Cortexutils 1.1.1 is Here

Lo and behold, The Chefs behind TheHive Project have been pretty busy at the code kitchen, continuously improving some of your favorite recipes. After releasing Mellifera 11.3 and Cortex 1.1.3, here comes the turn of Cortexutils, the Python library containing utility classes for Cortex analyzers.

Version 1.1.1 of the library solves an encoding issue, in fact a regression introduced by the previous release. It also corrects a situation where error reports wouldn’t be generated in case the analyzer did not require configuration (we have a handful of such creatures in store).

You can grab the new Cortexutils release through PIP. To update your existing installation, please run the following command:

 sudo pip install cortexutils --upgrade

Running Into Trouble?

Shall you encounter any difficulty, please join our user forum, contact us on Gitter, or send us an email at support@thehive-project.org. We will be more than happy to help!

Cortex 1.1.3 Released

Moments ago, we have announced the release of Mellifera 11.3. And since we don’t want to leave you wanting for more update er fun time, you may want to schedule as well a Cortex update shall you need it 😉

Cortex 1.1.3 is now available. This hotfix corrects the deb package to make it compatible with Ubuntu 16.04 without having to fiddle with OpenJDK. As we did with TheHive, we have repackaged the software to avoid grabbing OpenJDK 9 (which Cortex does not support) and force the installation of version 8. This version also corrects a cryptic error that might be thrown out by Cortex as a result of an improper interpretation of an analyzer failure.

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.

Mellifera 11.3 Released

A few days ago, we have been made aware of a bug in the way we pulled new or updated MISP events to inject them within Mellifera’s alerting panel. As a result, some events did not show up as intended. So you might have missed some of the action shared by peers and partners through MISP.

As true Frenchmen who care a lot about cuisine, TheHive Project’s Chefs went back to their code kitchen and figured out a more palatable recipe to make sure you won’t be left under the impression that you were seeing all new or updated MISP events while in fact you didn’t (we don’t want you to go too easy & lazy n’est-ce pas ?). Mellifera 11.3 (TheHive 2.11.3), a hotfix version has been released to that end and should fix the issue. Please note that you must use MISP 2.4.73 or better.

In addition, this new version of your favorite (or soon to be favorite) Security Incident Response Platform can be installed from a deb package on Ubuntu 16.04 without having to fiddle with OpenJDK. We have repackaged the software to avoid grabbing OpenJDK 9 (which TheHive does not support) and force the installation of version 8.

Finally, if an admin creates an empty case template, users can add tasks to it while previously this wasn’t possible.

Download & Get Down to Work

If you have an existing installation of TheHive, please follow the new migration guide.

If you are performing a fresh installation, read the installation guide corresponding to your needs and enjoy. Please note that you can install TheHive 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

TheHive: June-Dec 17 Roadmap

A new version of TheHive will be released by the end of June. We will take this opportunity to review our release naming and numbering from the ground up.

Months ago, we started giving ‘major’ versions (2.10, 2.11, …) the name of honey bee varieties. 2.10 was called Buckfast. 2.11, the current version, is called Mellifera. And we were supposed to give 2.12 yet another name. However, and after the few hiccups we’ve encountered with our QA as of late, we have decided to change things around in order to make sure new releases are as stable and well-maintained as you should expect them to be.

Starting from the next release (2.12), we will abide by the following numbering scheme:

Major versions == X (2, 3, …)
Minor versions = X.Y (2.12, 2.13, 3.1, …)
Hotfix/maintenance versions = X.Y.Z (2.12.1, 2.13.2, 3.1.1, …)

Only major versions will have corresponding honey bee names. So long as we stay with v2, we’ll keep calling all the minor versions Mellifera N (2.12.0 = Mellifera 12). Version 3 will be called Cerana.

Mellifera 12 – June 29, 2017 (planned date)

Mellifera 12 (v 2.12) will succeed to Mellifera 2 (the current version) to comply with the new naming scheme. It will allow you to see how similar new alerts are to existing cases so you can decide whether you import them into an existing case, create a new one or ignore them altogether. Mellifera 12 will show you the status of all the related cases (#229) to the one you are working on. Finally, you’ll have the ability to change the default case template before importing an alert.

M12 will also support custom fields (#12), a feature that has been requested by numerous users. This version will also add mini-reports to the Observables tab. That way, once a Cortex analysis has been completed, analysts will be able to view part or all the resulting short report in that tab instead of having to navigate to the page of each observable to read the short report.

Mellifera 13 – September 14, 2017

TheHive 2.13 should be the last Mellifera version. It will complete TheHive’s integration with MISP by adding the ability to export all observables or a subset of them to a MISP instance. Please note that TheHive allowed you from the start to import events from multiple MISP instances but since sharing is caring, we wanted to add the ability to export to this very popular threat sharing platform from your Security Incident Response Platform (SIRP). We do not want to rush it though.

Cerana – October 12, 2017

Cerana or TheHive 3.0.0 will bring a complete UI overhaul to make it even easier to work on cases, perform analysis and get your job done, after the interface refreshments Mellifera brought. It will lay the ground for some nifty features we have in mind.

Cerana 1 – November 15, 2017

TheHive 3.1.0 will include dynamic dashboards: the ability to work with the statistics and metrics the way you want and generate customized dashboards to help you drive your activities.

Keep an eye on TheHive’s milestones on GitHub. There are other features and enhancements that we might add as we progress and we will reflect them on that page.

Correction: June 12, 2017
An earlier version mentioned GitHub issue #36 as pertaining to custom fields while it is a request for globally-defined tags that an analyst can choose from.

Mellifera 2 Released: Make MISP Sync Great Again

The Chefs behind TheHive Project’s delicious code are happy to announce the availability of Mellifera 2 (TheHive v2.11.2), the scalable, free and open source Security Incident Response Platform. This minor version fixes two irking issues related to MISP and adds a few enhancements detailed below.

Fixed Issues

#220: alerts related to MISP events are not properly updated.
#221: in some edge cases, alerts related to MISP events are created with no attribute.

Enhancements

#188: display the case severity in the My tasks and the Waiting tasks pages to let analysts prioritize their work.
#218: show the description of an alert in the alerting panel.
#224: visually distinguish between analyzed and non-analyzed observables.

Download & Get Down to Work

If you have an existing TheHive installation, please follow the new migration guide.

Support

Correction: May 26, 2017

A copy/paste error from a previous blog post was fixed.

Cortex 1.1.2 Released

We are glad to announce a new version of your favorite observable analysis engine which corrects bugs introduced by version 1.1.1 and adds a few enhancements. As a reminder, TheHive, our Security Incident Response Platform, can interact with one or several Cortex instances. Moreover, starting from version 1.1.1, Cortex has a two-way integration with MISP.

We highly advise you to upgrade your Cortex in to instance to 1.1.2.

Screen Shot 2017-05-24 at 11.51.54.png — Cortex 1.1.2 – Job Report Example with CERT-SG’s Abuse Finder

Fixed Issues

#27: fixed the daunting error 500 that many users of TheHive encountered when a job is submitted to Cortex.
#29: the MISP expansion modules are now disabled by default to avoid another error 500.
#31: the web interface was displaying SNAPSHOT (oops!) for the Cortex version. It now displays the correct version.

Enhancements

#28: when you enable the MISP expansion modules, Cortex will not be slowed down and starts without delay.
#30: add a page loader mask similar to TheHive’s.

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

VMRay, FireHOL, Joe Sandbox & Fortiguard Analyzers

We are pleased to announce the availability of 2 new Cortex analyzers and an update to 2 existing ones:

New: VMRay and FireHOL
Updated: Joe Sandbox and Fortiguard URL Category

We would like to thank Nils Kuhnert from CERT-BUND, CERT-BDF and Eric Capuano for their precious contributions.

To install the new analyzers, grab the Cortex-Analyzers repository and unpack its content (or git pull the master branch) in your existing /path/to/cortex-analyzers. Then follow the Cortex analyzers guide.

To import the new report templates in your instance of TheHive:

download the updated package
log in TheHive using an administrator account
go to Admin > Report templates menu
click on Import templates button and select the downloaded package

VMRay

The VMRay analyzer has been submitted by Nils Kunhert from CERT-BUND. It lets you run a file in a local or remote (cloud) VMRay sandbox. The analyzer also lets you check existing analysis reports.

The analyzer accepts files and hashes as input. VMRay is a commercial service and you need an API key to run the analyzer. To make it work, install the requests Python library. It should already have been installed since it is used by other analyzers as well.

To use the analyzer, add the following section to the Cortex configuration file (application.conf):

VMRay {
 url = ""
 key = ""
 certpath = ""
 }

When called from TheHive, the following output is produced:

TheHive: VMRay Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Important note: an analysis on VMRay, like on any other sandbox, can take a long time. That is why the analyzer tries to fetch the report until it is ready.

FireHOL

The FireHOL analyzer has been submitted by Nils Kuhnert from CERT-BUND. It lets you use the lists maintained by FireHOL project and check if an IP resides in one of them. FireHOL is an open source project. The analyzer reports the block lists in which an IP resides with the latest updated ones displayed first. To make it work, you’ll need to download the lists in a directory first (and it would be wise to do it on a regular fashion using a cron entry for example):

git clone https://github.com/firehol/blocklist-ipsets

The FireHOL analyzer depends on the following librairies:

ipaddress
pytz
dateutil
datetime

Add the following section to the Cortex configuration file (application.conf) to activate the analyzer:

FireHOLBlocklists {
 blocklistpath = ""
 ignoreolderthandays = <int>
 }

The ignoreolderthandays parameter lets you tell the analyzer to ignore matches found in lists that have not been refreshed in <int> days where <int> is an integer.

When called from TheHive, the following output is produced:

TheHive: FireHOL Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Joe Sandbox

Thanks to CERT-BDF, the Joe Sandbox analyzer has been updated to support Joe Sandbox Cloud service beside the on-premises version (Ultimate). Like with other Joe Sandbox services, you need to add the following section to the Cortex configuration file (application.conf):

JoeSandbox {
 url = ""
 apikey = ""
 }

Fortiguard URL Category

Thanks to Eric Capuano, the Fortiguard URL Category analyzer is working again. Eric has modified it to handle the changes made by Fortiguard to their free online API.

Correction: May 23, 2017
An earlier version of this post used ignoredays instead of ignoreolderthandays for the FireHOL Blocklists analyzer. This parameter has also been described.

Mellifera 1: Bugfixes, Enhancements and Documentation

Last week, we have released Mellifera (TheHive 2.11.0), a major version of your favorite (or soon to be favorite) Security Incident Response Platform. Sadly, some annoying bugs have slipped past our QA (n’est-ce pas Thomas ?).

We are happy to announce the availability of Mellifera 1 (TheHive 2.11.1) which corrects those bugs and adds a few enhancements detailed below.

Issues Corrected

#204: update case templates created with previous versions of TheHive.
#205: remove duplicate tags associated to an observable present in two cases upon a case merging operation.
#206: apply case templates when an alert is converted into a case.

Enhancements

We also took the opportunity of this hotfix to add the following enhancements:

#180: merge duplicate tasks during a case merge operation. Starting from this release, if you have waiting tasks (i.e. not assigned) with the same name in cases you’d like to merge, the new merged case will have only one task instead of two.
#211: show the number of available analyzer reports for each observable. If an observable has not been analyzed yet, say so.

Documentation

Please note that we have moved all the documentation of TheHive in a new repository. If you are not using TheHive4py 1.2.0 (or future versions), you can send alerts to Mellifera using the API as documented.

Download & Get Down to Work

If you have an existing TheHive installation, please follow the new migration guide.

Support

Mellifera Is Here

TheHive Project French chefs are very excited to announce the immediate availability of Mellifera, TheHive 2.11.0, the greatest and latest iteration of our flagship product.

We are thrilled to share this major version with the incident response community, for free as usual. Yes, you read that sentence right. You don’t have to cough up a single € or BTC for a platform that is as good as some commercial alternatives, unless your boss is hassling you about paying big bucks to get so-called professional support. If that’s the case, try us and you might prove them wrong.

Going through all the features and fixes of this significant overhaul will take forever (well, almost) so let us highlight a few that we feel worthy of your attention and time.

The Alerting Framework

If you need one reason to upgrade from Buckfast to Mellifera or to ditch your existing, clunky incident handling platform and use ours, then that should be its brand-new and powerful alerting framework.

With Buckfast (TheHive 2.10.x) and earlier versions, you can configure multiple MISP instances. TheHive will then poll those instances at regular intervals and display new or updated events in a specific area where analysts can preview them, import them as cases using configurable templates or ignore them altogether (and if they do so by mistake, there’s no way to go back). And if you needed to raise alerts from a SIEM, email reports or other sources of noteworthy security events, you had to rely on TheHive4py API client and create a case without having a chance to preview the events in TheHive prior to the case creation.

Mellifera does not have these limitations. It features an all new, fancy and efficient alerting framework which can be displayed using the Alerts button in the Web interface. This button was previously called MISP.

Within the Alerts area, you can preview not only new or updated MISP events but also any event that you have pushed through TheHive4py. The client has been modified to be compatible with Mellifera. If you have an existing TheHive4py package, please upgrade to the new 1.2.0 version using PIP.

Using TheHive4py 1.2.0, you can send your SIEM alerts, user email reports and security events from various sources to Mellifera and your analysts will be able to preview and import them or simply ignore them. If they have ignored some events by mistake, they can use the quick actions on the top of the panel to retrieve them. Please note that you have to create programs that will bridge your event sources with Mellifera through TheHive4py.

All New Skin

Mellifera has an all new skin with many refinements spread all over the interface. For example, you can now easily reorder the tasks within a case template. You can also sort task logs according to their creation date (oldest first, newest first). The flow (a.k.a live stream) is also collapsible. Moreover, when you create a case, Mellifera will suggest existing tags.

Is MISP or Cortex There?

If you have configured Mellifera to interact with at least one MISP or Cortex instance, the Web interface will show their respective logos at the bottom of the page. Please note that you can now connect to MISP and Cortex even if you are behind a proxy which requires authentication.

New Installation Packages

Starting from this release, we no longer produce all-in-one binary packages and dockers containing TheHive and Cortex. Instead you can use dockers, binaries and RPM as well as DEB packages. Wink wink.

One More Thing

Mellifera has an all new logo and the project website has been completely redesigned. Now you can see who’s behind the project thanks to Alexandre Gohier, a close friend who also happens to be a professional photographer.

Download & Try

If you have an existing TheHive installation, please follow the new migration guide.

If you are performing a fresh installation, read the installation guide corresponding to your needs and enjoy!

Support

TheHive4py API Client 1.1.1 Released

The French chefs at TheHive Project’s code kitchen have released version 1.1.1 of TheHive4py. The API client for our Security Incident Response Platform has been updated to comply with Buckfast 2 (TheHive 2.10.2).

In April 20, 2017, Buckfast 2 was released to plug a number of vulnerabilities identified by our friends at Randorisec. Among other changes, Buckfast 2 implements a protection against CSRF attacks. As a result, API calls made by TheHive4py have been modified in order to support that protection. In essence, TheHive4py 1.1.1 submits authentication credentials for each call instead of a per-session authentication.

To update your existing package, please use PIP. Shall you encounter any difficulties, do not hesitate to ask on our user forum or contact us at support@thehive-project.org. You can also join our Gitter channel and have a chat with us.

A new, major version of TheHive4py (1.2.0) will be released in the upcoming days to be compatible with Mellifera, our next major release of TheHive, which will feature a brand new alerting framework.