, in the network traffic to or from the user's device. The PSA computes hashes of such files and compares these against a repository of known hashes of malicious files. Type of files that are to be scanned can be configured.
Examples of the policies that can be enables using the SECURED GGUI includes:
I; Enable; Logging; {propose, count_connection }; {traffic_target, address}
- This policy enables logging of all connections to or from a specific address.
I; Enable; Malware_detection; {type_Content, scan_xdosexec }
- This policy enables scanning of all Windows native executable files detected in the network traffic.
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The Bro PSA provides network monitoring capabilities to end users. It can be used to monitor user's network traffic according to specified policies and log security related events, such as suspicious connections and suspected malicious files.
The Bro PSA is implemented using the Bro Network Security Monitoring platform. Bro is a passive network traffic analyzer primarily used for security monitoring of suspicious activities in network traffic flows. It is an open-source software with BSD-style license. More detailed description of The Bro NSM can be found in Bro NSM documentation.
Software components used by the PSA include:
- Bro Network Security Monitor
- BroControl: An interactive interface for managing a Bro installation. Allows, e.g., starting and stopping the Bro NSM and updating its configuration. In the Bro PSA, this component is used for controlling the Bro NSM.
- Broccoli: The Bro Client Communications Library. This component enables third-party applications to communicate directly with the Bro NSM by sending and receiving events using Bro's communication protocol. In the Bro PSA it is used to connect the PSA interface with the Bro policy scripts written as Bro plugin extensions.
- Broccoli-python: Python bindings for Broccoli. Required, as the PSA interface is implemented using Python.
The Bro PSA is implemented using the Bro NSM.
Bro's architecture is illustrated below. Bro taps to network traffic in order to captures network packets. These packets are sent to Event Engine that reduces captured low-level packets to high-level network events, such as TCP connections, SSL sessions events, or HTTP requests. High-level events are then dispatched to Policy Script Interpreter that executes a set of event handlers to the events. Policy scripts define the actual actions taken on each event. Each policy script implements a set of event handlers. Events fired at policy scripts may, for instance, produce logs or notifications about the network traffic, or new events for other policy scripts.
Bro provides fully customizable and extensible platform for network traffic analysis. It utilizes its own event-based, syntactically C-like, scripting language with large set of pre-built functionalities. External C-library, Broccoli, allows interfacing with third-party programs.
The Bro PSA is implemented as a separate Python application that interfaces with the Bro NSM using Broccoli.
The architecture of the PSA is illustrated below. Each capability supported by the PSA is implemented as its own Bro policy script (Bro plug-in). These policy scripts determine what kind of information the PSA listens to and subscribe for related network events in Bro's event stream. Plugins filter low-level network events, e.g. establishment of connection to certain address and port, to higher level log event for the PSA, e.g. "there have been 100 connection attempts from certain address to local port 80 within one minute".
The PSA uses two interfaces to communicate with the Bro NSM:
- BroControl is used to control the Bro NSM. For example, it is used to start and stop monitoring activities, as well as, to install new or remove old policy scripts (Bro plugins).
- Broccoli is used to pass configuration information to policy scripts and to receive log events from them.
Currently, two Bro plug-ins have been implemented:
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Logging plug-in: allows logging of established connections during certain time interval filtered based on source and/or destination addresses and ports. Log events can be configured to trigger only if the amount of specified events exceeds certain threshold within a time interval. This capability may be used, e.g., log network usage or detect abnormal network traffic.
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Malware Detection plug-in: allows scanning of downloaded files for known malware. This PSA's malware detection capabilities are based on detecting certain types of files, e.g. PDFs, in the network traffic to or from the user's device. The PSA computes hashes of such files and compares these against a repository of known hashes of malicious files. Type of files that are to be scanned can be configured.
See PSA Developer guide for creating a virtual machine base image.
After obtaining the base image, install the following software components into the image:
- Bro Network Security Monitor (installation instructions).
- BroControl (installation instructions)
- Broccoli (installation instructions)
- Broccoli-python (installation instructions)
NOTE: Bro PSA has been developed and tested on Bro NSM version 2.4+, it is required to use Bro NSM version 2.4+, as the Bro policy scripts (plug-ins) might not work correctly in other versions.
Copy Bro PSA files into the following folder in the base image:
$HOME/pythonScript/
Configure Bro and BroCtl (default: /opt/bro/etc/broctl.cfg). At least the following options should be set:
BroArgs = -b
- This option sets the Bro NSM to operate on 'bare mode' in an attempt to minimize its resource usage. This causes many of Bro's default scripts and policies not to be loaded when the Bro NSM starts.
SitePolicyStandalone = <$HOME>/pythonScript/secured.bro
- This option defines local Bro policies to be taken from SECURED specific policy file. This policy file is provided with the PSA secured.bro and the file path should be modified to match the Bro PSA installation.
Change passwords for users 'root' and 'psa' for security reasons.
Known issues:
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Connection counting / logging capability currently can only handle detection intervals on granularity of one minute.
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Bro NSM might not be able to handle all network traffic packets, e.g., due to congestion or because it does not have enough resources allocated. In such case it starts to drop packets, which may cause monitoring module to miss part of the network traffic. This might cause Malware Detection capability to miss malicious files as the currently used detection technique relies on file hashes which cannot be calculated to partial files.
The following files are needed to run Bro PSA correctly:
The procedure to create a valid PSA image from scratch starts with the prerequisite instructions defined in the PSA Developer guide.
The PSA VM image (KVM) is available at Bro (checksums).
*NOTE: You have to manually change the PSA ID to BroLogging/BroMalware in PSA conf (PSA/psaEE.conf), change the VM image name in copy_psa_sw_to_vm.sh to the name required by SPM/UPR (and possibly legacy NED's JSON PSA Manifest) if tested in a fully integrated environment and and run the copy script. For a local test setup you can use the default image name, just replace the configuration file from NED files as desired. This is due to the capability differentiation in the policy framework.
The PSA Manifests are available at BroLogging and BroMalware (and legacy JSON format for old NED and manual testing).
Examples of HSPL:
I; Enable; Logging; {propose, count_connection }; {traffic_target, address}
- This policy enables logging of all connections to or from a specific address.
I; Enable; Malware_detection; {type_Content, scan_xdosexec }
- This policy enables scanning of all Windows native executable files detected in the network traffic.
Example MSPLs can be found below:
The M2L plug-in is available at M2LPlugin. Notice that it contains separate plug-ins for BroLogging and BroMalware.
Bro PSA provides the following capabilities
The list of capabilities are:
- Logging
- Offline_malware_analysis
Test scripts are available in the test directory or in PSA/test.
Please refer to project LICENSE file.
This software requires several open source software components with their own license:
- Bro Network Security Monitor, available at license
- BroControl, available at license
- Broccoli, available at license
- Broccoli-python, available at license
- Application: VTT
- MSPL: POLITO, VTT
- M2L Plugin: VTT
- Instructions for adding new Bro plug-ins to Bro PSA