Monitoring for Large-Scale Networks

SiLK

app-mismatch

NAME

app-mismatch - SiLK plug-in to find services on unusual ports

SYNOPSIS

  rwfilter --plugin=app-mismatch.so ...

DESCRIPTION

The app-mismatch plug-in adds a partitioning rule to rwfilter(1) that helps to find services running on unusual port numbers.

Specifically, when the app-mismatch plug-in is loaded into rwfilter(1), rwfilter adds a partitioning rule that passes a record when the record's application field (the applabel(1) value determined by yaf(1)) is set and the value does not match the value of either the source port or destination port.

The plug-in causes rwfilter to write each record that meets any of these criteria to the location specified by the --fail-destination switch:

the protocol field has a value other than 6 or 17 (TCP or UDP)
the application field has the value 0, indicating that the application labeling feature was disabled or that it was unable to determine the type of application
the application field value is equal to either the sPort or the dPort field, indicating the type of traffic appears to be consistent with what would be expected

The remaining records are either TCP or UDP records where the application field is set and its value is different than that in the source and destination port. These records are written to the location specified by the --pass-destination switch.

OPTIONS

The app-mismatch plug-in does not add any additional switches to rwfilter nor modify any field.

EXAMPLES

In the following examples, the dollar sign ($) represents the shell prompt. The text after the dollar sign represents the command line. Lines have been wrapped for improved readability, and the back slash (\) is used to indicate a wrapped line.

The app-mismatch.so plug-in must be explicitly loaded into rwfilter(1) using the --plugin switch. The plug-in becomes active once it is loaded and no additional switches are required.

The following searches the SiLK Flow file data.rw for services that appear to be running on unusual or non-typical ports. To get a quick summary of the data, the output from rwfilter is piped into rwuniq(1):

 $ rwfilter --plugin=app-mismatch.so --print-stat --pass=- data.rw \
   | rwuniq --fields=application,sPort,dPort | head
 Files     1.  Read      24494.  Pass        890. Fail       23604.
 appli|sPort|dPort|   Records|
    53|62579| 5355|         1|
    53|55188| 5355|         1|
    53|57807| 5355|         1|
    53|54898| 5355|         1|
    80| 1171|  591|         1|
    53| 5355|50478|         1|
    53|64981| 5355|         1|
   139|52845|  445|         1|
    53|52536| 5355|         1|

As seen in the output of the --print-stat switch from rwfilter, the plug-in failed 23,604 records. Some of those records have protocols other than TCP and UDP, and some records have an application value of zero. Adding additional rwfilter invocations provides a way to get count for each:

 $ rwfilter --protocol=6,17 --print-stat --pass=- data.rw       \
   | rwfilter --application=1- --print-stat --pass=- -          \
   | rwfilter --plugin=app-mismatch.so --print-stat --pass=- -  \
   | rwuniq --fields=application,sPort,dPort --pager= | head
 Files     1.  Read      24494.  Pass      24420. Fail          74.
 Files     1.  Read      24420.  Pass      14228. Fail       10192.
 Files     1.  Read      14228.  Pass        890. Fail       13338.
 appli|sPort|dPort|   Records|
    53|62579| 5355|         1|
    53|55188| 5355|         1|
    53|57807| 5355|         1|
    53|54898| 5355|         1|
    80| 1171|  591|         1|
    53| 5355|50478|         1|
    53|64981| 5355|         1|
   139|52845|  445|         1|
    53|52536| 5355|         1|

All but 74 records were either TCP or UDP. For the TCP and UDP records, 10,192 had an application label of 0. There were 13,338 records where the application label matched the port number. Change the final rwfilter invocation to use --fail-destination to see those records:

 $ rwfilter --protocol=6,17 --print-stat --pass=- data.rw       \
   | rwfilter --application=1- --print-stat --pass=- -          \
   | rwfilter --plugin=app-mismatch.so --print-stat --pass=- -  \
   | rwuniq --fields=application,sPort,dPort --pager= | head
 Files     1.  Read      24494.  Pass      24420. Fail          74.
 Files     1.  Read      24420.  Pass      14228. Fail       10192.
 Files     1.  Read      14228.  Pass        890. Fail       13338.
 appli|sPort|dPort|   Records|
   443|  443|53257|         1|
    80|54123|   80|         2|
    80|52322|   80|         1|
    80|54749|   80|         1|
    80|   80|52885|         3|
    80|   80|54204|         1|
    53|   53|55964|         1|
    80|53497|   80|         1|
    80|54122|   80|         2|

ENVIRONMENT

SILK_PATH

This environment variable gives the root of the install tree. When searching for plug-ins, a SiLK application may use this environment variable. See the "FILES" section for details.

SILK_PLUGIN_DEBUG

When set to 1, the SiLK applications print status messages to the standard error as they attempt to find and open the app-mismatch.so plug-in. A typical invocation using this variable is:

 env SILK_PLUGIN_DEBUG=1 rwfilter --plugin=app-mismatch.so --version

FILES

${SILK_PATH}/lib64/silk/app-mismatch.so
${SILK_PATH}/lib64/app-mismatch.so
${SILK_PATH}/lib/silk/app-mismatch.so
${SILK_PATH}/lib/app-mismatch.so
/usr/lib64/silk/app-mismatch.so
/usr/lib64/app-mismatch.so
/usr/lib/silk/app-mismatch.so
/usr/lib/app-mismatch.so: Possible locations for the plug-in.