ACT Workers

Introduction

This repository contains workers for the ACT platform.

The source code the workers are available on github.

Changelog

2.0.0

• Configuration is moved from ~/.config/actworkers/actworkers.ini to ~/.config/act/act.ini
• The old scio worker is removed and the new scio-worker (act-scio2) is renamed to act-scio

Setup

To use the workers, install from PyPi:

sudo pip3 install act-workers

This will install scripts for all workers:

• act-argus-case
• act-attack
• act-country-regions
• act-fact-chain-helper (see usage below)
• act-feed
• act-ip-filter
• act-misp-feeds
• act-mnemonic-pdns
• act-scio
• act-search-graph
• act-shadowserver-asn
• act-uploader
• act-url-shorter-unpack
• act-ta-helper (see usage below)
• act-veris
• act-vt

Origins

All workers support the optional arguments --origin-name and --origin-id. If they are not specified, facts will be added with the origin of the user performing the upload to the platform.

For managing origins, use the tool act-origin in act-admin package on pypi.

Access mode

By default, all facts will have access-mode "RoleBased", which means that the user needs access to the organization specified when creating the facts.

The access mode can be explicit set with --access-mode, e.g. like this, to set all facts to Public access mode:

--access-mode Public

There are also some workers, e.g. act-scio and act-mnemoninc-pdns that will set access-mode based on the input document (TLP green/white -> access-mode=Public), unless you explicit configures it to not do so.

Organization

All workers support the optional arguments --organization If they are not specified, facts will be added with the organization of the origin or the user performing the upload to the platform (if not set by the origin.

Worker usage

To print facts to stdout:

$ act-country-regions
{"type": "memberOf", "value": "", "accessMode": "Public", "sourceObject": {"type": "country", "value": "Afghanistan"}, "destinationObject": {"type": "subRegion", "value": "Southern Asia"}, "bidirectionalBinding": false}
{"type": "memberOf", "value": "", "accessMode": "Public", "sourceObject": {"type": "subRegion", "value": "Southern Asia"}, "destinationObject": {"type": "region", "value": "Asia"}, "bidirectionalBinding": false}
(...)

Or print facts as text representation:

$ act-country-regions --output-format str
(country/Afghanistan) -[memberOf]-> (subRegion/Southern Asia)
(subRegion/Southern Asia) -[memberOf]-> (region/Asia)
(...)

To add facts directly to the platform, include the act-baseurl and user-id options:

$ act-country-regions --act-baseurl http://localhost:8888 --user-id 1

Configuration

All workers support options specified as command line arguments, environment variables and in a configuration file.

A utility to show and start with a default ini file is also included:

act-worker-config --help
usage: ACT worker config [-h] {show,user,system}

positional arguments:
  {show,user,system}

optional arguments:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit

    show - Print default config

    user - Copy default config to /home/fredrikb/.config/actworkers/actworkers.ini

    system - Copy default config to /etc/actworkers.ini

You can see the default options in act/workers/etc/actworkers.ini.

The configuration presedence are (from lowest to highest):

1. Defaults (shown in --help for each worker)
2. INI file
3. Environment variable
4. Command line argument

INI-file

Arguments are parsed in two phases. First, it will look for the argument --config argument which can be used to specify an alternative location for the ini file. If not --config argument is given it will look for an ini file in the following locations:

/etc/<CONFIG_FILE_NAME>
~/.config/<CONFIG_ID>/<CONFIG_FILE_NAME> (or directory specified by $XDG_CONFIG_HOME)

The ini file contains a "[DEFAULT]" section that will be used for all workers. In addition there are separate sections for each worker which you can use to configure worker-specific options, and override default options.

Environment variables

The configuration step will also look for environment variables in uppercase and with "-" replaced with "_". For the example for the option "cert-file" it will look for the enviornment variable "$CERT_FILE".

Requirements

All workers requires python version >= 3.5 and the act-api library:

• act-api (act-api on pypi)

In addition some of the libraries might have additional requirements. See requirements.txt for a full list of all requirements.

Proxy configuration

Workers will honor the proxy-string option on the command line when connecting to external APIs. However, if you need to use the proxy to connect to the ACT platform (--act-baseurl), you will need to add the "--proxy-platform" switch:

echo -n www.mnemonic.no | act-vt --proxy-string <PROXY> --user-id <USER-ID> --act-baseurl <ACT-HOST> --proxy-platform

Local development

Use pip to install in local development mode. act-workers (and act-api) uses namespacing, so it is not compatible with using setup.py install or setup.py develop.

In repository, run:

pip3 install --user -e .

search

A worker to run graph queries is also included. A sample search config is inscluded in etc/searc_jobs.ini:

act-search-graph etc/search_jobs.ini

act-feed

act-feed can be used to download feed bundles from a remote uri. Feed uri must have a file, manifest.json, that lists all bundle files that can be download by the feed worker:

{
     "bundles": {
          "000bd93b8ce1fa2acfa448fa916083d76e64b008e336d6f54ad89f12f4232dcf.gz": 1636355543,
          "0598e898979bc851d58b440a3ea248fe64d9df4d2ab1665da3be73c6d13df411.gz": 1636681082,
          "0c03f87d142345a1bbea0867c145608e70ab2c0ea8282b5e06833f5f2b0f5f04.gz": 1636366321,
     },
     "updated": 1636699081
}

A local cache will be stored stored to keep track of the last bundle download, so bundles will not be downloaded multiple times.

You can either let act-feed download files to a local directory:

act-feed --feed-uri https://act.mnemonic.no/feed --dump-dir [path]

output all facts to stdout:

act-feed --feed-uri https://act.mnemonic.no/feed 

or upload facts directory to the platform

act-feed --feed-uri https://act.mnemonic.no/feed --act-baseurl [platform UR] --user-id [USERID]

act-fact-chain-helper

The act-fact-chain-helper is a utility that can be used to add facts chains based on known start and end nodes. This can be usefull when adding information from reports where do not have all the information availiable to you.

example

We know from a report that the threat actor APT 1 uses the tool Mimikatz

$ act-fact-chain-helper --output-format str --start threatActor/apt1 --end tool/mimikatz --avoid mentions --include content
(incident/[placeholder[1194f1ba4ea8ded28250a0193327654e5ee305bce03741a3e6f183f03b5c6b35]]) -[attributedTo]-> (threatActor/apt1)
(event/[placeholder[1194f1ba4ea8ded28250a0193327654e5ee305bce03741a3e6f183f03b5c6b35]]) -[attributedTo]-> (incident/[placeholder[1194f1ba4ea8ded28250a0193327654e5ee305bce03741a3e6f183f03b5c6b35]])
(content/[placeholder[1194f1ba4ea8ded28250a0193327654e5ee305bce03741a3e6f183f03b5c6b35]]) -[observedIn]-> (event/[placeholder[1194f1ba4ea8ded28250a0193327654e5ee305bce03741a3e6f183f03b5c6b35]])
(content/[placeholder[1194f1ba4ea8ded28250a0193327654e5ee305bce03741a3e6f183f03b5c6b35]]) -[classifiedAs]-> (tool/mimikatz)

In this case we do need to hint at the tool that it should include the "content" object and avoid "mention" facts.

The source and destination is interchangeable. In the example above, the fact chain created by swapping the source and destination is identical.

by adding the --act-baseurl option, the data will be stored to the platform.

The tool works by finding the shortest path though the datamodel. The options --avoid and --include will modify the cost of traversing certain nodes or edges. This tool is considered experimental.l.

act-ta-helper

You can use act-ta-helper to create facts, including placeholders, for typical scenarios where you have some information of TA activity, but not all.

This worker should not be used if any of objects listed as placeholders below are known.

  --ta THREAT-ACTOR             Threat Actor Name (Required)
  --ta-located-in COUNTRY       Country where threat actor is located
  --campaign CAMPAIGN           Campaign
  --techniques TECHNIQUES       List of techniques (commaseparated).
                                Support technique IDs, e.g. T1002 and name
                                e.g "Valid Accounts"
  --tools TOOLS                 List of tools (commaseparated)
  --sectors SECTORS             List of Sectors (commaseparated)
  --target-countries COUNTRIES  Target Countries (commaseparated)

You can run the tool with the options above, and add --output-format str to se a suggested list of facts. You can then add --act-baseurl and --user-id to add the facts to a platform instance.

You can add all options on a single command line, like this example:

act-ta-helper \
    --output-format str \
    --ta HAFNIUM \
    --sectors pharmaceuticals,education,defense,non-profit \
    --tools PsExec,Procdump,7-Zip,Nishang,PowerCat,WinRar,SIMPLESEESHARP,SPORTSBALL,ChinaChopper,ASPXSPY,Covenant \
    --target-countries "Denmark,United States of America" \
    --campaign "Operation Exchange Marauder" \
    --ta-located-in China \
    --techniques T1588,T1003,T1190,T1560,T1583,T1071,T1114,T1567,T1136,T1021

The following facts/placeholders will be created based on the options (placeholders are marked with [*]):

ta-located-in

Use this if you know the threat actor name and country where TA is located, but organization is unknown.

threatActor -[attributedTo]-> organization[*] -[locatedIn]-> country

campaign

Use this if you know the threat actor and campaign name, but incident is unknown.

threatActor -[attributedTo]-> incident[*] -[attributedTo]-> campaign

techniques

Use this if you know the threat actor and technique, but event and incident is unknown.

technique <-[classifiedAs]- event[*] -[attributedTo]-> incident[*] -[attributedTo]-> threatActor

tools

Use if tool and threat actor is known, but incident, content and event is unknown.

threatActor <-[attributedTo]- incident[*] <-[observedIn]- content[*] -[classifiedAs]-> tool

sectors

Use this if threat actor and target sector is known, but organization and incident is unknown.

threatActor -[attributedTo]-> incident[*] -[targets]-> organization[*] -[memberOf]-> sector

target-countries

Use this if threat actor and target country is known, but organization and incident is unknown.

threatActor -[attributedTo]-> incident[*] -[targets]-> organization[*] -[locatedIn]-> country