SIEM and Event Correlation
Correlating events might yield unexpected conclusions
What is a SIEM?
Security information and event management
Set of tools for :
Log and alert storage
Log analysis, learning, baselining, patter-matching and deviations
Log correlation
High level overview of security posture
Splunk, ArcSight, ELK Stack, IBM qRadar, Alienvault, Graylog
SIEM alerts
The SIEM is just another box that generates alerts…
False positives, false negative?
Alerts should be fired for suspicious events or sets of conditions, also known as a “use case”:
The data source
The query string
Action triggered by the event
SIEM Use Case Matching
When a matching event is found, a SIEM should capture:
When the event started
Who was involved
What happened
Where the event happened
Where the event originated
SIEM Sources
A SIEM can collect data from:
Agents on hosts/servers
Built-in listeners or collectors (standard syslog, SNMP traps, netflow variants
Sensor for network traffic.
Normalization
Consistency – all events have to look the same
Issue: 100s of vendors, appliances, standards, formats..
Logs in txt vs binary or CSV vs TSV
JSON vs XML
Character encoding mismatch
Windows vs Linux newlines
SNMP MIBs from various vendors
Vendor plugins are used for format normalization
Timestamp normalization
Analysis and Detection
Rule-matching
If-then-else static approach
Fast
Useless for unknown threats
Heuristic rule matching
A more “permissive” if-then-else
Heuristics > fuzzy matching > machine learning
Approach based on constantly refining rules
Behavioral analysis
Build a baseline, define how normal looks like
Statistical model, requires human intervention for fine tuning
Anomaly analysis
Look for a well-known expected outcome
Example: RFC deviations
Trend analysis
Look at historical patterns
Based on predictions, but they must be trusted
SIEM Rules
Start from a predefined set of rules
Customization is required to match each environment
Rule: Statement that matches conditions by:
Numerical values
String comparison
Set membership
Unified AND/OR operations
Sometimes similar to database (SQL) queries
String searching – filtering text information in logs
Regular expressions
GREP supports regex.
Cut can help filter
Sort
Piping chains commands.
Grep | cut | sort
Head – first 10 lines
Tail – Last 10 lines
Gawk – for extracting info
Wmic on windows
Powershell: Get-EventLog
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