Importing Pcap into Security Onion

Within the last week, Doug Burks of Security Onion (SO) added a new script that revolutionizes the use case for his amazing open source network security monitoring platform.

I have always used SO in a live production mode, meaning I deploy a SO sensor sniffing a live network interface. As the multitude of SO components observe network traffic, they generate, store, and display various forms of NSM data for use by analysts.

The problem with this model is that it could not be used for processing stored network traffic. If one simply replayed the traffic from a .pcap file, the new traffic would be assigned contemporary timestamps by the various tools observing the traffic.

While all of the NSM tools in SO have the independent capability to read stored .pcap files, there was no unified way to integrate their output into the SO platform.

Therefore, for years, there has not been a way to import .pcap files into SO -- until last week!

Here is how I tested the new so-import-pcap script. First, I made sure I was running Security Onion Elastic Stack Release Candidate 2 (14.04.5.8 ISO) or later. Next I downloaded the script using wget from https://github.com/Security-Onion-Solutions/securityonion-elastic/blob/master/usr/sbin/so-import-pcap.

I continued as follows:

richard@so1:~$ sudo cp so-import-pcap /usr/sbin/

 richard@so1:~$ sudo chmod 755 /usr/sbin/so-import-pcap

I tried running the script against two of the sample files packaged with SO, but ran into issues with both.

richard@so1:~$ sudo so-import-pcap /opt/samples/10k.pcap

 so-import-pcap

 Please wait while...
...creating temp pcap for processing.
mergecap: Error reading /opt/samples/10k.pcap: The file appears to be damaged or corrupt
(pcap: File has 263718464-byte packet, bigger than maximum of 262144)
Error while merging!

I checked the file with capinfos.

 richard@so1:~$ capinfos /opt/samples/10k.pcap
capinfos: An error occurred after reading 17046 packets from "/opt/samples/10k.pcap": The file appears to be damaged or corrupt.
(pcap: File has 263718464-byte packet, bigger than maximum of 262144)

Capinfos confirmed the problem. Let's try another!

richard@so1:~$ sudo so-import-pcap /opt/samples/zeus-sample-1.pcap

 so-import-pcap

 Please wait while...
...creating temp pcap for processing.
mergecap: Error reading /opt/samples/zeus-sample-1.pcap: The file appears to be damaged or corrupt
(pcap: File has 1984391168-byte packet, bigger than maximum of 262144)
Error while merging!

Another bad file. Trying a third!

richard@so1:~$ sudo so-import-pcap /opt/samples/evidence03.pcap

 so-import-pcap

 Please wait while...
...creating temp pcap for processing.
...setting sguild debug to 2 and restarting sguild.
...configuring syslog-ng to pick up sguild logs.
...disabling syslog output in barnyard.
...configuring logstash to parse sguild logs (this may take a few minutes, but should only need to be done once)...done.
...stopping curator.
...disabling curator.
...stopping ossec_agent.
...disabling ossec_agent.
...stopping Bro sniffing process.
...disabling Bro sniffing process.
...stopping IDS sniffing process.
...disabling IDS sniffing process.
...stopping netsniff-ng.
...disabling netsniff-ng.
...adjusting CapMe to allow pcaps up to 50 years old.
...analyzing traffic with Snort.
...analyzing traffic with Bro.
...writing /nsm/sensor_data/so1-eth1/dailylogs/2009-12-28/snort.log.1261958400

 Import complete!

 You can use this hyperlink to view data in the time range of your import:
https://localhost/app/kibana#/dashboard/94b52620-342a-11e7-9d52-4f090484f59e?_g=(refreshInterval:(display:Off,pause:!f,value:0),time:(from:'2009-12-28T00:00:00.000Z',mode:absolute,to:'2009-12-29T00:00:00.000Z'))

 or you can manually set your Time Range to be:
From: 2009-12-28    To: 2009-12-29
Incidentally here is the capinfos output for this trace.

richard@so1:~$ capinfos /opt/samples/evidence03.pcap
File name:           /opt/samples/evidence03.pcap
File type:           Wireshark/tcpdump/... - pcap
File encapsulation:  Ethernet
Packet size limit:   file hdr: 65535 bytes
Number of packets:   1778
File size:           1537 kB
Data size:           1508 kB
Capture duration:    171 seconds
Start time:          Mon Dec 28 04:08:01 2009
End time:            Mon Dec 28 04:10:52 2009
Data byte rate:      8814 bytes/s
Data bit rate:       70 kbps
Average packet size: 848.57 bytes
Average packet rate: 10 packets/sec
SHA1:                34e5369c8151cf11a48732fed82f690c79d2b253
RIPEMD160:           afb2a911b4b3e38bc2967a9129f0a11639ebe97f
MD5:                 f8a01fbe84ef960d7cbd793e0c52a6c9
Strict time order:   True

That worked! Now to see what I can find in the SO interface.

I accessed the Kibana application and changed the timeframe to include those in the trace.


Here's another screenshot. Again I had to adjust for the proper time range.


Very cool! However, I did not find any IDS alerts. This made me wonder if there was a problem with alert processing. I decided to run the script on a new .pcap:

richard@so1:~$ sudo so-import-pcap /opt/samples/emerging-all.pcap

so-import-pcap

Please wait while...
...creating temp pcap for processing.
...analyzing traffic with Snort.
...analyzing traffic with Bro.
...writing /nsm/sensor_data/so1-eth1/dailylogs/2010-01-27/snort.log.1264550400

Import complete!

You can use this hyperlink to view data in the time range of your import:
https://localhost/app/kibana#/dashboard/94b52620-342a-11e7-9d52-4f090484f59e?_g=(refreshInterval:(display:Off,pause:!f,value:0),time:(from:'2010-01-27T00:00:00.000Z',mode:absolute,to:'2010-01-28T00:00:00.000Z'))

or you can manually set your Time Range to be:
From: 2010-01-27    To: 2010-01-28

When I searched the interface for NIDS alerts (after adjusting the time range), I found results:


The alerts show up in Sguil, too!



This is a wonderful development for the Security Onion community. Being able to import .pcap files and analyze them with the standard SO tools and processes, while preserving timestamps, makes SO a viable network forensics platform.

This thread in the mailing list is covering the new script.

I suggest running on an evaluation system, probably in a virtual machine. I did all my testing on Virtual Box. Check it out! 

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