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Jon Siwek b667c637df Deprecate Func::Call(val_list*, ...) 
The version taking a vector of intrusive pointers should be used
instead.  A variadic version is also added that forwards all arguments.
2020-03-24 20:48:32 -07:00

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This document summarizes the most important changes in the current Zeek
release. For an exhaustive list of changes, see the ``CHANGES`` file
(note that submodules, such as Broker, come with their own ``CHANGES``.)
Zeek 3.2.0
==========
New Functionality
-----------------
- X509 Certificate caching:
Zeek now caches certificates if they have (by default) been encountered
more than 10 times in 62 seconds. Information for cached certificates is
retained; if the certificate is encountered again it does not have to
be re-parsed and already existing information is used to raise the events.
This should especially help with performance in environments where the
same certificates are seen very often.
Certificate caching is very configureable; it is possible to disable the
feature, change the time intervals or even suppress X509 events.
For details see ``scripts/base/files/x509/main.zeek``.
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- Several C++ functions have been changed to pass smart pointers
(``class IntrusivePtr<>``) instead of raw pointers. This makes the
code more robust. External plugins may need to be updated to this
API change.
- BIFs that use @ARG@, @ARGS@, or @ARGC@ may break since their type has
changed: BIF arguments are now passed as a ``std::vector<IntrusivePtr<Val>>``
rather than a ``val_list`` (i.e. ``List<Val*>``).
Removed Functionality
---------------------
- The fmt() function which takes a va_list argument is replaced, use
the new vfmt() function for equivalent functionality. The former is
deprecated because overloading it with the variadic fmt() function
can cause the unintended overload to be chosen depending on how the
platform implements va_list.
Deprecated Functionality
------------------------
- The ``Func::Call(val_list*, ...)`` method is now deprecated. The alternate
overload taking a ``zeek::Args`` (``std::vector<IntrusivePtr<Val>>``) should
be used instead. There's also now a variadic template that forwards all
arguments.
Zeek 3.1.0
==========
New Functionality
-----------------
- Add a new supervisor framework that enables Zeek to operate clusters
of processes itself without any external help.
The Supervisor framework provides an entirely new deployment mode
for Zeek, one that supervises a set of Zeek processes that are meant
to be persistent. A Supervisor automatically revives any process
that dies or exits prematurely and also arranges for an ordered
shutdown of the entire process tree upon its own termination. This
Supervisor mode for Zeek provides the basic foundation for process
configuration/management that could be used to deploy a Zeek cluster
similar to what ZeekControl does, but is also simpler to integrate
as a standard system service.
This mode is still experimental and will evolve over time. The
command-line argument of ``-j`` toggles Zeek to run in "Supervisor
mode" to allow for creation and management of child processes. If
you're going to test this, please note that you will need some
custom script code to configure the processes you want Zeek to run.
See the documentation for more information:
https://docs.zeek.org/en/stable/frameworks/supervisor.html
- Add a new option, ``dpd_late_match_stop``, which can be used in conjuction
with the option ``dpd_match_only_beginning`` and the new event
``protocol_late_match`` to help annotate the conn.log with a field
to speculate on the protocol/service in cases where the DPD buffer
was already exhausted and can't analyze the full connection anymore,
but where there was still a late signature match. A new script,
``policy/protocols/conn/speculative-service.zeek``, was added as an
example of how to perform this tuning and add a "speculative_service"
field to conn.log, but it's not loaded by default.
- There is now a new ``tcp_options`` event that is raised for each TCP header
that contains options.
- Added a new option, ``Log::print_to_log`` that can be set to automatically
redirect the output from "print" statements to a real log stream (e.g.
instead of writing to stdout).
- There is now a new ``&on_change`` attribute that can be used to be notified
of changes to tables and sets.
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- A C++17-capable compiler and CMake 3.0+ are now required to compile Zeek
- The backwards-compability wrappers & work-arounds introduced in 3.0
for the "Bro to Zeek rename" have either changed their operation, or in some
cases been removed. Generally, anything that reported a
naming-related warning in 3.0 now aborts with a corresponding error
message. In cases where 3.0 silently continued to accept old names,
3.1 now reports warnings. Most importantly, that's loading of
scripts with ".bro" endings, which are now flagged and should be
renamed.
- Broker has switched versions for the underlying CAF communication
library from 0.16 to 0.17. CAF has changed its wireformat between
those versions, which means that previous Broker and Zeek versions
won't be able to connect to the new ones. In other words, all Zeek
instances, as well as other Broker clients, need to upgrade at the
same time. In case of version mismatches, Broker now reports better
error messages to point out the problem.
- The key type of ``Known::service_store`` has changed to
``Known::AddrPortServTriplet`` and ``Known::services`` is now a table
instead of just a set.
- The DNS class name for Hesiod in the ``DNS::classes`` table is now spelled
correctly as "C_HESIOD" instead of "C_HESOD". For reference, this
class name string may appear in the dns.log file or in any custom
script logic that inspects the ``qclass`` field of ``DNS::Info``
after a ``dns_request`` event.
- The configuration input reader now ignores trailing spaces at the end of
configuration lines.
- The tcp_option event is now correctly raised.
- The base scripts shipped with Zeek now use the new
``successful_connection_remove`` event instead of
``connection_state_remove`` where possible (when the logic doesn't
pertain to unestablished TCP connections). There's a performance
benefit to this switch, but it may potentially break custom scripts
that depended on accessing or modifying state via specific
``&priority`` ordering of ``connection_state_remove`` event
handlers. However, since most of Zeek's base scripts previously just
used that event with the intention of writing a finalized log as the
last thing executed for a given connection, and the new
``successful_connection_remove`` event handlers all run after
``connection_state_remove``, it's not likely this change to the base
scripts causes any incompatibility with user scripts.
There's also a new event called ``connection_successful`` and a new
``connection`` record field named "successful" to help indicate this
new property of connections.
- The JSON output formatters now use the RapidJSON library. This
improves their performance considerably over the library that was
previously used. Output from the formatters remains nearly
identical.
- The ``decompose_uri`` function no longer raises an error when parsing
URIs with an empty port number (e.g. ``http://example.org:/``). Instead,
the ``portnum`` component of the returned ``URI`` value is left
uninitialized.
- Replace old ``select``-based IO loop with a new architecture that doesn't
spin checking for active IO sources. The new architecture now waits for the
the sources to actively notify it when activity occurs and only processes
data once it's ready. This helps heavily reduce the CPU usage on idle
network connections. This includes a couple of breaking changes:
- Only a single packet source is allowed to be specified from the
command-line now. If you pass combinations of multiple ``-r`` and/or
``-i`` flags, Zeek will return an error at startup.
- The IOSource API changed fairly wildly. The ``GetFds()`` and
``NextTimestamp`` methods no longer exist. If you had previously
implemented a custom IOSource, you will need to look at the new API
and make changes to your code to accomodate it. This does not include
packet sources, which should remain functional with little to no
changes, since the entirety of the changes should be in ``PktSrc``.
- Remove a large number of headers from being included by various files across
the entire code base, which leads to a sizeable build time improvement. This
set of changes has the potential to cause plugins to not build anymore. The
fixes for this potential breakage should just be a matter of including the
necessary headers in the plugin code.
Removed Functionality
---------------------
- Removed the ``current_conns_extern`` field from the ConnStats record
type. Zeek only maintains a single timer manager now, and without the
manager tags that came with multiple tiemr managers, we don't track
whether a connection is external anymore.
Deprecated Functionality
------------------------
- The C++ API typedefs for int{8,16,32,64} and uint{8,16,32,64} are deprecated
in favor of the real <cstdint> types they alias. E.g. use int8_t instead of
int8.
- The C++ API functions "safe_snprintf" and "safe_vsnprintf" are deprecated.
Use "snprintf" and "vsnprintf" instead.
Zeek 3.0.0
==========
New Functionality
-----------------
- Added support for DNSSEC resource records RRSIG, DNSKEY, DS, NSEC, and NSEC3.
The associated events are:
- dns_RRSIG
- dns_DNSKEY
- dns_DS
- dns_NSEC
- dns_NSEC3
- Added support for parsing and logging DNS SPF resource records.
A new ``dns_SPF_reply`` event is also available.
- Zeek's Plugin framework now allows a patch version. If a patch version is not
provided, it will default to 0. To specify this, modify the plugin
Configuration class in your ``src/Plugin.cc`` and set
``config.version.patch``. Note that the default plugin skeleton
includes a unit test whose Baseline has the plugin version number in
it and that will now fail due to the version number now including a
patch number. For those that want to keep the unit test, simply adapt
the unit test/baseline to include the new plugin patch number.
- The default http.log not includes a field for the HTTP request Origin header.
- Support for decapsulating VXLAN tunnels.
- The for-loop syntax now allows for iterating over key-value pairs of tables.
Previously, a separate lookup within the loop was required to obtain the
value at a given index/key, but now this works::
local t: table[count] of string = table();
t[1] = "hello";
t[55] = "goodbye";
for ( key, value in t )
print key, value;
- Added options for controlling the source path/prefix for Input and
Intel framework files:
- InputAscii::path_prefix
- InputBinary::path_prefix
- Intel::path_prefix
- Support for NFLOG link-layer type.
- Support for some SMB 3.x features
- An ``smb2_transform_header`` event is raised after parsing
TRANSFORM_HEADER structures associated with encrypted messages.
- The ``SMB2::NegotiateResponse`` record now contains
``negotiate_context_count`` and ``negotiate_context_values`` fields
containing capability information found in an SMB 3.1.1 dialect's
negotiation message.
- Added a new hook, ``Intel::filter_item``, to assist in filtering and
removal of intelligence items that are about to be inserted.
- Add support for SMB filenames in the intel framework.
- Added a new event for weirdness found via file analysis: ``file_weird``.
- The conn.log "history" field supports a new character 'G' or 'g'
(capital for originator, lowercase responder) to indicate a content
gap in the TCP stream. These are recorded logarithmically.
- The ``ZEEK_DNS_RESOLVER`` environment variable now controls
the DNS resolver to use by setting it to an IPv4 or IPv6 address. If
not set, then the first IPv4 address from /etc/resolv.conf gets used.
- The ``/<re>/i`` convenience syntax for case-insensitive patterns is now
also allowed when specifying patterns used in signature files.
- New RDP functionality.
- New events:
- rdp_client_network_data
- rdp_client_security_data
- rdp_client_cluster_data
- rdp_native_encrypted_data
- Add a new "client_channels" field to rdp.log based on data parsed from
the Client Network Data (TS_UD_CS_NET) packet. The channel list is also
available in the new ``rdp_client_network_data`` event.
- Add parsing support for TLS 1.3 pre-shared key extension. This info
is available in the events: ``ssl_extension_pre_shared_key_client_hello``
and ``ssl_extension_pre_shared_key_server_hello``.
- Added/re-wrote support for NTP.
- Parsing support for modes 1-7, with parsed structures available in
the ``ntp_message`` event.
- An ntp.log is produced by default, containing data extracted from
NTP messages with modes 1-5.
- Add support for vector slicing operations. For example::
local v = vector(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
v[2:4] = vector(6, 7, 8); # v is now [1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 5]
print v[:4]; # prints [1, 2, 6, 7]
- Add support for paraglob, a fairly quick data structure for matching a string
against a large list of patterns. For example::
local v1 = vector("*", "d?g", "*og", "d?", "d[!wl]g");
local p1 = paraglob_init(v1);
print paraglob_match(p1, "dog");
- An ``expire_func`` for a table with a multi-value-index will now unroll
the index and take one argument for each index value. For example, for a
``table[string,string] of count`` the expire function signature is:
function(t: table[string, string] of count, s: string, s2: string): interval
- Zeek's anonymous functions now capture their closures by reference.
This means that they can use and modify variables from the scope
that they were generated in. For example:
local n = 3;
local f = function() { n += 1; };
f();
print n; # prints 4
These anonymous functions can also be serialized over Broker with
their closures. In order to be serialzed over Broker the receiving
script needs to have an identical version of the function declared.
For the above example, a receiving script would need to have
declared a function
local name = function() { n += 1; };
to be able to receive the senders function over Broker.
Functions with closures can still use the variables they have
captured even after they have left the scope that they were declared
in. For example, a simple generator function like the one below
works as expected.
local make_adder = function(n: count): function(m: count): count
{
return function (m: count): count
{
return n + m;
};
};
print make_adder(3)(5); # prints 8
local three = make_adder(3);
print three(5); # prints 8
- Add ``LogAscii::enable_utf_8`` option to allow valid utf8 sequences
to be written directly into the ASCII logs without any escaping.
- Add parsing, analysis, and logging support for MQTT protocol v3.1/v3.1.1.
This is not enabled by default, use ``@load policy/protocols/mqtt`` to
use the new MQTT analysis support.
- Zeek now supports duration thresholding on connections, similarly to how it supports
byte and packet thresholds.
- New events:
- ConnThreshold::duration_threshold_crossed
- conn_duration_threshold_crossed
- New functions:
- ConnThreshold::set_duration_threshold
- ConnThreshold::delete_duration_threshold
- set_current_conn_duration_threshold
- get_current_conn_duration_threshold
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- The following executable names have changed (the old names will
continue to work, but emit a deprecation warning):
- ``bro`` is now ``zeek``
- ``bro-config`` is now ``zeek-config``
- ``broctl`` is now ``zeekctl``
- ``bro-cut`` is now ``zeek-cut``
- BroControl has been completely renamed to ZeekControl. Many installation
directories and files with "broctl" in their name have been changed
to use "zeekctl" instead. It's expected this has been done in a way
that's backwards compatible with previous Bro installations. E.g.
if you made customizations to the ``broctl.cfg`` file of a previous
installation, installing the newer Zeek version over it will retain that
file and even symlink the new ``zeekctl.cfg`` to it.
- The default install prefix is now ``/usr/local/zeek`` instead of
``/usr/local/bro``. If you have an existing installation that used
the previous default and are still using the new default when upgrading,
we'll crate ``/usr/local/zeek`` as a symlink to ``/usr/local/bro``.
Certain subdirectories will also get similar treatment: ``share/bro``,
``include/bro``, and ``lib/bro``.
- ``$prefix/share/bro/site/local.bro`` has been renamed to
``local.zeek``. If you have a ``local.bro`` file from a previous
installation, possibly with customizations made to it, the new
version of Zeek will install a ``local.zeek`` file that is a symlink
to the pre-existing ``local.bro``. In that case, you may want to
just copy ``local.bro`` into the new ``local.zeek`` location to
avoid confusion, but things are otherwise meant to work properly
without intervention.
- All scripts ending in ``.bro`` that ship with the Zeek source tree have
been renamed to ``.zeek``.
- The search logic for the ``@load`` script directive now prefers files
ending in ``.zeek``, but will fallback to loading a ``.bro`` file if
it exists. E.g. ``@load foo`` will first check for a ``foo.zeek``
file to load and then otherwise ``foo.bro``. Note that
``@load foo.bro`` (with the explicit ``.bro`` file suffix) prefers
in the opposite order: it first checks for ``foo.bro`` and then
falls back to a ``foo.zeek``, if it exists.
- The for-loop index variable for vectors has been changed from
'int' to 'count' type. It's unlikely this would alter/break any
script behavior unless they were explicitly inspecting the variable's
type (and there's typically no reason to do that).
- The startup/initialization behavior has changed such that any errors
encountered while processing the ``bro_init()`` event will cause the
process to terminate rather than continue on the main run loop.
- The ``dns_state`` field within ``connection`` records has changed: the
``pending_queries`` and ``pending_replies`` fields are now ``&optional``,
and there is a new field ``pending_query`` that is populated before
``pending_queries``. If you have scripts that access the ``pending_queries``
or ``pending_replies`` fields, they will need to be updated.
This change was made to improve performance.
- The ternary operator ("<expr> ? <alt1> : <alt2>") now enforces that
if "<alt1>" and "<alt2>" are both records, they are of the same
type. It was always assumed that they were, but code might have
still worked even if not.
- The "orig_fuids", "orig_filenames", "orig_mime_types" http.log fields
as well as their "resp" counterparts are now limited to having
"HTTP::max_files_orig" or "HTTP::max_files_resp" entries, which are 15
by default. The limit can also be ignored case-by-case via the
"HTTP::max_files_policy" hook.
- The binpac library is now only compiled as a shared library by default.
To revert back to compiling only a static library, there's the
``--enable-static-binpac`` configure option.
- The Broker C++ API has some breaking changes, see it's own NEWS file for
details on how to migrate old code.
- Some Weirds associated with generic binpac parsing exceptions in analyzers
that didn't otherwise handle them (like syslog, modbus, dnp3) are now
a ProtocolViolation instead
- An "addl" parameter was added to the ``flow_weird`` and ``net_weird`` events
for describing additional information about the weird. The ``conn_weird``
event already had such a parameter.
- Weird names that contained variable content and may result in an unbounded
number of weird names have been renamed to remove the variable content
(which has been made available in the "addl" field of ``conn_weird``,
``flow_weird``, or ``net_weird`` events):
- "unknown_dce_rpc_auth_type_%d" -> unknown_dce_rpc_auth_type
- "gtp_invalid_info_element_%d" -> gtp_invalid_info_element
- "unknown_netbios_type:" 0x%x -> unknown_netbios_type
- "excess_netbios_hdr_len" (%d > %d) -> excess_netbios_hdr_len
- "deficit_netbios_hdr_len" (%d > %d) -> deficit_netbios_hdr_len
- "bad_RPC_program (%d)" -> bad_RPC_program
- "unknown_MOUNT_request(%u)" -> unknown_MOUNT_request
- "unknown_NFS_request(%u)" -> unknown_NFS_request
- "RPC resync: discard %d bytes\n" -> RPC_resync
- "RPC_message_too_long (%d64)" -> RPC_message_too_long
- "socks5_unsupported_authentication_method_%d" -> socks5_unsupported_authentication_method
- "socks5_unsupported_authentication_%d_%d" -> socks5_unsupported_authentication
- "ssh_unknown_kex_algorithm=%s" -> ssh_unknown_kex_algorithm
- "Encountered unknown type in server name ssl extension: %d" -> ssl_ext_unknown_server_name_type
- "UDP_datagram_length_mismatch(%d!=%d)" -> UDP_datagram_length_mismatch
- "OPENSSL Could not parse OCSP request (fuid %s)" -> openssl_ocsp_request_parse_error
- "OPENSSL Could not parse OCSP response (fuid %s)" -> openssl_ocsp_response_parse_error
- "Could not parse X509 certificate (fuid %s)" -> x509_cert_parse_error
- "Certificate with invalid BasicConstraint. fuid %s" -> x509_invalid_basic_constraint
- "Could not parse subject alternative names. fuid %s" -> x509_san_parse_error
- "DNS-field does not contain an IA5String. fuid %s" -> x509_san_non_string
- "Weird IP address length %d in subject alternative name. fuid %s" -> x509_san_ip_length
- "Could not parse time in X509 certificate (fuid %s) -- UTCTime has wrong length" -> x509_utc_length
- "Could not parse UTC time in non-YY-format in X509 certificate (x509 %s)" -> x509_utc_format
- "Could not parse time in X509 certificate (fuid %s) -- Generalized time has wrong length" -> x509_gen_time_length
- "Invalid time type in X509 certificate (fuid %s)" -> x509_invalid_time_type
- "Could not parse time in X509 certificate (fuid %s) -- additional char after time" -> x509_time_add_char
- "Could not parse time in X509 certificate (fuid %s) -- not enough bytes remaining for offset" -> x509_time_offset_underflow
- "Could not parse time in X509 certificate (fuid %s) -- unknown offset type" -> x509_time_offset_type
- "X509::GetExtensionFromBIO: %s" -> x509_get_ext_from_bio
- "unknown_mobility_type_%d" -> unknown_mobility_type
- "unknown_routing_type_%d" -> unknown_routing_type
- "unknown_protocol_%d" -> unknown_protocol
- "unknown_gre_version_%d" -> unknown_gre_version
- "unknown_gre_protocol_%u16" -> unknown_gre_protocol
- The "missed_bytes" field of conn.log can be calculated slightly differently
in some cases: ACKs that reveal a content gap, but also come at
the end of a connection (in a FIN or RST) are considered unreliable
and aren't counted as true gaps.
- The Broxygen component, which is used to generate our Doxygen-like
scripting API documentation has been renamed to Zeekygen. This likely has
no breaking or visible changes for most users, except in the case one
used it to generate their own documentation via the ``--broxygen`` flag,
which is now named ``--zeekygen``. Besides that, the various documentation
in scripts has also been updated to replace Sphinx cross-referencing roles
and directives like ":bro:see:" with ":zeek:see:".
- The catch-and-release and unified2 scripts are no longer loaded by
default. Because there was a performance impact simply from loading
them and it's unlikely a majority of user make use of their features,
they've been moved from the scripts/base/ directory into
scripts/policy/ and must be manually loaded to use their
functionality. The "drop" action for the notice framework is likewise
moved since it was implemented via catch-and-release. As a result,
the default notice.log no longer contains a "dropped" field.
If you previously used the catch-and-release functionality add this:
@load policy/frameworks/netcontrol/catch-and-release
If you previously used Notice::ACTION_DROP add:
@load policy/frameworks/notice/actions/drop
If you previously used the Unified2 file analysis support add:
@load policy/files/unified2
- The default value of ``peer_description`` has changed from "bro"
to "zeek". This won't effect most users, except for the fact that
this value may appear in several log files, so any external plugins
that have written unit tests that compare baselines of such log
files may need to be updated.
- The "remote_ip" field of "addr" type was removed from radius.log and
replaced with a field named "tunnel_client" of "string" type. The
reason for this is that the Tunnel-Client-Endpoint RADIUS attribute
this data is derived from may also be a FQDN, not just an IP address.
- The ``ssl_server_hello`` event's ``server_random`` parameter has been
changed to always include the full 32-byte field from the
ServerHello. Previously a 4-byte timestamp and 28-byte random data
were parsed separately as some TLS protocol versions specified a
separate timestamp field as part of the full 32-byte random sequence.
- The namespace used by all the builtin plugins that ship with Zeek have
changed to use "Zeek::" instead of "Bro::".
- Any Broker topic names used in scripts shipped with Zeek that
previously were prefixed with "bro/" are now prefixed with "zeek/"
instead.
In the case where external applications were using a "bro/" topic
to send data into a Bro process, a Zeek process still subscribes
to those topics in addition to the equivalently named "zeek/" topic.
In the case where external applications were using a "bro/" topic
to subscribe to remote messages or query data stores, there's no
backwards compatibility and external applications must be changed
to use the new "zeek/" topic. The thought is this change will have
low impact since most data published under "bro/" topic names is
intended for use only as a detail of implementing cluster-enabled
versions of various scripts.
A list of the most relevant/common topic names that could potentially
be used in external applications to consume/query remote data that
one may need to change:
- store names
- bro/known/services
- bro/known/hosts
- bro/known/certs
- cluster nodes
- bro/cluster/<node type>
- bro/cluster/node/<name>
- bro/cluster/nodeid/<id>
- logging
- bro/logs/<stream>
- The ``resp_ref`` argument was removed from the ``ocsp_response_bytes``
event. ``resp_ref`` was not used by anything in the codebase and could not be
passed to any other functions for further processing. The remainder of the
``ocsp_response_bytes`` is unchanged.
- For performance reasons, processing of notices is now always
performed by the node on which the notice is raised rather than
the centralized Manager node. This has potential incompatibilities
for those that relied on global state for notice policy processing.
It also introduces an expected race condition that may cause multiple
notices of the same kind that are generated within a short timespan
of each other on separate cluster nodes to all be logged rather
than suppressed and de-duplicated into a single notice.
- to_json is now a bif, no longer a script. Loading base/utils/json.zeek is no
longer necessary and has been deprecated. to_json should yield much better, always
valid json. There are some small differences in output; unnecessary spaces are removed
and port values are rendered differently, now including the port and the protocol.
- The output of the JSON logger now uses an external library to generate json. There
are small changes to the output; most visibly double numbers are now rounded slightly
differently. The way in which port values are rendered does _not_ change for JSON logs.
- The C++-layer List, Queue, and Dict types have changed from using macros to
templates as well as some other API changes.
- Range-based for-loops are now supported
- The loop_over_queue macro is now removed
- PList is now a template instead of a macro, so any "PList(T)" usages in
external code should now use "PList<T>"
- PDict is now a template instead of a macro, so any "PDict(T)" usages in
external code should now use "PDict<T>"
- Generally some methods used to assume containers were only using integer
or pointer types, so semantics may now be slightly different to
either avoid copying or unsafely returning arbitrary T types by value.
E.g. List::remove_nth and List::get can no longer return a "null" value
when the provided index is out of range, so they assert instead, and
Queue::pop methods do not return a value at all (one must check for
a non-empty container before removing an element).
- Google Perftools (tcmalloc) is no longer used by default on Linux
systems if it's found during the configuration process.
Use the --enable-perftools configuration flag to use tcmalloc.
The --disable-perftools flag is also no longer provided since
there's no longer any case in which tcmalloc will be used by default.
- There now is a maximum number of protocol violations that can be raised by an analyzer
before it is disabled; the default is set to 5. This behavior is customizable using
``DPD::max_violations`` and ``DPD::ignore_violations``.
- The scan detection script, ``policy/misc/scan``, is no longer loaded by
default in ``site/local.zeek`` due to it frequenty causing performance issues.
Removed Functionality
---------------------
- A number of functions that were deprecated in version 2.6 or below and completely
removed from this release. Most of the functions were used for the old communication
code.
- ``find_ip_addresses``
- ``cat_string_array``
- ``cat_string_array_n``
- ``complete_handshake``
- ``connect``
- ``decode_base64_custom``
- ``disconnect``
- ``enable_communication``
- ``encode_base64_custom``
- ``get_event_peer``
- ``get_local_event_peer``
- ``join_string_array``
- ``listen``
- ``merge_pattern``
- ``request_remote_events``
- ``request_remote_logs``
- ``request_remote_sync``
- ``resume_state_updates``
- ``send_capture_filter``
- ``send_current_packet``
- ``send_id``
- ``send_ping``
- ``set_accept_state``
- ``set_compression_level``
- ``sort_string_array``
- ``split1``
- ``split_all``
- ``split``
- ``suspend_state_updates``
- ``terminate_communication``
- ``split``
- ``send_state``
- ``checkpoint_state``
- ``rescan_state``
- ``log_file_name``
- ``open_log_file``
- ``disable_print_hook``
- The following events were deprecated in version 2.6 or below and are completely
removed from this release:
- ``ssl_server_curve``
- ``dhcp_ack``
- ``dhcp_decline``
- ``dhcp_discover``
- ``dhcp_inform``
- ``dhcp_nak``
- ``dhcp_offer``
- ``dhcp_release``
- ``dhcp_request``
- ``remote_state_access_performed``
- ``remote_state_inconsistency``
- ``remote_connection_established``
- ``remote_connection_closed``
- ``remote_connection_handshake_done``
- ``remote_event_registered``
- ``remote_connection_error``
- ``remote_capture_filter``
- ``remote_log_peer``
- ``remote_log``
- ``finished_send_state``
- ``remote_pong``
- ``software_version_found``
- ``software_unparsed_version_found``
- ``software_parse_error``
- ``print_hook``
- ``interconn_stats``
- ``interconn_remove_conn``
- ``root_backdoor_signature_found``
- ``napster_signature_found``
- ``kazaa_signature_found``
- ``gaobot_signature_found``
- ``ftp_signature_found``
- ``gnutella_signature_found``
- ``http_signature_found``
- ``irc_signature_found``
- ``telnet_signature_found``
- ``ssh_signature_found``
- ``rlogin_signature_found``
- ``smtp_signature_found``
- ``http_proxy_signature_found``
- ``backdoor_stats``
- ``backdoor_remove_conn``
- ``dns_full_request``
- ``non_dns_request``
- The following types/records were deprecated in version 2.6 or below and are
removed from this release:
- ``peer_id``
- ``event_peer``
- ``packet``
- ``software``
- ``software_version``
- The following configuration options were deprecated in version 2.6 or below and are
removed from this release:
- ``max_remote_events_processed``
- ``forward_remote_events``
- ``forward_remote_state_changes``
- ``enable_syslog``
- ``remote_trace_sync_interval``
- ``remote_trace_sync_peers``
- ``remote_check_sync_consistency``
- ``log_rotate_interval``
- ``log_max_size``
- ``log_encryption_key``
- ``state_dir``
- ``state_write_delay``
- ``ssl_ca_certificate``
- ``ssl_private_key``
- ``ssl_passphrase``
- ``suppress_local_output``
- ``irc_servers``
- ``interconn_min_interarrival``
- ``interconn_max_interarrival``
- ``interconn_max_keystroke_pkt_size``
- ``interconn_default_pkt_size``
- ``interconn_stat_period``
- ``interconn_stat_backoff``
- ``interconn_endp_stats``
- ``backdoor_stat_period``
- ``backdoor_stat_backoff``
- ``backdoor_endp_stats``
- ``chunked_io_buffer_soft_cap``
- The following constants were used as part of deprecated functionality in version 2.6
or below and are removed from this release:
- ``PEER_ID_NONE``
- ``REMOTE_LOG_INFO``
- ``REMOTE_SRC_CHILD``
- ``REMOTE_SRC_PARENT``
- ``REMOTE_SRC_SCRIPT``
- The deprecated script ``policy/protocols/smb/__load__.bro`` was removed.
Instead of ``@load policy/protocols/smb`` use ``@load base/protocols/smb``.
- Broccoli, which had been deprecated in version 2.6 and was no longer built by default
was removed from the source tree.
- Support for the &persistent, &synchronized, &mergeable, &encrypt, &rotate_interval,
and &rotate_size attributes, which were deprecated in Bro 2.6, was removed. The ``-g``
command-line option (dump-config) which relied on this functionality was also removed.
- Functionality for writing state updates for variables with the
&synchronized attribute was removed. This entails the
``-x`` command-line option (print-state) as well as the
``capture_state_updates`` function.
- Removed the BroControl ``update`` command, which was deprecated in Bro 2.6.
- Functionality for writing/reading binary event streams was
removed. This functionality relied on the old communication code
anc was basically untested. The ``-R`` command-line option (replay)
as well as the ``capture_events`` function were removed.
- Removed p0f (passive OS fingerprinting) support. The version of
p0f shipped with zeek was ancient, probably did not give
any reliable support anymore and did not offer a clear
upgrade path. The ``OS_version_found`` event as well as the
``generate_OS_version_event`` configuration option were removed.
- Removed the ``max_files_in_cache`` option and the associated
"file caching" feature it's associated with. That feature allowed
one to open many scripting-layer ``file`` objects and potentially
bypass the operating system's resource limits for open files.
This is typically not necessary and it's a problem that is more
appropriately addressed at the system configuration level.
- Removed the InterConn analyzer.
- Removed the BackDoor analyzer.
- Removed ``List::sortedinsert`` from the C++ API.
Deprecated Functionality
------------------------
- The ``str_shell_escape`` function is now deprecated, use ``safe_shell_quote``
instead. The later will automatically return a value that is enclosed
in double-quotes.
- The ``bro_init``, ``bro_done``, and ``bro_script_loaded`` events are now
deprecated, use ``zeek_init``, ``zeek_done``, and
``zeek_script_loaded`` instead. Any existing event handlers for
the deprecated versions will automatically alias to the new events
such that existing code will not break, but will emit a deprecation
warning.
- The ``bro_is_terminating`` and ``bro_version`` function are deprecated and
replaced by functions named ``zeek_is_terminating`` and ``zeek_version``.
- The ``List::insert`` method from the C++ API is deprecated, use
``List::push_front`` instead.
Bro 2.6
=======
New Functionality
-----------------
- Bro has switched to using the new Broker library for all its
communication. Broker's API has been completely redesigned (compared
to the version in 2.5), and much of its implementation has been
redone. There's a new script-level "broker" framework that
supersedes the old "communication" framework, which is now
deprecated. All scripts that ship with Bro have been ported to use
Broker. BroControl has likewise been ported to use Broker.
For more about the new Broker framework, see
https://www.bro.org/sphinx-git/frameworks/broker.html. There's also
a guide there for porting existing Bro scripts to Broker. For more
about Broker itself, including its API for external applications,
see https://bro-broker.readthedocs.io/en/stable
When using BroControl, the function of proxies has changed with
Broker. If you are upgrading and have configured more than one proxy
currenty, we recommend going back down to a single proxy node now.
That should be fine unless you are using custom scripts doing
significant data distribution through the new cluster framework.
A side effect of the switch to using Broker is that each Bro node now runs
as a single process instead of two. Also, the number of file descriptors
being polled in Bro's main event loop has been reduced (1 per worker
versus 5). This should increase the number of workers one can
use before reaching the common 1024 file descriptor limitation of
"select()".
- Bro now has new "is" and "as" script operators for dynamic
type-checking and casting.
- "v as T" casts a value v into a value of type T, assuming that's
possible (if not, it triggers a runtime error).
- "v is T" returns a boolean indicating whether value v can be
casted into type T (i.e., if true then "v as T" will succeed).
This casting supports three cases currently: (1) a value of
declared type "any" can be casted to its actual underlying type;
(2) Broker values can be casted to their corresponding script
types; and (3) all values can be casted to their declared types
(i.e., a no-op).
Example for "any"::
# cat a.bro
function check(a: any)
{
local s: string = "default";
if ( a is string )
s = (a as string);
print fmt("s=%s", s);
}
event bro_init()
{
check("Foo");
check(1);
}
# bro a.bro
s=Foo
s=default
- The existing "switch" statement got extended to now also support switching by
type rather than value. The new syntax supports two type-based versions
of "case":
- "case type T: ...": Take branch if operand can be casted to type T.
- "case type T as x: ... ": Take branch if operand can be casted
to type T, and make the casted value available through ID "x".
Multiple types can be listed per branch, separated by commas.
However, one cannot mix cases with expressions and types inside a
single switch statement.
Example::
function switch_one(v: any)
{
switch (v) {
case type string:
print "It's a string!";
break;
case type count as c:
print "It's a count!", c;
break;
case type bool, type addr:
print "It's a bool or address!";
break;
default:
print "Something else!";
break;
}
}
- Bro now comes with a new "configuration framework" that allows
updating script options dynamically at runtime. This functionality
consists of three larger pieces working together:
- Option variables: The new "option" keyword allows variables to be
declared as runtime options. Such variables cannot be changed
using normal assignments. Instead, they can be changed using the
new function "Config::set_value". This function will automatically
apply the change to all nodes in a cluster. Note that options can also
be changed using the new function "Option::set", but this function will
not send the change to any other nodes, so Config::set_value should
typically be used instead of Option::set.
Various redef-able constants in the standard Bro scripts have
been converted to runtime options. This change will not affect any
user scripts because the initial value of runtime options can still be
redefined with a "redef" declaration. Example::
option testvar = "old value";
redef testvar = "new value";
It is possible to "subscribe" to an option through
"Option::set_change_handler", which will trigger a handler callback
when an option changes. Change handlers can optionally modify
values before they are applied by returning the desired value, or
reject updates by returning the old value. Priorities can be
specified if there are several handlers for one option.
Example script::
option testbool: bool = T;
function option_changed(ID: string, new_value: bool): bool
{
print fmt("Value of %s changed from %s to %s", ID, testbool, new_value);
return new_value;
}
event bro_init()
{
print "Old value", testbool;
Option::set_change_handler("testbool", option_changed);
Option::set("testbool", F);
print "New value", testbool;
}
- Script-level configuration framework: The new script framework
base/framework/config facilitates reading in new option values
from external files at runtime. The format for these files looks
like this::
[option name][tab/spaces][new variable value]
Configuration files to read can be specified by adding them to
"Config::config_files".
Usage example::
redef Config::config_files += { "/path/to/config.dat" };
module TestConfig;
export {
option testbool: bool = F;
}
The specified file will now be monitored continuously for changes, so
that writing "TestConfig::testbool T" into ``/path/to/config.dat`` will
automatically update the option's value accordingly.
The configuration framework creates a ``config.log`` that shows all
value changes that took place.
- Config reader: Internally, the configuration framework uses a new
type of input reader to read such configuration files into Bro.
The reader uses the option name to look up the type that variable
has, converts the read value to the correct type, and then updates
the option's value. Example script use::
type Idx: record {
option_name: string;
};
type Val: record {
option_val: string;
};
global currconfig: table[string] of string = table();
event InputConfig::new_value(name: string, source: string, id: string, value: any)
{
print id, value;
}
event bro_init()
{
Input::add_table([$reader=Input::READER_CONFIG, $source="../configfile", $name="configuration", $idx=Idx, $val=Val, $destination=currconfig, $want_record=F]);
}
- Support for OCSP and Signed Certificate Timestamp. This adds the
following events and BIFs:
- Events:
- ocsp_request
- ocsp_request_certificate
- ocsp_response_status
- ocsp_response_bytes
- ocsp_response_certificate
- ocsp_extension
- x509_ocsp_ext_signed_certificate_timestamp
- ssl_extension_signed_certificate_timestamp
- Functions:
- sct_verify
- x509_subject_name_hash
- x509_issuer_name_hash
- x509_spki_hash
- The SSL scripts provide a new hook "ssl_finishing(c: connection)"
to trigger actions after the handshake has concluded.
- New functionality has been added to the TLS parser, adding several
events. These events mostly extract information from the server and client
key exchange messages. The new events are:
- ssl_ecdh_server_params
- ssl_dh_server_params
- ssl_server_signature
- ssl_ecdh_client_params
- ssl_dh_client_params
- ssl_rsa_client_pms
Since "ssl_ecdh_server_params" contains more information than the old
"ssl_server_curve" event, "ssl_server_curve" is now marked as deprecated.
- The "ssl_application_data" event was retired and replaced with
"ssl_plaintext_data".
- Some SSL events were changed and now provide additional data. These events
are:
- ssl_client_hello
- ssl_server_hello
- ssl_encrypted_data
If you use these events, you can make your scripts work on old and new
versions of Bro by wrapping the event definition in an "@if", for example::
@if ( Version::at_least("2.6") || ( Version::number == 20500 && Version::info$commit >= 944 ) )
event ssl_client_hello(c: connection, version: count, record_version: count, possible_ts: time, client_random: string, session_id: string, ciphers: index_vec, comp_methods: index_vec)
@else
event ssl_client_hello(c: connection, version: count, possible_ts: time, client_random: string, session_id: string, ciphers: index_vec)
@endif
- Functions for retrieving files by their ID have been added:
- Files::file_exists
- Files::lookup_File
- New functions in the logging API:
- Log::get_filter_names
- Log::enable_stream
- HTTP now recognizes and skips upgraded/websocket connections. A new event,
"http_connection_upgrade", is raised in such cases.
- A new hook, HTTP::sqli_policy, may be used to whitelist requests that
could otherwise be counted as SQL injection attempts.
- Added a MOUNT3 protocol parser
- This is not enabled by default (no ports are registered and no
DPD signatures exist, so no connections will end up attaching the
new Mount analyzer). If it were to be activated by users, the
following events are available:
- mount_proc_null
- mount_proc_mnt
- mount_proc_umnt
- mount_proc_umnt_all
- mount_proc_not_implemented
- mount_reply_status
- Added new NFS events:
- nfs_proc_symlink
- nfs_proc_link
- nfs_proc_sattr
- The SMB scripts in ``policy/protocols/smb`` are now moved into
``base/protocols/smb`` and loaded/enabled by default. If you previously
loaded these scripts from their ``policy/`` location (in local.bro or
other custom scripts) you may now remove/change those although they
should still work since ``policy/protocols/smb`` is simply a placeholder
script that redirects to the new ``base/`` location.
- Added new SMB events:
- smb1_transaction_secondary_request
- smb1_transaction2_secondary_request
- smb1_transaction_response
- Bro can now decrypt Kerberos tickets, and retrieve the authentication from
them, given a suitable keytab file.
- Added support for bitwise operations on "count" values. '&', '|' and
'^' are binary "and", "or" and "xor" operators, and '~' is a unary
ones-complement operator.
- The '&' and '|' operators can apply to patterns, too. p1 & p2 yields
a pattern that represents matching p1 followed by p2, and p1 | p2 yields
a pattern representing matching p1 or p2. The p1 | p2 functionality was
semi-present in previous versions of Bro, but required constants as
its operands; now you can use any pattern-valued expressions.
- You can now specify that a pattern matches in a case-insensitive
fashion by adding 'i' to the end of its specification. So for example
/fOO/i == "Foo" yields T, as does /fOO/i in "xFoObar".
You can achieve the same functionality for a subpattern enclosed in
parentheses by adding "?i:" to the open parenthesis. So for example
/foo|(?i:bar)/ will match "BaR", but not "FoO".
For both ways of specifying case-insensitivity, characters enclosed in
double quotes remain case-sensitive. So for example /"foo"/i will not
match "Foo", but it will match "foo".
- "make install" now installs Bro's include headers (and more) into
"--prefix" so that compiling plugins no longer needs access to a
source/build tree. For OS distributions, this also facilitates
creating "bro-devel" packages providing all files necessary to build
plugins.
- Bro now supports PPPoE over QinQ.
- Bro now supports OpenSSL 1.1.
- The new connection/conn.log history character 'W' indicates that
the originator ('w' = responder) advertised a TCP zero window
(instructing the peer to not send any data until receiving a
non-zero window).
- The connection/conn.log history characters 'C' (checksum error seen),
'T' (retransmission seen), and 'W' (zero window advertised) are now
repeated in a logarithmic fashion upon seeing multiple instances
of the corresponding behavior. Thus a connection with 2 C's in its
history means that the originator sent >= 10 packets with checksum
errors; 3 C's means >= 100, etc.
- The above connection history behaviors occurring multiple times
(i.e., starting at 10 instances, than again for 100 instances,
etc.) generate corresponding events:
- tcp_multiple_checksum_errors
- udp_multiple_checksum_errors
- tcp_multiple_zero_windows
- tcp_multiple_retransmissions
Each has the same form, e.g.::
event tcp_multiple_retransmissions(c: connection, is_orig: bool,
threshold: count);
- Added support for set union, intersection, difference, and comparison
operations. The corresponding operators for the first three are
"s1 | s2", "s1 & s2", and "s1 - s2". Relationals are in terms
of subsets, so "s1 < s2" yields true if s1 is a proper subset of s2
and "s1 == s2" if the two sets have exactly the same elements.
"s1 <= s2" holds for subsets or equality, and similarly "s1 != s2",
"s1 > s2", and "s1 >= s2" have the expected meanings in terms
of non-equality, proper superset, and superset-or-equal.
- An expression of the form "v += e" will append the value of the expression
"e" to the end of the vector "v" (of course assuming type-compatibility).
"redef v += { a, b, c }" will similarly extend a vector previously declared
with &redef by appending the result of expressions "a", "b", and "c" to
the vector at initialization-time.
- A new "@deprecated" directive was added. It marks a script-file as
deprecated.
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- All communication is now handled through Broker, requiring changes
to existing scripts to port them over to the new API. The Broker
framework documentation comes with a porting guide.
- The DHCP analyzer and its script-layer interface have been rewritten.
- Supports more DHCP options than before.
- The DHCP log now represents DHCP sessions based on transaction ID
and works on Bro cluster deployments.
- Removed the ``policy/protocols/dhcp/known-devices-and-hostnames.bro``
script since it's generally less relevant now with the updated log.
- Removed the ``base/protocols/dhcp/utils.bro`` script and thus the
"reverse_ip" function.
- Replaced all DHCP events with the single "dhcp_message" event.
The list of removed events includes:
- dhcp_discover
- dhcp_offer
- dhcp_request
- dhcp_decline
- dhcp_ack
- dhcp_nak
- dhcp_release
- dhcp_inform
- A new script, ``policy/protocols/dhcp/deprecated_events.bro``, may be
loaded to aid those transitioning away from the list of "removed"
events above. The script provides definitions for the old events
and automatically generates them from a "dhcp_message" handler, thus
providing equivalent functionality to the previous Bro release.
Such usage emits deprecation warnings.
- Removed ``policy/misc/known-devices.bro`` script and thus
``known_devices.log`` will no longer be created.
- The "--with-binpac" configure option has changed to mean "path
to the binpac executable" instead of "path to binpac installation root".
- The MIME types used to identify X.509 certificates in SSL
connections changed from "application/pkix-cert" to
"application/x-x509-user-cert" for host certificates and
"application/x-x509-ca-cert" for CA certificates.
- The "ssl_server_curve" event is considered deprecated and will be removed
in the future. See the new "ssl_ecdh_server_params" event for a
replacement.
- The Socks analyzer no longer logs passwords by default. This
brings its behavior in line with the FTP/HTTP analyzers which also
do not log passwords by default.
To restore the previous behavior and log Socks passwords, use::
redef SOCKS::default_capture_password = T;
- The DNS base scripts no longer generate some noisy and annoying
weirds:
- dns_unmatched_msg
- dns_unmatched_msg_quantity
- dns_unmatched_reply
- The "tunnel_parents" field of ``conn.log`` is now marked ``&optional``, so,
in the default configuration of logs, this field will show "-"
instead of "(empty)" for connections that lack any tunneling.
- SMB event argument changes:
- "smb1_transaction_request" now has two additional arguments, "parameters"
and "data" strings
- "smb1_transaction2_request" now has an additional "args" record argument
- The "SMB::write_cmd_log" option has been removed and the corresponding
logic moving to ``policy/protocols/smb/log-cmds.bro`` which can simply
be loaded to produce the same effect of toggling the old flag on.
- SSL event argument changes:
- "ssl_server_signature" now has an additional argument
"signature_and_hashalgorithm".
- The "dnp3_header_block" event no longer has the "start" parameter.
- The "string_to_pattern()" and now-deprecated "merge_pattern()"
built-ins are no longer restricted to only be called at initialization time.
- GeoIP Legacy Database support has been replaced with GeoIP2 MaxMind DB
format support.
- This updates the "lookup_location" and "lookup_asn" BIFs to use
libmaxminddb. The motivation for this is that MaxMind is discontinuing
GeoLite Legacy databases: no updates after April 1, 2018, no downloads
after January 2, 2019. It's also noted that all GeoIP Legacy databases
may be discontinued as they are superseded by GeoIP2.
- "Weird" events are now generally suppressed/sampled by default according to
some tunable parameters:
- Weird::sampling_whitelist
- Weird::sampling_threshold
- Weird::sampling_rate
- Weird::sampling_duration
Those options can be changed if one needs the previous behavior of
a "net_weird", "flow_weird", or "conn_weird" event being raised for
every single event.
The original ``weird.log`` may not differ much with these changes,
except in the cases where a particular weird type exceeds the
sampling threshold.
Otherwise, there is a new ``weird_stats.log`` generated via
``policy/misc/weird-stats.bro`` which contains concise summaries
of weird counts per type per time period.
- Improved DCE-RPC analysis via tracking of context identifier mappings
- These DCE-RPC events now contain an additional context-id argument:
- dce_rpc_bind
- dce_rpc_request
- dce_rpc_response
- Added new events:
- dce_rpc_alter_context
- dce_rpc_alter_context_resp
- The default value of ``Pcap::snaplen`` changed from 8192 to 9216 bytes
to better accommodate jumbo frames.
- Improvements to ``ntlm.log`` to fix incorrect reporting of login
success/failure. Also, the "status" field was removed and
"server_nb_computer_name", "server_dns_computer_name", and
"server_tree_name" fields added.
- BroControl: The output of the broctl "top" command has changed slightly.
The "Proc" column has been removed from the output. This column previously
indicated whether each Bro process was the "parent" or "child", but this
is no longer relevant because each Bro node now runs as a single process.
- The ``DNP3::function_codes`` name for request 0x21 has been corrected from
"AUTHENTICATE_ERR" to "AUTHENTICATE_REQ_NR".
- The ``DNS::query_types`` names for resource records 41 and 100 have been
corrected from "EDNS" to "OPT" and "DINFO" to "UINFO", respectively.
Removed Functionality
---------------------
- We no longer maintain any Bro plugins as part of the Bro
distribution. Most of the plugins that used to be in aux/plugins have
been moved over to use the Bro Package Manager instead. See
https://packages.bro.org for a list of Bro packages currently
available.
- The "ocsp_request" event no longer has "requestorName" parameter.
- The node-specific ``site/local-*.bro`` scripts have been removed.
- BroControl: The "IPv6Comm" and "ZoneID" options are no longer
available (though Broker should be able to handle IPv6 automatically).
Deprecated Functionality
------------------------
- The old communication system is now deprecated and scheduled for
removal with the next Bro release. This includes the "communication"
framework, the ``&sychronized`` attributes, and the existing
communication-related BiFs. Use Broker instead.
- The infrastructure for serializing Bro values into a binary
representation is now deprecated and scheduled for removal with the
next Bro release. This includes the ``&persistent`` attribute, as well
as BIFs like "send_id()". Use Broker data stores and the new
configuration framework instead.
- Mixing of scalars and vectors, such as "v + e" yielding a vector
corresponding to the vector v with the scalar e added to each of
its elements, has been deprecated.
- The built-in function "merge_pattern()" has been deprecated. It will
be replaced by the '&' operator for patterns.
- The undocumented feature of using "&&" and "||" operators for patterns
has been deprecated.
- BroControl: The "update" command is deprecated and scheduled for
removal with the next Bro release. Bro's new configuration framework
is taking its place.
Bro 2.5.5
=========
Bro 2.5.5 primarily addresses security issues.
- Fix array bounds checking in BinPAC: for arrays that are fields within
a record, the bounds check was based on a pointer to the start of the
record rather than the start of the array field, potentially resulting
in a buffer over-read.
- Fix SMTP command string comparisons: the number of bytes compared was
based on the user-supplied string length and can lead to incorrect
matches. e.g. giving a command of "X" incorrectly matched
"X-ANONYMOUSTLS" (and an empty commands match anything).
The following changes address potential vectors for Denial of Service
reported by Christian Titze & Jan Grashöfer of Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology:
- "Weird" events are now generally suppressed/sampled by default according
to some tunable parameters:
- Weird::sampling_whitelist
- Weird::sampling_threshold
- Weird::sampling_rate
- Weird::sampling_duration
Those options can be changed if one needs the previous behavior of
a "net_weird", "flow_weird", or "conn_weird" event being raised for
every single event. Otherwise, there is a new weird_stats.log which
contains concise summaries of weird counts per type per time period
and the original weird.log may not differ much either, except in
the cases where a particular weird type exceeds the sampling threshold.
These changes help improve performance issues resulting from excessive
numbers of weird events.
- Improved handling of empty lines in several text protocol analyzers
that can cause performance issues when seen in long sequences.
- Add 'smtp_excessive_pending_cmds' weird which serves as a notification
for when the "pending command" queue has reached an upper limit and
been cleared to prevent one from attempting to slowly exhaust memory.
Bro 2.5.4
=========
Bro 2.5.4 primarily fixes security issues:
* Multiple fixes and improvements to BinPAC generated code related to
array parsing, with potential impact to all Bro's BinPAC-generated
analyzers in the form of buffer over-reads or other invalid memory
accesses depending on whether a particular analyzer incorrectly
assumed that the evaulated-array-length expression is actually the
number of elements that were parsed out from the input.
* The NCP analyzer (not enabled by default and also updated to actually
work with newer Bro APIs in the release) performed a memory allocation
based directly on a field in the input packet and using signed integer
storage. This could result in a signed integer overflow and memory
allocations of negative or very large size, leading to a crash or
memory exhaustion. The new NCP::max_frame_size tuning option now
limits the maximum amount of memory that can be allocated.
There's also the following bug fixes:
* A memory leak in the SMBv1 analyzer.
* The MySQL analyzer was generally not working as intended, for example,
it now is able to parse responses that contain multiple results/rows.
Bro 2.5.3
=========
Bro 2.5.3 fixes a security issue in Binpac generated code. In some cases
the code generated by binpac could lead to an integer overflow which can
lead to out of bound reads and allow a remote attacker to crash Bro; there
is also a possibility that this can be exploited in other ways.
Bro 2.5.2
=========
Bro 2.5.2 fixes a security issue in the ContentLine analyzer. In rare cases
a bug in the ContentLine analyzer can lead to an out of bound write of a single
byte. This allows a remote attacker to crash Bro; there also is a possibility
this can be exploited in other ways. CVE-2017-1000458 has been assigned to this
issue.
Bro 2.5.1
=========
New Functionality
-----------------
- Bro now includes bifs for rename, unlink, and rmdir.
- Bro now includes events for two extensions used by TLS 1.3:
ssl_extension_supported_versions and ssl_extension_psk_key_exchange_modes
- Bro now includes hooks that can be used to interact with log processing
on the C++ level.
- Bro now supports ERSPAN. Currently this ignores the ethernet header that is
carried over the tunnel; if a MAC is logged currently only the outer MAC
is returned.
- Added a new BroControl option CrashExpireInterval to enable
"broctl cron" to remove crash directories that are older than the
specified number of days (the default value is 0, which means crash
directories never expire).
- Added a new BroControl option MailReceivingPackets to control
whether or not "broctl cron" will mail a warning when it notices
that no packets were seen on an interface.
- There is a new broctl command-line option "--version" which outputs
the BroControl version.
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- The input framework's Ascii reader is now more resilient. If an input
is marked to reread a file when it changes and the file didn't exist
during a check Bro would stop watching the file in previous versions.
The same could happen with bad data in a line of a file. These
situations do not cause Bro to stop watching input files anymore. The
old behavior is available through settings in the Ascii reader.
- The RADIUS scripts have been reworked. Requests are now logged even if
there is no response. The new framed_addr field in the log indicates
if the radius server is hinting at an address for the client. The ttl
field indicates how quickly the server is replying to the network access
server.
- With the introduction of the Bro package manager, the Bro plugin repository
is considered deprecated. The af_packet, postgresql, and tcprs plugins have
already been removed and are available via bro-pkg.
Bro 2.5
=======
New Dependencies
----------------
- Bro now requires a compiler with C++11 support for building the
source code.
- Bro now requires Python instead of Perl to compile the source code.
- When enabling Broker (which is disabled by default), Bro now requires
version 0.14 of the C++ Actor Framework.
New Functionality
-----------------
- SMB analyzer. This is the rewrite that has been in development for
several years. The scripts are currently not loaded by default and
must be loaded manually by loading policy/protocols/smb. The next
release will load the smb scripts by default.
- Implements SMB1+2.
- Fully integrated with the file analysis framework so that files
transferred over SMB can be analyzed.
- Includes GSSAPI and NTLM analyzer and reimplements the DCE-RPC
analyzer.
- New logs: smb_cmd.log, smb_files.log, smb_mapping.log, ntlm.log,
and dce_rpc.log
- Not every possible SMB command or functionality is implemented, but
generally, file handling should work whenever files are transferred.
Please speak up on the mailing list if there is an obvious oversight.
- Bro now includes the NetControl framework. The framework allows for easy
interaction of Bro with hard- and software switches, firewalls, etc.
New log files: netcontrol.log, netcontrol_catch_release.log,
netcontrol_drop.log, and netcontrol_shunt.log.
- Bro now includes the OpenFlow framework which exposes the data structures
necessary to interface to OpenFlow capable hardware.
- Bro's Intelligence Framework was refactored and new functionality
has been added:
- The framework now supports the new indicator type Intel::SUBNET.
As subnets are matched against seen addresses, the new field 'matched'
in intel.log was introduced to indicate which indicator type(s) caused
the hit.
- The new function remove() allows to delete intelligence items.
- The intel framework now supports expiration of intelligence items.
Expiration can be configured using the new Intel::item_expiration constant
and can be handled by using the item_expired() hook. The new script
do_expire.bro removes expired items.
- The new hook extend_match() allows extending the framework. The new
policy script whitelist.bro uses the hook to implement whitelisting.
- Intel notices are now suppressible and mails for intel notices now
list the identified services as well as the intel source.
- There is a new file entropy analyzer for files.
- Bro now supports the remote framebuffer protocol (RFB) that is used by
VNC servers for remote graphical displays. New log file: rfb.log.
- Bro now supports the Radiotap header for 802.11 frames.
- Bro now has rudimentary IMAP and XMPP analyzers examining the initial
phases of the protocol. Right now these analyzers only identify
STARTTLS sessions, handing them over to TLS analysis. These analyzers
do not yet analyze any further IMAP/XMPP content.
- New funtionality has been added to the SSL/TLS analyzer:
- Bro now supports (draft) TLS 1.3.
- The new event ssl_extension_signature_algorithm() allows access to the
TLS signature_algorithms extension that lists client supported signature
and hash algorithm pairs.
- The new event ssl_extension_key_share gives access to the supported named
groups in TLS 1.3.
- The new event ssl_application_data gives information about application data
that is exchanged before encryption fully starts. This is used to detect
when encryption starts in TLS 1.3.
- Bro now tracks VLAN IDs. To record them inside the connection log,
load protocols/conn/vlan-logging.bro.
- A new dns_CAA_reply() event gives access to DNS Certification Authority
Authorization replies.
- A new per-packet event raw_packet() provides access to layer 2
information. Use with care, generating events per packet is
expensive.
- A new built-in function, decode_base64_conn() for Base64 decoding.
It works like decode_base64() but receives an additional connection
argument that will be used for decoding errors into weird.log
(instead of reporter.log).
- A new get_current_packet_header() bif returns the headers of the current
packet.
- Three new built-in functions for handling set[subnet] and table[subnet]:
- check_subnet(subnet, table) checks if a specific subnet is a member
of a set/table. This is different from the "in" operator, which always
performs a longest prefix match.
- matching_subnets(subnet, table) returns all subnets of the set or table
that contain the given subnet.
- filter_subnet_table(subnet, table) works like matching_subnets, but returns
a table containing all matching entries.
- Several built-in functions for handling IP addresses and subnets were added:
- is_v4_subnet(subnet) checks whether a subnet specification is IPv4.
- is_v6_subnet(subnet) checks whether a subnet specification is IPv6.
- addr_to_subnet(addr) converts an IP address to a /32 subnet.
- subnet_to_addr(subnet) returns the IP address part of a subnet.
- subnet_width(subnet) returns the width of a subnet.
- The IRC analyzer now recognizes StartTLS sessions and enables the SSL
analyzer for them.
- The misc/stats.bro script is now loaded by default and logs more Bro
execution statistics to the stats.log file than it did previously. It
now also uses the standard Bro log format.
- A set of new built-in functions for gathering execution statistics:
get_net_stats(), get_conn_stats(), get_proc_stats(),
get_event_stats(), get_reassembler_stats(), get_dns_stats(),
get_timer_stats(), get_file_analysis_stats(), get_thread_stats(),
get_gap_stats(), get_matcher_stats()
- Two new functions haversine_distance() and haversine_distance_ip()
for calculating geographic distances. The latter function requires that Bro
be built with libgeoip.
- Table expiration timeout expressions are evaluated dynamically as
timestamps are updated.
- The pcap buffer size can be set through the new option Pcap::bufsize.
- Input framework readers stream types Table and Event can now define a custom
event (specified by the new "error_ev" field) to receive error messages
emitted by the input stream. This can, e.g., be used to raise notices in
case errors occur when reading an important input source.
- The logging framework now supports user-defined record separators,
renaming of column names, as well as extension data columns that can
be added to specific or all logfiles (e.g., to add new names).
- The new "bro-config" script can be used to determine the Bro installation
paths.
- New BroControl functionality in aux/broctl:
- There is a new node type "logger" that can be specified in
node.cfg (that file has a commented-out example). The purpose of
this new node type is to receive logs from all nodes in a cluster
in order to reduce the load on the manager node. However, if
there is no "logger" node, then the manager node will handle
logging as usual.
- The post-terminate script will send email if it fails to archive
any log files. These mails can be turned off by changing the
value of the new BroControl option MailArchiveLogFail.
- Added the ability for "broctl deploy" to reload the BroControl
configuration (both broctl.cfg and node.cfg). This happens
automatically if broctl detects any changes to those config files
since the last time the config was loaded. Note that this feature
is relevant only when using the BroControl shell interactively.
- The BroControl plugin API has a new function "broctl_config".
This gives plugin authors the ability to add their own script code
to the autogenerated broctl-config.bro script.
- There is a new BroControl plugin for custom load balancing. This
plugin can be used by setting "lb_method=custom" for your worker
nodes in node.cfg. To support packet source plugins, it allows
configuration of a prefix and suffix for the interface name.
- New Bro plugins in aux/plugins:
- af_packet: Native AF_PACKET support.
- kafka : Log writer interfacing to Kafka.
- myricom: Native Myricom SNF v3 support.
- pf_ring: Native PF_RING support.
- postgresql: A PostgreSQL reader/writer.
- redis: An experimental log writer for Redis.
- tcprs: A TCP-level analyzer detecting retransmissions, reordering, and more.
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- Log changes:
- Connections
The 'history' field gains two new flags: '^' indicates that
Bro heuristically flipped the direction of the connection.
't/T' indicates the first TCP payload retransmission from
originator or responder, respectively.
- Intelligence
New field 'matched' to indicate which indicator type(s) caused the hit.
- DNS
New 'rtt' field to indicate the round trip time between when a
request was sent and when a reply started.
- SMTP
New 'cc' field which includes the 'Cc' header from MIME
messages sent over SMTP.
Changes in 'mailfrom' and 'rcptto' fields to remove some
non-address cruft that will tend to be found. The main
example is the change from ``"<user@domain>"`` to
``"user@domain.com"``.
- HTTP
Removed 'filename' field (which was seldomly used).
New 'orig_filenames' and 'resp_filenames' fields which each
contain a vector of filenames seen in entities transferred.
- stats.log
The following fields have been added: active_tcp_conns,
active_udp_conns, active_icmp_conns, tcp_conns, udp_conns,
icmp_conns, timers, active_timers, files, active_files, dns_requests,
active_dns_requests, reassem_tcp_size, reassem_file_size,
reassem_frag_size, reassem_unknown_size.
The following fields have been renamed: lag -> pkt_lag.
The following fields have been removed: pkts_recv.
- The BrokerComm and BrokerStore namespaces were renamed to Broker.
The Broker "print()" function was renamed to Broker::send_print(), and
the "event()" function was renamed to Broker::send_event().
- The constant ``SSH::skip_processing_after_detection`` was removed. The
functionality was replaced by the new constant
``SSH::disable_analyzer_after_detection``.
- The ``net_stats()`` and ``resource_usage()`` functions have been
removed, and their functionality is now provided by the new execution
statistics functions (see above).
- Some script-level identifiers have changed their names:
- snaplen -> Pcap::snaplen
- precompile_pcap_filter() -> Pcap::precompile_pcap_filter()
- install_pcap_filter() -> Pcap::install_pcap_filter()
- pcap_error() -> Pcap::error()
- TCP analysis was changed to process connections without the initial
SYN packet. In the past, connections without a full handshake were
treated as partial, meaning that most application-layer analyzers
would refuse to inspect the payload. Now, Bro will consider these
connections as complete and all analyzers will process them normally.
- The ``policy/misc/capture-loss.bro`` script is now loaded by default.
- The traceroute detection script package ``policy/misc/detect-traceroute``
is no longer loaded by default.
- Changed BroControl functionality in aux/broctl:
- The networks.cfg file now contains private IP space 172.16.0.0/12
by default.
- Upon startup, if broctl can't get IP addresses from the "ifconfig"
command for any reason, then broctl will now also try to use the
"ip" command.
- BroControl will now automatically search the Bro plugin directory
for BroControl plugins (in addition to all the other places where
BroControl searches). This enables automatic loading of
BroControl plugins that are provided by a Bro plugin.
- Changed the default value of the StatusCmdShowAll option so that
the "broctl status" command runs faster. This also means that
there is no longer a "Peers" column in the status output by
default.
- Users can now specify a more granular log expiration interval. The
BroControl option LogExpireInterval can be set to an arbitrary
time interval instead of just an integer number of days. The time
interval is specified as an integer followed by a time unit:
"day", "hr", or "min". For backward compatibility, an integer
value without a time unit is still interpreted as a number of
days.
- Changed the text of crash report emails. Now crash reports tell
the user to forward the mail to the Bro team only when a backtrace
is included in the crash report. If there is no backtrace, then
the crash report includes instructions on how to get backtraces
included in future crash reports.
- There is a new option SitePolicyScripts that replaces SitePolicyStandalone
(the old option is still available, but will be removed in the next
release).
Removed Functionality
---------------------
- The app-stats scripts have been removed because they weren't
being maintained and they were becoming inaccurate (as a result, the
app_stats.log is also gone). They were also prone to needing more regular
updates as the internet changed and will likely be more relevant if
maintained externally.
- The event ack_above_hole() has been removed, as it was a subset
of content_gap() and led to plenty of noise.
- The command line options ``--analyze``, ``--set-seed``, and
``--md5-hashkey`` have been removed.
- The packaging scripts pkg/make-\*-packages are gone. They aren't
used anymore for the binary Bro packages that the project
distributes; haven't been supported in a while; and have
problems.
Deprecated Functionality
------------------------
- The built-in functions decode_base64_custom() and
encode_base64_custom() are no longer needed and will be removed
in the future. Their functionality is now provided directly by
decode_base64() and encode_base64(), which take an optional
parameter to change the Base64 alphabet.
Bro 2.4
=======
New Functionality
-----------------
- Bro now has support for external plugins that can extend its core
functionality, like protocol/file analysis, via shared libraries.
Plugins can be developed and distributed externally, and will be
pulled in dynamically at startup (the environment variables
BRO_PLUGIN_PATH and BRO_PLUGIN_ACTIVATE can be used to specify the
locations and names of plugins to activate). Currently, a plugin
can provide custom protocol analyzers, file analyzers, log writers,
input readers, packet sources and dumpers, and new built-in functions.
A plugin can furthermore hook into Bro's processing at a number of
places to add custom logic.
See https://www.bro.org/sphinx-git/devel/plugins.html for more
information on writing plugins.
- Bro now has support for the MySQL wire protocol. Activity gets
logged into mysql.log.
- Bro now parses DTLS traffic. Activity gets logged into ssl.log.
- Bro now has support for the Kerberos KRB5 protocol over TCP and
UDP. Activity gets logged into kerberos.log.
- Bro now has an RDP analyzer. Activity gets logged into rdp.log.
- Bro now has a file analyzer for Portable Executables. Activity gets
logged into pe.log.
- Bro now has support for the SIP protocol over UDP. Activity gets
logged into sip.log.
- Bro now features a completely rewritten, enhanced SSH analyzer. The
new analyzer is able to determine if logins failed or succeeded in
most circumstances, logs a lot more more information about SSH
sessions, supports v1, and introduces the intelligence type
``Intel::PUBKEY_HASH`` and location ``SSH::IN_SERVER_HOST_KEY``. The
analayzer also generates a set of additional events
(``ssh_auth_successful``, ``ssh_auth_failed``, ``ssh_auth_attempted``,
``ssh_auth_result``, ``ssh_capabilities``, ``ssh2_server_host_key``,
``ssh1_server_host_key``, ``ssh_encrypted_packet``,
``ssh2_dh_server_params``, ``ssh2_gss_error``, ``ssh2_ecc_key``). See
next section for incompatible SSH changes.
- Bro's file analysis now supports reassembly of files that are not
transferred/seen sequentially. The default file reassembly buffer
size is set with the ``Files::reassembly_buffer_size`` variable.
- Bro's file type identification has been greatly improved (new file types,
bug fixes, and performance improvements).
- Bro's scripting language now has a ``while`` statement::
while ( i < 5 )
print ++i;
``next`` and ``break`` can be used inside the loop's body just like
with ``for`` loops.
- Bro now integrates Broker, a new communication library. See
aux/broker/README for more information on Broker, and
doc/frameworks/broker.rst for the corresponding Bro script API.
With Broker, Bro has the similar capabilities of exchanging events and
logs with remote peers (either another Bro process or some other
application that uses Broker). It also includes a key-value store
API that can be used to share state between peers and optionally
allow data to persist on disk for longer-term storage.
Broker support is by default off for now; it can be enabled at
configure time with --enable-broker. It requires CAF version 0.13+
(https://github.com/actor-framework/actor-framework) as well as a
C++11 compiler (e.g. GCC 4.8+ or Clang 3.3+).
Broker will become a mandatory dependency in future Bro versions and
replace the current communication and serialization system.
- Add --enable-c++11 configure flag to compile Bro's source code in
C++11 mode with a corresponding compiler. Note that 2.4 will be the
last version of Bro that compiles without C++11 support.
- The SSL analysis now alerts when encountering SSL connections with
old protocol versions or unsafe cipher suites. It also gained
extended reporting of weak keys, caching of already validated
certificates, and full support for TLS record defragmentation. SSL generally
became much more robust and added several fields to ssl.log (while
removing some others).
- A new icmp_sent_payload event provides access to ICMP payload.
- The input framework's raw reader now supports seeking by adding an
option "offset" to the config map. Positive offsets are interpreted
to be from the beginning of the file, negative from the end of the
file (-1 is end of file).
- One can now raise events when a connection crosses a given size
threshold in terms of packets or bytes. The primary API for that
functionality is in base/protocols/conn/thresholds.bro.
- There is a new command-line option -Q/--time that prints Bro's execution
time and memory usage to stderr.
- BroControl now has a new command "deploy" which is equivalent to running
the "check", "install", "stop", and "start" commands (in that order).
- BroControl now has a new option "StatusCmdShowAll" that controls whether
or not the broctl "status" command gathers all of the status information.
This option can be used to make the "status" command run significantly
faster (in this case, the "Peers" column will not be shown in the output).
- BroControl now has a new option "StatsLogEnable" that controls whether
or not broctl will record information to the "stats.log" file. This option
can be used to make the "broctl cron" command run slightly faster (in this
case, "broctl cron" will also no longer send email about not seeing any
packets on the monitoring interfaces).
- BroControl now has a new option "MailHostUpDown" which controls whether or
not the "broctl cron" command will send email when it notices that a host
in the cluster is up or down.
- BroControl now has a new option "CommandTimeout" which specifies the number
of seconds to wait for a command that broctl ran to return results.
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- bro-cut has been rewritten in C, and is hence much faster.
- File analysis
* Removed ``fa_file`` record's ``mime_type`` and ``mime_types``
fields. The event ``file_sniff`` has been added which provides
the same information. The ``mime_type`` field of ``Files::Info``
also still has this info.
* The earliest point that new mime type information is available is
in the ``file_sniff`` event which comes after the ``file_new`` and
``file_over_new_connection`` events. Scripts which inspected mime
type info within those events will need to be adapted. (Note: for
users that worked w/ versions of Bro from git, for a while there was
also an event called ``file_mime_type`` which is now replaced with
the ``file_sniff`` event).
* Removed ``Files::add_analyzers_for_mime_type`` function.
* Removed ``offset`` parameter of the ``file_extraction_limit``
event. Since file extraction now internally depends on file
reassembly for non-sequential files, "offset" can be obtained
with other information already available -- adding together
``seen_bytes`` and ``missed_bytes`` fields of the ``fa_file``
record gives how many bytes have been written so far (i.e.
the "offset").
- The SSH changes come with a few incompatibilities. The following
events have been renamed:
* ``SSH::heuristic_failed_login`` to ``ssh_auth_failed``
* ``SSH::heuristic_successful_login`` to ``ssh_auth_successful``
The ``SSH::Info`` status field has been removed and replaced with
the ``auth_success`` field. This field has been changed from a
string that was previously ``success``, ``failure`` or
``undetermined`` to a boolean. a boolean that is ``T``, ``F``, or
unset.
- The has_valid_octets function now uses a string_vec parameter instead of
string_array.
- conn.log gained a new field local_resp that works like local_orig,
just for the responder address of the connection.
- GRE tunnels are now identified as ``Tunnel::GRE`` instead of
``Tunnel::IP``.
- The default name for extracted files changed from extract-protocol-id
to extract-timestamp-protocol-id.
- The weird named "unmatched_HTTP_reply" has been removed since it can
be detected at the script-layer and is handled correctly by the
default HTTP scripts.
- When adding a logging filter to a stream, the filter can now inherit
a default ``path`` field from the associated ``Log::Stream`` record.
- When adding a logging filter to a stream, the
``Log::default_path_func`` is now only automatically added to the
filter if it has neither a ``path`` nor a ``path_func`` already
explicitly set. Before, the default path function would always be set
for all filters which didn't specify their own ``path_func``.
- BroControl now establishes only one ssh connection from the manager to
each remote host in a cluster configuration (previously, there would be
one ssh connection per remote Bro process).
- BroControl now uses SQLite to record state information instead of a
plain text file (the file "spool/broctl.dat" is no longer used).
On FreeBSD, this means that there is a new dependency on the package
"py27-sqlite3".
- BroControl now records the expected running state of each Bro node right
before each start or stop. The "broctl cron" command uses this info to
either start or stop Bro nodes as needed so that the actual state matches
the expected state (previously, "broctl cron" could only start nodes in
the "crashed" state, and could never stop a node).
- BroControl now sends all normal command output (i.e., not error messages)
to stdout. Error messages are still sent to stderr, however.
- The capability of processing NetFlow input has been removed for the
time being. Therefore, the -y/--flowfile and -Y/--netflow command-line
options have been removed, and the netflow_v5_header and netflow_v5_record
events have been removed.
- The -D/--dfa-size command-line option has been removed.
- The -L/--rule-benchmark command-line option has been removed.
- The -O/--optimize command-line option has been removed.
- The deprecated fields "hot" and "addl" have been removed from the
connection record. Likewise, the functions append_addl() and
append_addl_marker() have been removed.
- Log files now escape non-printable characters consistently as "\xXX'.
Furthermore, backslashes are escaped as "\\", making the
representation fully reversible.
Deprecated Functionality
------------------------
- The split* family of functions are to be replaced with alternate
versions that return a vector of strings rather than a table of
strings. This also allows deprecation for some related string
concatenation/extraction functions. Note that the new functions use
0-based indexing, rather than 1-based.
The full list of now deprecated functions is:
* split: use split_string instead.
* split1: use split_string1 instead.
* split_all: use split_string_all instead.
* split_n: use split_string_n instead.
* cat_string_array: see join_string_vec instead.
* cat_string_array_n: see join_string_vec instead.
* join_string_array: see join_string_vec instead.
* sort_string_array: use sort instead.
* find_ip_addresses: use extract_ip_addresses instead.
Bro 2.3
=======
Dependencies
------------
- Libmagic is no longer a dependency.
New Functionality
-----------------
- Support for GRE tunnel decapsulation, including enhanced GRE
headers. GRE tunnels are treated just like IP-in-IP tunnels by
parsing past the GRE header in between the delivery and payload IP
packets.
- The DNS analyzer now actually generates the dns_SRV_reply() event.
It had been documented before, yet was never raised.
- Bro now uses "file magic signatures" to identify file types. These
are defined via two new constructs in the signature rule parsing
grammar: "file-magic" gives a regular expression to match against,
and "file-mime" gives the MIME type string of content that matches
the magic and an optional strength value for the match. (See also
"Changed Functionality" below for changes due to switching from
using libmagic to such signatures.)
- A new built-in function, "file_magic", can be used to get all file
magic matches and their corresponding strength against a given chunk
of data.
- The SSL analyzer now supports heartbeats as well as a few
extensions, including server_name, alpn, and ec-curves.
- The SSL analyzer comes with Heartbleed detector script in
protocols/ssl/heartbleed.bro. Note that loading this script changes
the default value of "SSL::disable_analyzer_after_detection" from true
to false to prevent encrypted heartbeats from being ignored.
- StartTLS is now supported for SMTP and POP3.
- The X509 analyzer can now perform OSCP validation.
- Bro now has analyzers for SNMP and Radius, which produce corresponding
snmp.log and radius.log output (as well as various events of course).
- BroControl has a new option "BroPort" which allows a user to specify
the starting port number for Bro.
- BroControl has a new option "StatsLogExpireInterval" which allows a
user to specify when entries in the stats.log file expire.
- BroControl has a new option "PFRINGClusterType" which allows a user
to specify a PF_RING cluster type.
- BroControl now supports PF_RING+DNA. There is also a new option
"PFRINGFirstAppInstance" that allows a user to specify the starting
application instance number for processes running on a DNA cluster.
See the BroControl documentation for more details.
- BroControl now warns a user to run "broctl install" if Bro has
been upgraded or if the broctl or node configuration has changed
since the most recent install.
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- string slices now exclude the end index (e.g., "123"[1:2] returns
"2"). Generally, Bro's string slices now behave similar to Python.
- ssl_client_hello() now receives a vector of ciphers, instead of a
set, to preserve their order.
- Notice::end_suppression() has been removed.
- Bro now parses X.509 extensions headers and, as a result, the
corresponding event got a new signature:
event x509_extension(c: connection, is_orig: bool, cert: X509, ext: X509_extension_info);
- In addition, there are several new, more specialized events for a
number of x509 extensions.
- Generally, all x509 events and handling functions have changed their
signatures.
- X509 certificate verification now returns the complete certificate
chain that was used for verification.
- Bro no longer special-cases SYN/FIN/RST-filtered traces by not
reporting missing data. Instead, if Bro never sees any data segments
for analyzed TCP connections, the new
base/misc/find-filtered-trace.bro script will log a warning in
reporter.log and to stderr. The old behavior can be reverted by
redef'ing "detect_filtered_trace".
- We have removed the packet sorter component.
- Bro no longer uses libmagic to identify file types but instead now
comes with its own signature library (which initially is still
derived from libmagic's database). This leads to a number of further
changes with regards to MIME types:
* The second parameter of the "identify_data" built-in function
can no longer be used to get verbose file type descriptions,
though it can still be used to get the strongest matching file
magic signature.
* The "file_transferred" event's "descr" parameter no longer
contains verbose file type descriptions.
* The BROMAGIC environment variable no longer changes any behavior
in Bro as magic databases are no longer used/installed.
* Removed "binary" and "octet-stream" mime type detections. They
don't provide any more information than an uninitialized
mime_type field.
* The "fa_file" record now contains a "mime_types" field that
contains all magic signatures that matched the file content
(where the "mime_type" field is just a shortcut for the
strongest match).
- dns_TXT_reply() now supports more than one string entry by receiving
a vector of strings.
- BroControl now runs the "exec" and "df" broctl commands only once
per host, instead of once per Bro node. The output of these
commands has been changed slightly to include both the host and
node names.
- Several performance improvements were made. Particular emphasis
was put on the File Analysis system, which generally will now emit
far fewer file handle request events due to protocol analyzers now
caching that information internally.
Bro 2.2
=======
New Functionality
-----------------
- A completely overhauled intelligence framework for consuming
external intelligence data. It provides an abstracted mechanism
for feeding data into the framework to be matched against the
data available. It also provides a function named ``Intel::match``
which makes any hits on intelligence data available to the
scripting language.
Using input framework, the intel framework can load data from
text files. It can also update and add data if changes are
made to the file being monitored. Files to monitor for
intelligence can be provided by redef-ing the
``Intel::read_files`` variable.
The intel framework is cluster-ready. On a cluster, the
manager is the only node that needs to load in data from disk,
the cluster support will distribute the data across a cluster
automatically.
Scripts are provided at ``policy/frameworks/intel/seen`` that
provide a broad set of sources of data to feed into the intel
framwork to be matched.
- A new file analysis framework moves most of the processing of file
content from script-land into the core, where it belongs. See
``doc/file-analysis.rst``, or the online documentation, for more
information.
Much of this is an internal change, but the framework also comes
with the following user-visible functionality (some of that was
already available before but is done differently, and more
efficiently, now):
- HTTP:
* Identify MIME type of messages.
* Extract messages to disk.
* Compute MD5 for messages.
- SMTP:
* Identify MIME type of messages.
* Extract messages to disk.
* Compute MD5 for messages.
* Provide access to start of entity data.
- FTP data transfers:
* Identify MIME types of data.
* Record to disk.
- IRC DCC transfers: Record to disk.
- Support for analyzing data transferred via HTTP range requests.
- A binary input reader interfaces the input framework with the
file analysis, allowing to inject files on disk into Bro's
content processing.
- A new framework for computing a wide array of summary statistics,
such as counters and thresholds checks, standard deviation and mean,
set cardinality, top K, and more. The framework operates in
real-time, independent of the underlying data, and can aggregate
information from many independent monitoring points (including
clusters). It provides a transparent, easy-to-use user interface,
and can optionally deploy a set of probabilistic data structures for
memory-efficient operation. The framework is located in
``scripts/base/frameworks/sumstats``.
A number of new applications now ship with Bro that are built on top
of the summary statistics framework:
* Scan detection: Detectors for port and address scans. See
``policy/misc/scan.bro`` (these scan detectors used to exist in
Bro versions <2.0; it's now back, but quite different).
* Tracerouter detector: ``policy/misc/detect-traceroute.bro``
* Web application detection/measurement:
``policy/misc/app-stats/*``
* FTP and SSH brute-forcing detector:
``policy/protocols/ftp/detect-bruteforcing.bro``,
``policy/protocols/ssh/detect-bruteforcing.bro``
* HTTP-based SQL injection detector:
``policy/protocols/http/detect-sqli.bro`` (existed before, but
now ported to the new framework)
- GridFTP support. This is an extension to the standard FTP analyzer
and includes:
- An analyzer for the GSI mechanism of GSSAPI FTP AUTH method.
GSI authentication involves an encoded TLS/SSL handshake over
the FTP control session. For FTP sessions that attempt GSI
authentication, the ``service`` field of the connection log
will include ``gridftp`` (as well as also ``ftp`` and
``ssl``).
- An example of a GridFTP data channel detection script. It
relies on the heuristics of GridFTP data channels commonly
default to SSL mutual authentication with a NULL bulk cipher
and that they usually transfer large datasets (default
threshold of script is 1 GB). For identified GridFTP data
channels, the ``services`` fields of the connection log will
include ``gridftp-data``.
- Modbus and DNP3 support. Script-level support is only basic at this
point but see ``src/analyzer/protocol/{modbus,dnp3}/events.bif``, or
the online documentation, for the events Bro generates. For Modbus,
there are also some example policies in
``policy/protocols/modbus/*``.
- The documentation now includes a new introduction to writing Bro
scripts. See ``doc/scripting/index.rst`` or, much better, the online
version. There's also the beginning of a chapter on "Using Bro" in
``doc/using/index.rst``.
- GPRS Tunnelling Protocol (GTPv1) decapsulation.
- The scripting language now provide "hooks", a new flavor of
functions that share characteristics of both standard functions and
events. They are like events in that multiple bodies can be defined
for the same hook identifier. They are more like functions in the
way they are invoked/called, because, unlike events, their execution
is immediate and they do not get scheduled through an event queue.
Also, a unique feature of a hook is that a given hook handler body
can short-circuit the execution of remaining hook handlers simply by
exiting from the body as a result of a ``break`` statement (as
opposed to a ``return`` or just reaching the end of the body). See
``doc/scripts/builtins.rst``, or the online documentation, for more
informatin.
- Bro's language now has a working ``switch`` statement that generally
behaves like C-style switches (except that case labels can be
comprised of multiple literal constants delimited by commas). Only
atomic types are allowed for now. Case label bodies that don't
execute a ``return`` or ``break`` statement will fall through to
subsequent cases. A ``default`` case label is supported.
- Bro's language now has a new set of types ``opaque of X``. Opaque
values can be passed around like other values but they can only be
manipulated with BiF functions, not with other operators. Currently,
the following opaque types are supported::
opaque of md5
opaque of sha1
opaque of sha256
opaque of cardinality
opaque of topk
opaque of bloomfilter
These go along with the corrsponding BiF functions ``md5_*``,
``sha1_*``, ``sha256_*``, ``entropy_*``, etc. . Note that where
these functions existed before, they have changed their signatures
to work with opaques types rather than global state.
- The scripting language now supports constructing sets, tables,
vectors, and records by name::
type MyRecordType: record {
c: count;
s: string &optional;
};
global r: MyRecordType = record($c = 7);
type MySet: set[MyRec];
global s = MySet([$c=1], [$c=2]);
- Strings now support the subscript operator to extract individual
characters and substrings (e.g., ``s[4]``, ``s[1:5]``). The index
expression can take up to two indices for the start and end index of
the substring to return (e.g. ``mystring[1:3]``).
- Functions now support default parameters, e.g.::
global foo: function(s: string, t: string &default="abc", u: count &default=0);
- Scripts can now use two new "magic constants" ``@DIR`` and
``@FILENAME`` that expand to the directory path of the current
script and just the script file name without path, respectively.
- ``ssl.log`` now also records the subject client and issuer
certificates.
- The ASCII writer can now output CSV files on a per filter basis.
- New SQLite reader and writer plugins for the logging framework allow
to read/write persistent data from on disk SQLite databases.
- A new packet filter framework supports BPF-based load-balancing,
shunting, and sampling; plus plugin support to customize filters
dynamically.
- Bro now provides Bloom filters of two kinds: basic Bloom filters
supporting membership tests, and counting Bloom filters that track
the frequency of elements. The corresponding functions are::
bloomfilter_basic_init(fp: double, capacity: count, name: string &default=""): opaque of bloomfilter
bloomfilter_basic_init2(k: count, cells: count, name: string &default=""): opaque of bloomfilter
bloomfilter_counting_init(k: count, cells: count, max: count, name: string &default=""): opaque of bloomfilter
bloomfilter_add(bf: opaque of bloomfilter, x: any)
bloomfilter_lookup(bf: opaque of bloomfilter, x: any): count
bloomfilter_merge(bf1: opaque of bloomfilter, bf2: opaque of bloomfilter): opaque of bloomfilter
bloomfilter_clear(bf: opaque of bloomfilter)
See ``src/probabilistic/bloom-filter.bif``, or the online
documentation, for full documentation.
- Bro now provides a probabilistic data structure for computing
"top k" elements. The corresponding functions are::
topk_init(size: count): opaque of topk
topk_add(handle: opaque of topk, value: any)
topk_get_top(handle: opaque of topk, k: count)
topk_count(handle: opaque of topk, value: any): count
topk_epsilon(handle: opaque of topk, value: any): count
topk_size(handle: opaque of topk): count
topk_sum(handle: opaque of topk): count
topk_merge(handle1: opaque of topk, handle2: opaque of topk)
topk_merge_prune(handle1: opaque of topk, handle2: opaque of topk)
See ``src/probabilistic/top-k.bif``, or the online documentation,
for full documentation.
- Bro now provides a probabilistic data structure for computing set
cardinality, using the HyperLogLog algorithm. The corresponding
functions are::
hll_cardinality_init(err: double, confidence: double): opaque of cardinality
hll_cardinality_add(handle: opaque of cardinality, elem: any): bool
hll_cardinality_merge_into(handle1: opaque of cardinality, handle2: opaque of cardinality): bool
hll_cardinality_estimate(handle: opaque of cardinality): double
hll_cardinality_copy(handle: opaque of cardinality): opaque of cardinality
See ``src/probabilistic/cardinality-counter.bif``, or the online
documentation, for full documentation.
- ``base/utils/exec.bro`` provides a module to start external
processes asynchronously and retrieve their output on termination.
``base/utils/dir.bro`` uses it to monitor a directory for changes,
and ``base/utils/active-http.bro`` for providing an interface for
querying remote web servers.
- BroControl can now pin Bro processes to CPUs on supported platforms:
To use CPU pinning, a new per-node option ``pin_cpus`` can be
specified in node.cfg if the OS is either Linux or FreeBSD.
- BroControl now returns useful exit codes. Most BroControl commands
return 0 if everything was OK, and 1 otherwise. However, there are
a few exceptions. The "status" and "top" commands return 0 if all Bro
nodes are running, and 1 if not all nodes are running. The "cron"
command always returns 0 (but it still sends email if there were any
problems). Any command provided by a plugin always returns 0.
- BroControl now has an option "env_vars" to set Bro environment variables.
The value of this option is a comma-separated list of environment variable
assignments (e.g., "VAR1=value, VAR2=another"). The "env_vars" option
can apply to all Bro nodes (by setting it in broctl.cfg), or can be
node-specific (by setting it in node.cfg). Environment variables in
node.cfg have priority over any specified in broctl.cfg.
- BroControl now supports load balancing with PF_RING while sniffing
multiple interfaces. Rather than assigning the same PF_RING cluster ID
to all workers on a host, cluster ID assignment is now based on which
interface a worker is sniffing (i.e., all workers on a host that sniff
the same interface will share a cluster ID). This is handled by
BroControl automatically.
- BroControl has several new options: MailConnectionSummary (for
disabling the sending of connection summary report emails),
MailAlarmsInterval (for specifying a different interval to send alarm
summary emails), CompressCmd (if archived log files will be compressed,
this specifies the command that will be used to compress them),
CompressExtension (if archived log files will be compressed, this
specifies the file extension to use).
- BroControl comes with its own test-suite now. ``make test`` in
``aux/broctl`` will run it.
In addition to these, Bro 2.2 comes with a large set of smaller
extensions, tweaks, and fixes across the whole code base, including
most submodules.
Changed Functionality
---------------------
- Previous versions of ``$prefix/share/bro/site/local.bro`` (where
"$prefix" indicates the installation prefix of Bro), aren't compatible
with Bro 2.2. This file won't be overwritten when installing over a
previous Bro installation to prevent clobbering users' modifications,
but an example of the new version is located in
``$prefix/share/bro/site/local.bro.example``. So if no modification
has been done to the previous local.bro, just copy the new example
version over it, else merge in the differences. For reference,
a common error message when attempting to use an outdated local.bro
looks like::
fatal error in /usr/local/bro/share/bro/policy/frameworks/software/vulnerable.bro, line 41: BroType::AsRecordType (table/record) (set[record { min:record { major:count; minor:count; minor2:count; minor3:count; addl:string; }; max:record { major:count; minor:count; minor2:count; minor3:count; addl:string; }; }])
- The type of ``Software::vulnerable_versions`` changed to allow
more flexibility and range specifications. An example usage:
.. code:: bro
const java_1_6_vuln = Software::VulnerableVersionRange(
$max = Software::Version($major = 1, $minor = 6, $minor2 = 0, $minor3 = 44)
);
const java_1_7_vuln = Software::VulnerableVersionRange(
$min = Software::Version($major = 1, $minor = 7),
$max = Software::Version($major = 1, $minor = 7, $minor2 = 0, $minor3 = 20)
);
redef Software::vulnerable_versions += {
["Java"] = set(java_1_6_vuln, java_1_7_vuln)
};
- The interface to extracting content from application-layer protocols
(including HTTP, SMTP, FTP) has changed significantly due to the
introduction of the new file analysis framework (see above).
- Removed the following, already deprecated, functionality:
* Scripting language:
- ``&disable_print_hook attribute``.
* BiF functions:
- ``parse_dotted_addr()``, ``dump_config()``,
``make_connection_persistent()``, ``generate_idmef()``,
``split_complete()``
- ``md5_*``, ``sha1_*``, ``sha256_*``, and ``entropy_*`` have
all changed their signatures to work with opaque types (see
above).
- Removed a now unused argument from ``do_split`` helper function.
- ``this`` is no longer a reserved keyword.
- The Input Framework's ``update_finished`` event has been renamed to
``end_of_data``. It will now not only fire after table-reads have
been completed, but also after the last event of a whole-file-read
(or whole-db-read, etc.).
- Renamed the option defining the frequency of alarm summary mails to
``Logging::default_alarm_mail_interval``. When using BroControl, the
value can now be set with the new broctl.cfg option
``MailAlarmsInterval``.
- We have completely rewritten the ``notice_policy`` mechanism. It now
no longer uses a record of policy items but a ``hook``, a new
language element that's roughly equivalent to a function with
multiple bodies (see above). For existing code, the two main changes
are:
- What used to be a ``redef`` of ``Notice::policy`` now becomes a
hook implementation. Example:
Old::
redef Notice::policy += {
[$pred(n: Notice::Info) = {
return n$note == SSH::Login && n$id$resp_h == 10.0.0.1;
},
$action = Notice::ACTION_EMAIL]
};
New::
hook Notice::policy(n: Notice::Info)
{
if ( n$note == SSH::Login && n$id$resp_h == 10.0.0.1 )
add n$actions[Notice::ACTION_EMAIL];
}
- notice() is now likewise a hook, no longer an event. If you
have handlers for that event, you'll likely just need to change
the type accordingly. Example:
Old::
event notice(n: Notice::Info) { ... }
New::
hook notice(n: Notice::Info) { ... }
- The ``notice_policy.log`` is gone. That's a result of the new notice
policy setup.
- Removed the ``byte_len()`` and ``length()`` bif functions. Use the
``|...|`` operator instead.
- The ``SSH::Login`` notice has been superseded by an corresponding
intelligence framework observation (``SSH::SUCCESSFUL_LOGIN``).
- ``PacketFilter::all_packets`` has been replaced with
``PacketFilter::enable_auto_protocol_capture_filters``.
- We removed the BitTorrent DPD signatures pending further updates to
that analyzer.
- In previous versions of BroControl, running "broctl cron" would create
a file ``$prefix/logs/stats/www`` (where "$prefix" indicates the
installation prefix of Bro). Now, it is created as a directory.
Therefore, if you perform an upgrade install and you're using BroControl,
then you may see an email (generated by "broctl cron") containing an
error message: "error running update-stats". To fix this problem,
either remove that file (it is not needed) or rename it.
- Due to lack of maintenance the Ruby bindings for Broccoli are now
deprecated, and the build process no longer includes them by
default. For the time being, they can still be enabled by
configuring with ``--enable-ruby``, however we plan to remove
Broccoli's Ruby support with the next Bro release.
Bro 2.1
=======
New Functionality
-----------------
- Bro now comes with extensive IPv6 support. Past versions offered
only basic IPv6 functionality that was rarely used in practice as it
had to be enabled explicitly. IPv6 support is now fully integrated
into all parts of Bro including protocol analysis and the scripting
language. It's on by default and no longer requires any special
configuration.
Some of the most significant enhancements include support for IPv6
fragment reassembly, support for following IPv6 extension header
chains, and support for tunnel decapsulation (6to4 and Teredo). The
DNS analyzer now handles AAAA records properly, and DNS lookups that
Bro itself performs now include AAAA queries, so that, for example,
the result returned by script-level lookups is a set that can
contain both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Support for the most common
ICMPv6 message types has been added. Also, the FTP EPSV and EPRT
commands are now handled properly. Internally, the way IP addresses
are stored has been improved, so Bro can handle both IPv4
and IPv6 by default without any special configuration.
In addition to Bro itself, the other Bro components have also been
made IPv6-aware by default. In particular, significant changes were
made to trace-summary, PySubnetTree, and Broccoli to support IPv6.
- Bro now decapsulates tunnels via its new tunnel framework located in
scripts/base/frameworks/tunnels. It currently supports Teredo,
AYIYA, IP-in-IP (both IPv4 and IPv6), and SOCKS. For all these, it
logs the outer tunnel connections in both conn.log and tunnel.log,
and then proceeds to analyze the inner payload as if it were not
tunneled, including also logging that session in conn.log. For
SOCKS, it generates a new socks.log in addition with more
information.
- Bro now features a flexible input framework that allows users to
integrate external information in real-time into Bro while it's
processing network traffic. The most direct use-case at the moment
is reading data from ASCII files into Bro tables, with updates
picked up automatically when the file changes during runtime. See
doc/input.rst for more information.
Internally, the input framework is structured around the notion of
"reader plugins" that make it easy to interface to different data
sources. We will add more in the future.
- BroControl now has built-in support for host-based load-balancing
when using either PF_RING, Myricom cards, or individual interfaces.
Instead of adding a separate worker entry in node.cfg for each Bro
worker process on each worker host, it is now possible to just
specify the number of worker processes on each host and BroControl
configures everything correctly (including any neccessary enviroment
variables for the balancers).
This change adds three new keywords to the node.cfg file (to be used
with worker entries): lb_procs (specifies number of workers on a
host), lb_method (specifies what type of load balancing to use:
pf_ring, myricom, or interfaces), and lb_interfaces (used only with
"lb_method=interfaces" to specify which interfaces to load-balance
on).
- Bro's default ASCII log format is not exactly the most efficient way
for storing and searching large volumes of data. An alternatives,
Bro now comes with experimental support for two alternative output
formats:
* DataSeries: an efficient binary format for recording structured
bulk data. DataSeries is developed and maintained at HP Labs.
See doc/logging-dataseries for more information.
* ElasticSearch: a distributed RESTful, storage engine and search
engine built on top of Apache Lucene. It scales very well, both
for distributed indexing and distributed searching. See
doc/logging-elasticsearch.rst for more information.
Note that at this point, we consider Bro's support for these two
formats as prototypes for collecting experience with alternative
outputs. We do not yet recommend them for production (but welcome
feedback!)
Changed Functionality
---------------------
The following summarizes the most important differences in existing
functionality. Note that this list is not complete, see CHANGES for
the full set.
- Changes in dependencies:
* Bro now requires CMake >= 2.6.3.
* On Linux, Bro now links in tcmalloc (part of Google perftools)
if found at configure time. Doing so can significantly improve
memory and CPU use.
On the other platforms, the new configure option
--enable-perftools can be used to enable linking to tcmalloc.
(Note that perftools's support for non-Linux platforms may be
less reliable).
- The configure switch --enable-brov6 is gone.
- DNS name lookups performed by Bro now also query AAAA records. The
results of the A and AAAA queries for a given hostname are combined
such that at the scripting layer, the name resolution can yield a
set with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
- The connection compressor was already deprecated in 2.0 and has now
been removed from the code base.
- We removed the "match" statement, which was no longer used by any of
the default scripts, nor was it likely to be used by anybody anytime
soon. With that, "match" and "using" are no longer reserved keywords.
- The syntax for IPv6 literals changed from "2607:f8b0:4009:802::1012"
to "[2607:f8b0:4009:802::1012]". When an IP address variable or IP
address literal is enclosed in pipes (for example,
``|[fe80::db15]|``) the result is now the size of the address in
bits (32 for IPv4 and 128 for IPv6).
- Bro now spawns threads for doing its logging. From a user's
perspective not much should change, except that the OS may now show
a bunch of Bro threads.
- We renamed the configure option --enable-perftools to
--enable-perftools-debug to indicate that the switch is only relevant
for debugging the heap.
- Bro's ICMP analyzer now handles both IPv4 and IPv6 messages with a
joint set of events. The `icmp_conn` record got a new boolean field
'v6' that indicates whether the ICMP message is v4 or v6.
- Log postprocessor scripts get an additional argument indicating the
type of the log writer in use (e.g., "ascii").
- BroControl's make-archive-name script also receives the writer
type, but as its 2nd(!) argument. If you're using a custom version
of that script, you need to adapt it. See the shipped version for
details.
- Signature files can now be loaded via the new "@load-sigs"
directive. In contrast to the existing (and still supported)
signature_files constant, this can be used to load signatures
relative to the current script (e.g., "@load-sigs ./foo.sig").
- The options "tunnel_port" and "parse_udp_tunnels" have been removed.
Bro now supports decapsulating tunnels directly for protocols it
understands.
- ASCII logs now record the time when they were opened/closed at the
beginning and end of the file, respectively (wall clock). The
options LogAscii::header_prefix and LogAscii::include_header have
been renamed to LogAscii::meta_prefix and LogAscii::include_meta,
respectively.
- The ASCII writers "header_*" options have been renamed to "meta_*"
(because there's now also a footer).
- Some built-in functions have been removed: "addr_to_count" (use
"addr_to_counts" instead), "bro_has_ipv6" (this is no longer
relevant because Bro now always supports IPv6), "active_connection"
(use "connection_exists" instead), and "connection_record" (use
"lookup_connection" instead).
- The "NFS3::mode2string" built-in function has been renamed to
"file_mode".
- Some built-in functions have been changed: "exit" (now takes the
exit code as a parameter), "to_port" (now takes a string as
parameter instead of a count and transport protocol, but
"count_to_port" is still available), "connect" (now takes an
additional string parameter specifying the zone of a non-global IPv6
address), and "listen" (now takes three additional parameters to
enable listening on IPv6 addresses).
- Some Bro script variables have been renamed:
"LogAscii::header_prefix" has been renamed to
"LogAscii::meta_prefix", "LogAscii::include_header" has been renamed
to "LogAscii::include_meta".
- Some Bro script variables have been removed: "tunnel_port",
"parse_udp_tunnels", "use_connection_compressor",
"cc_handle_resets", "cc_handle_only_syns", and
"cc_instantiate_on_data".
- A couple events have changed: the "icmp_redirect" event now includes
the target and destination addresses and any Neighbor Discovery
options in the message, and the last parameter of the
"dns_AAAA_reply" event has been removed because it was unused.
- The format of the ASCII log files has changed very slightly. Two
new lines are automatically added, one to record the time when the
log was opened, and the other to record the time when the log was
closed.
- In BroControl, the option (in broctl.cfg) "CFlowAddr" was renamed to
"CFlowAddress".
Bro 2.0
=======
As the version number jump from 1.5 suggests, Bro 2.0 is a major
upgrade and lots of things have changed. Most importantly, we have
rewritten almost all of Bro's default scripts from scratch, using
quite different structure now and focusing more on operational
deployment. The result is a system that works much better "out of the
box", even without much initial site-specific configuration. The
down-side is that 1.x configurations will need to be adapted to work
with the new version. The two rules of thumb are:
(1) If you have written your own Bro scripts
that do not depend on any of the standard scripts formerly
found in ``policy/``, they will most likely just keep working
(although you might want to adapt them to use some of the new
features, like the new logging framework; see below).
(2) If you have custom code that depends on specifics of 1.x
default scripts (including most configuration tuning), that is
unlikely to work with 2.x. We recommend to start by using just
the new scripts first, and then port over any customizations
incrementally as necessary (they may be much easier to do now,
or even unnecessary). Send mail to the Bro user mailing list
if you need help.
Below we summarize changes from 1.x to 2.x in more detail. This list
isn't complete, see the ``CHANGES`` file in the distribution.
for the full story.
Script Organization
-------------------
In versions before 2.0, Bro scripts were all maintained in a flat
directory called ``policy/`` in the source tree. This directory is now
renamed to ``scripts/`` and contains major subdirectories ``base/``,
``policy/``, and ``site/``, each of which may also be subdivided
further.
The contents of the new ``scripts/`` directory, like the old/flat
``policy/`` still gets installed under the ``share/bro``
subdirectory of the installation prefix path just like previous
versions. For example, if Bro was compiled like ``./configure
--prefix=/usr/local/bro && make && make install``, then the script
hierarchy can be found in ``/usr/local/bro/share/bro``.
The main
subdirectories of that hierarchy are as follows:
- ``base/`` contains all scripts that are loaded by Bro by default
(unless the ``-b`` command line option is used to run Bro in a
minimal configuration). Note that is a major conceptual change:
rather than not loading anything by default, Bro now uses an
extensive set of default scripts out of the box.
The scripts under this directory generally either accumulate/log
useful state/protocol information for monitored traffic, configure a
default/recommended mode of operation, or provide extra Bro
scripting-layer functionality that has no significant performance cost.
- ``policy/`` contains all scripts that a user will need to explicitly
tell Bro to load. These are scripts that implement
functionality/analysis that not all users may want to use and may have
more significant performance costs. For a new installation, you
should go through these and see what appears useful to load.
- ``site/`` remains a directory that can be used to store locally
developed scripts. It now comes with some preinstalled example
scripts that contain recommended default configurations going beyond
the ``base/`` setup. E.g. ``local.bro`` loads extra scripts from
``policy/`` and does extra tuning. These files can be customized in
place without being overwritten by upgrades/reinstalls, unlike
scripts in other directories.
With version 2.0, the default ``BROPATH`` is set to automatically
search for scripts in ``policy/``, ``site/`` and their parent
directory, but **not** ``base/``. Generally, everything under
``base/`` is loaded automatically, but for users of the ``-b`` option,
it's important to know that loading a script in that directory
requires the extra ``base/`` path qualification. For example, the
following two scripts:
* ``$PREFIX/share/bro/base/protocols/ssl/main.bro``
* ``$PREFIX/share/bro/policy/protocols/ssl/validate-certs.bro``
are referenced from another Bro script like:
.. code:: bro
@load base/protocols/ssl/main
@load protocols/ssl/validate-certs
Notice how ``policy/`` can be omitted as a convenience in the second
case. ``@load`` can now also use relative path, e.g., ``@load
../main``.
Logging Framework
-----------------
- The logs generated by scripts that ship with Bro are entirely redone
to use a standardized, machine parsable format via the new logging
framework. Generally, the log content has been restructured towards
making it more directly useful to operations. Also, several
analyzers have been significantly extended and thus now log more
information. Take a look at ``ssl.log``.
* A particular format change that may be useful to note is that the
``conn.log`` ``service`` field is derived from DPD instead of
well-known ports (while that was already possible in 1.5, it was
not the default).
* Also, ``conn.log`` now reports raw number of packets/bytes per
endpoint.
- The new logging framework makes it possible to extend, customize,
and filter logs very easily.
- A common pattern found in the new scripts is to store logging stream
records for protocols inside the ``connection`` records so that
state can be collected until enough is seen to log a coherent unit
of information regarding the activity of that connection. This
state is now frequently seen/accessible in event handlers, for
example, like ``c$<protocol>`` where ``<protocol>`` is replaced by
the name of the protocol. This field is added to the ``connection``
record by ``redef``'ing it in a
``base/protocols/<protocol>/main.bro`` script.
- The logging code has been rewritten internally, with script-level
interface and output backend now clearly separated. While ASCII
logging is still the default, we will add further output types in
the future (binary format, direct database logging).
Notice Framework
----------------
The way users interact with "notices" has changed significantly in order
to make it easier to define a site policy and more extensible for adding
customized actions.
New Default Settings
--------------------
- Dynamic Protocol Detection (DPD) is now enabled/loaded by default.
- The default packet filter now examines all packets instead of
dynamically building a filter based on which protocol analysis scripts
are loaded. See ``PacketFilter::all_packets`` for how to revert to old
behavior.
API Changes
-----------
- The ``@prefixes`` directive works differently now.
Any added prefixes are now searched for and loaded *after* all input
files have been parsed. After all input files are parsed, Bro
searches ``BROPATH`` for prefixed, flattened versions of all of the
parsed input files. For example, if ``lcl`` is in ``@prefixes``, and
``site.bro`` is loaded, then a file named ``lcl.site.bro`` that's in
``BROPATH`` would end up being automatically loaded as well. Packages
work similarly, e.g. loading ``protocols/http`` means a file named
``lcl.protocols.http.bro`` in ``BROPATH`` gets loaded automatically.
- The ``make_addr`` BIF now returns a ``subnet`` versus an ``addr``
Variable Naming
---------------
- ``Module`` is more widely used for namespacing. E.g. the new
``site.bro`` exports the ``local_nets`` identifier (among other
things) into the ``Site`` module.
- Identifiers may have been renamed to conform to new `scripting
conventions
<http://www.bro.org/development/howtos/script-conventions.html>`_
Removed Functionality
---------------------
We have remove a bunch of functionality that was rarely used and/or
had not been maintained for a while already:
- The ``net`` script data type.
- The ``alarm`` statement; use the notice framework instead.
- Trace rewriting.
- DFA state expiration in regexp engine.
- Active mapping.
- Native DAG support (may come back eventually)
- ClamAV support.
- The connection compressor is now disabled by default, and will
be removed in the future.
BroControl Changes
------------------
BroControl looks pretty much similar to the version coming with Bro 1.x,
but has been cleaned up and streamlined significantly internally.
BroControl has a new ``process`` command to process a trace on disk
offline using a similar configuration to what BroControl installs for
live analysis.
BroControl now has an extensive plugin interface for adding new
commands and options. Note that this is still considered experimental.
We have removed the ``analysis`` command, and BroControl currently
does not send daily alarm summaries anymore (this may be restored
later).
Development Infrastructure
--------------------------
Bro development has moved from using SVN to Git for revision control.
Users that want to use the latest Bro development snapshot by checking it out
from the source repositories should see the `development process
<http://www.bro.org/development/process.html>`_. Note that all the various
sub-components now reside in their own repositories. However, the
top-level Bro repository includes them as git submodules so it's easy
to check them all out simultaneously.
Bro now uses `CMake <http://www.cmake.org>`_ for its build system so
that is a new required dependency when building from source.
Bro now comes with a growing suite of regression tests in
``testing/``.
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