Ahead of the imminent release of Mellifera 12 (TheHive 2.12.0), a new, major (as in MAJOR) version of your (soon to be?) favorite Security Incident Response Platform, we’ve made rather significant changes to Cortex analyzers and released a new version of the CortexUtils Python library.

TL;DR

If you are in a hurry:

$ sudo pip install cortexutils --upgrade
$ cd where/your/analyzers/are
$ git pull master

Adjust the Cortex configuration for the new MISP 2.0 analyzer and for Hippocampe as shown below if you are using these analyzers then import the corresponding report templates into 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

CortexUtils 1.2.0

CortexUtils has been updated to include a new function called build_taxonomy() which is required for analyzers relying on the Python library we released to make their development development easier.

Mini-Reports in The Observable Tabs

Starting from Mellifera 12 (TheHive 2.12.0), mini-reports will be displayed in the observable tab in each case as soon as an analysis has been completed. Now analyzers compute their short/mini reports and put them in the summary section of their JSON output, ready for consumption. TheHive 2.12.0 and up will no longer create them on-the-fly.

Taxonomy

The mini-reports of all the analyzers have been updated to comply with a taxonomy that is similar to the one we were already using for VirusTotal:  VT:Score="14/56”.  A “maliciousness” level was already included in TheHive’s analyzer templates and we used a specific color to display each level. This level is now produced directly by the analyzers:

• info / blue: the analyzer produced an information, and the short report is shown in blue color in TheHive.
• safe / green : the analyzer did not find anything suspicious or the analyzed observable is safe (according to the analyzer). TheHive displays the short report in green color.
• suspicious / orange : the analyzer found that the observable is either suspicious or warrants further investigation. The short report is orange colored in TheHive.
• malicious / red : the analyzer found that the observable is malicious. The short report is displayed by TheHive in red color as show below:

The short report is built with the summary() function of an analyzer. The build_taxonomy() of cortexutils mentioned earlier should help building it.

MISP 2.0

The MISP analyzer has been updated to version 2.0 and includes new functionality submitted by our long-term contributor Nils Kuhnert from CERT-Bund (thanks a heap!). Unlike the previous version, v 2.0 will let you search for an observable in multiple MISP servers at the same time.

The analyzer accepts a truckload of datatypes as input. To make it work, install the pymisp Python library. It should already have been installed if you are just updating your current analyzers. You will also have to change Cortex configuration file (application.conf) for this new version:

MISP {
 url=["https://mymispserver_1", "https://mymispserver_2"]
 key=["mykey_1", "mykey_2" ]
 certpath=["", ""]
 name=["MISP_SERVER_NAME_1", "MISP_SERVER_NAME_2"]
}

Important note: You have to adjust your existing configuration to match the one shown above. The certpath variable can be left blank if you are not using a self-signed certificate.

When called from TheHive, the following output is produced:

The short report will show the number of unique events found in all MISP servers while the long report will show information of each matching event in each MISP server.

CERTatPassiveDNS

The CERTatPassiveDNS analyzer is a new submission by Nils (thanks again). It lets you check the CERT.at PassiveDNS service for a given domain or hostname. It takes domains and FQDN as input.

Access to the CERT.at service is allowed to trusted partners only. If you think you qualify, please contact CERT.at. You do not need to add specific information into the Cortex configuration file to benefit from this analyzer as it calls the whois system command to perform the pDNS requests.

When called from TheHive, the following output is produced:

 

 

Miscellaneous

The latest version of the Cortex-analyzers repository also include the following bug fixes and improvements:

• #61: fix typos in two requirements.txt files – by Michael Salsone
• #65: update the Joe Sandbox analyzer’s long report to support version 19.0.0
• #67: fixed mistake in the FireHol analyzer –  by Nils Kuhnert
• #69: use http://server:port for Hippocampe instead of http://server:port/hippocampe/api/v1.0/

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!

Correction: July 6, 2017 
An earlier version of this post mispelled Nils Kuhnert’s last name.