Cortex 1.1.1: Two Way MISP Integration Now a Reality

TheHive Project’s Chefs are thrilled to announce the immediate availability of Cortex 1.1.1.

Starting from this version, Cortex can be integrated in two ways with MISP as described below. We would like to thank Alexandre Dulaunoy for inviting us to the Open Source Security Software Hackathon which took place in Luxembourg during two days (May 2-3, 2017). Andras Iklody worked with us during the event in order to make this two way integration a reality. Merci !

Now in addition to TheHive, our Security Incident Response Platform which can connect to multiple MISP instances to receive new or updated events, let analysts preview then import them if they deem them worth investigating, Cortex can query MISP modules or be invoked from MISP to let an instance’s users leverage the power of its 21 analyzers. And in the near future, TheHive will also gain the ability to export observables to MISP.

Invoke MISP modules within Cortex

Besides its regular analyzers, Cortex 1.1.1  can analyze observables using MISP expansion modules.

Obviously, there are some overlap between Cortex native analyzers and MISP expansion modules. For example, you could query the CIRCL’s Passive DNS service using a native Cortex analyzer or a MISP expansion module. When there’s overlap, we highly recommend you rely on the Cortex analyzer. That way, we will be able to better help you in case you encounter issues or need help to make it work.

In order to invoke MISP expansion modules within Cortex, they need to be installed on the same host that Cortex runs on. Please read the MISP Integration guide.

Invoke Cortex Analyzers within MISP

Starting from version 2.4.73, a MISP instance can invoke Cortex analyzers. To do so, connect to the MISP Web UI with sufficient privileges, then go to Administration > Server settings > Plugin settings. Edit the Cortex section as follows:

• set Plugin.Cortex_services_enable to true
• set Plugin.Cortex_services_url  to http://ip_address (replace ip_address with the IP address of Cortex)
• set Plugin.Plugin.Cortex_services_port to port (replace port with the port on which Cortex is listening: 9000 by default)

Once this operation is completed, the Cortex analyzer list should appear in MISP’s Cortex section. The analyzers must be enabled to make them available to the instance users.

Documentation

Please note that we have moved all the documentation of Cortex to a new repository.

Download & Get Down to Work

To update your current Cortex installation, follow the instructions of the installation guide. Before doing so, you may want to save the job reports that were not executed via TheHive. Cortex 1 has no persistence and restarting the service will wipe out any existing reports.

Please note that you can install Cortex using an RPM or DEB package, deploy it using an Ansible script, use Docker, install it from a binary or build it from sources.

Support

Something does not work as expected? You have troubles installing or upgrading? No worries, please join our  user forum, contact us on Gitter, or send us an email at support@thehive-project.org. We are here to help.

Correction: May 18, 2017
An earlier version of this post contained a few typos which were corrected.