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Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM

In this tutorial we are going to discuss methods of modeling cyber threat intelligence using the Cisco Threat Intelligence Model. We will also introduce best practices for client developers using the Cisco Threat Intelligence API (CTIA).

This document is managed and maintained by the Cisco SecureX Threat Intelligence team. Use of this document for purposes other than educational are strictly prohibited.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1: CTIM Model

Introduction

Background

Nothing comes from nothing, and CTIM didn't spring from a vacuum. In order to better understand why CTIM and CTIA are the way they are, it helps to have a little bit of understanding of the business and technological context in which they arose.

What is Cyber Threat Intelligence?

First, let us be clear what we mean when we talk about Cyber Threat Intelligence. The Center for Internet Security provides this useful definition:

Cyber threat intelligence is what cyber threat information becomes once it has been collected, evaluated in the context of its source and reliability, and analyzed through rigorous and structured tradecraft techniques by those with substantive expertise and access to all-source information.

There are three processes taking place in sequence here:

  1. Collection
  2. Evaluation
  3. Analysis

It might help to think of each of these processes as part of a data refining pipeline. In the same way that an oil refinery converts crude petroleum into a variety of refined petroleum products, this data refining pipeline gathers raw data (such as information about how computer software behaves in a variety of contexts). It then progressively refines that data by decomposing and structuring it, enriching it by placing it in context with data from other origins, with its own varying levels of refinement. Refining it in this way allows us to isolate the parts of the data that help us make more informed decisions. The end result is what we call actionable intelligence.

So, in order to understand the origins of where the Cisco Threat Intelligence Model comes from, we must consider the technology that immediately preceeded it: Threat Grid.

Controlled Detonation

Without getting lost in the details, Threat Grid is a sandbox designed to safely perform controlled detonation of malware samples. This is how that works, in general:

  1. A sample is submitted. This could be any file, document, executable, image, email attachment, nearly anything that can be packaged into a file on a computer.
  2. Some virtual machines are created, and the file is "detonated" in them. Documents are opened, executables are run, etc.
  3. Threat Grid carefully observes the system to see what happens to it when the sample is run. What does the sample do? What does it change? What memory does it access? What files does it create? What websites does it visit? Does it install software? What are its behaviors? All of these observations are recorded.
  4. After a while, the virtual machine is recycled and the observation data is stored, to be evaluated later by various automated systems as well as further inspected by human analysts.

Each sample can easily yield hundreds of megabytes of observation data. By the end of 2015, Threat Grid was processing upwards of 1,000,000 samples each month, and generating hundreds of terabytes of raw cyber threat intelligence each month.

That's a lot of raw material. Certainly more than can easily be displayed in a web app (but not impossible--Threat Grid does pretty wondrous things with all of its data). However, one of the things that the system could tell us with great confidence is whether or not a given sample was malicious.

And so, for reasons that are logical and entirely forgivable given the options at the time, customers started using Threat Grid as a verdict service. They wanted to know whether their email attachments were safe to open. All of them. This was not an ideal situation, because sandboxes aren't optimized for this use case. They're for performing a deeper inspection on samples.

We were generating and storing an awful lot of data, when most of the time what people really wanted was a simple yes or no.

But we knew they really needed more than that. People would need some context about why we thought a given sample was malicious, and if so, what it meant for their organization. Most importantly, we knew that if evidence of a threat was detected on their network, they probably needed help deciding what to do about it.

The CTIA Project

And so, at the end of 2015 we started working on a prototype for a fast verdict lookup service. We called it the Cisco Threat Intelligence API (CTIA).

Building on the work of the Open API Initiative, we wanted to build our prototype of CTIA as a robust REST API standard that had executable human-readable and machine-readable documentation, enabling service discovery platforms later on. For this we chose a Swagger 2.0 implementation.

For our early data model, and learning from the complexity of storing Threat Intelligence in Threat Grid, we chose to borrow many concepts from the emerging Structured Threat Intelligence Expressions (STIX™), which defines itself as:

a structured language for describing cyber threat information so it can be shared, stored, and analyzed in a consistent manner.

However, we didn't focus on implementing an exchange for STIX data, such as a TAXII service. STIX is a fine wireline format, but our main emphasis was on rapid storage and retrieval to accelerate analysis and to ease incident response.

And this is a very important distinction between the model that became CTIM, and its roots in STIX. We weren't trying to build an exchange for threat intelligence indicators. Our raw data wasn't so much the patterns we were looking out for, it was actual behavior that we could observe malware engaging in, right in front of us. We have petabytes of such data, it just needed to be refined, but also placed into an actionable context.

And so, development of our REST API began apace.

Extracting the Model

Once the CTIA prototype was built in the Spring of 2016, and we started showing demonstrations of what we could do with it, we realized that we needed to isolate the model from the API. We could build other tools on top of that model, and the first such tool was our Incident Response Orchestration Hub.

So, we spun off the Cisco Threat Intelligence Model (CTIM) project from CTIA, and over the course of the next several years we continued to build those tools on top of our elegant model and lightning fast API, both of which are Open Source.

Cisco Threat Response

In 2018 we released the fruits of that tool development effort to the public. We call it Cisco Threat Response. Today it is used by over 3600 Security Operations Centers around the world.

By December of 2018, we had added support for OAuth2 client credentials, allowing Cisco Threat Response users to start writing their own tools and to curate their own Cyber Threat Intelligence resources. And as we partner with other teams throughout Cisco's burgeoning Security Business Group, and other partners in the Threat Intelligence industry, it has become clear that we needed to start writing better documentation for client developers, and for users looking to model their data in CTIM.

This tutorial is written in the hopes that it will enable developers and threat analysts to more easily model their cyber threat intelligence assets using the Cisco Threat Intelligence Model (CTIM) and Cisco Threat Intelligence API (CTIA).

This tutorial is nowhere near exhaustive. I gloss over the history of this project, and do not cover the entire CTIM entity model. Instead, this guide focuses on the most common entity types encountered by threat analysts and tool developers.

Intended Audience

  • This tutorial is aimed at CTIA client developers or threat analysts building tools to model their threat intelligence data in CTIM and store it in a CTIA server.
  • API access via Cisco Threat Response is not required. Developers and students without access to Cisco Threat Response can still store intel in a local or on-premise deployment of CTIA, if they wish.
  • All of the data in this tutorial is presented in JSON format, for simplicity.

Objectives

By the time you finish this tutorial, you should have learned the following:

  1. How to build common CTIM objects and package them into bundles.
  2. The advantages of using bundles:
    • Using external IDs to avoid unwanted entity duplication
    • Using transient IDs to reduce your volume of HTTP requests
  3. How to POST the resulting bundle to CTIA.

Part 1: CTIM Model

This section contains documentation and best practices for defining cyber threat observables, as well as the most common entity types:

  • Sightings
  • Judgements
  • Indicators
  • Relationships
  • Bundles

1.1: Common CTIM Entity Properties

In addition to having a common core set of fields built from a base entity definition, all entities in CTIM are sourceable, and describable, as defined in our common schema

1.1.1: Base Field Summary

All CTIM entities are derived from the base entity.

1.1.1.1: Required Base Fields
  • id: A globally unique URI identifying this object.
  • type: A valid CTIM entity type
  • schema_version: The CTIM schema version for this entity
1.1.1.2: Optional Base Fields
  • external_ids: One or more custom, user-defined identifiers for the entity, distinct from its globally unique URI. External IDs will be covered in great detail later in this tutorial.
  • revision: A monotonically increasing revision, incremented each time the object is changed.
  • external_references: Specifies a list of external references which refers to non-CTIM information. This property is used to provide one or more URLs, descriptions, or IDs to records in external systems.
  • timestamp: The time this object was created at, or last modified.
  • language: The human language this object is specified in.
  • tlp: Traffic Light Protocol string, which declares how, and to whom, this entity can be shared. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see https://www.us-cert.gov/tlp.
1.1.1.3: Best Practices for External IDs

External IDs (XIDs) are extremely valuable tools in your toolkit when encoding threat intelligence data in CTIM. If you are careful and consistent about how you generate your external IDs, you can reap many benefits including faster searches, and even avoid creating duplicate entities.

  • External IDs should be constructed in a deterministic fashion, so that if you know some of the key characteristics of a threat intelligence object, you will be able to reconstruct its external ID.
  • External IDs should attempt to avoid collision with IDs from other systems, if possible.
  • External IDs should be unique within a bundle.

To this end, we recommend the following best practices:

  1. All External IDs that you define should have a prefix that is likely to be unique to your organization.
  2. All External IDs should be derivable from SHA256 digest (or larger), based on a deterministically constructable string.

The structure of our recommended external ID string will look like this:

<prefix>-<entity-type>-<sha256-hash>
  • The <prefix> part helps reduce (and, if I choose a suitable prefix string, even eliminate) the chance that I'll have a collision with another namespace. Prefix strings are extremely useful when creating bundles, in order to help us prevent the creation of duplicate entities, as we'll learn later.
  • The <entity-type> part is there for my convenience, to help me reason about relationship entities, as we will also learn later.
  • The <sha256-hash> part is generated from some deterministic collection of strings. Because it is a SHA256 digest, it's exceptionally unlikely that we will accidentally collide with another external ID string. The important thing to note here, is that the hash is deterministic. It is not a hash of a random number, or a hash of the timestamp from when we ran the importer, but something that we can recreate at any time, so long as we know the inputs. For example:
$ echo "CTIM Modeling Tutorial|example-indicator-title|2019-02-28" | sha256sum
1df6883f3a46c66165bc910d6ca0d46234f0fe616a0c3d617e3e4e9caacc3878

If we pick a good descriptive prefix string ctim-tutorial, we can put all three of these parts together to build the final external ID string for this entity:

Example External ID:
"ctim-tutorial-indicator-1df6883f3a46c66165bc910d6ca0d46234f0fe616a0c3d617e3e4e9caacc3878"

Note: Translating this process to the language of your choice is left as an exercise to the reader.

1.1.2: Sourceable Field Summary

All of the entities that we cover in this tutorial have the property of being sourceable. What this means, essentially, is that we may specify where the intelligence in the entity comes from. All of the fields for sourceable entities are optional, and they include the following:

1.1.2.1: Optional Sourceable Fields
  • source: A string representing the name of the source of the intelligence.
  • source_uri: A URI to the source of the intelligence, if one is available.
1.1.2.2: Notes on Sources

Naturally, if we don't know where intel comes from, we are less likely to trust it. Even though it is an optional field in the schema, all client developers should mark their intel with source and source_uri fields, whenever it is appropriate.

The source and source_uri fields do not describe the source of the CTIM entity, but the source of the cyber threat intelligence captured within that entity. So, for example, if someone in the Cisco Threat Response team is packaging up data from the National Vulnerability Database, we would list the source as the "National Vulnerability Database", and the source_uri as "https://nvd.nist.gov".

The source field can be a very useful field when searching through your stored intelligence, and can dramatically speed up CTIA queries for your data later on. It is a very useful and important field, and all client developers are strongly encouraged to use it consistently.

1.1.3: Describable Field Summary

All of the entities that we cover in this tutorial have the property of being describable. What this means, essentially, is that we can provide additional descriptive text for them. All describable entity fields are optional, and they include the following:

1.1.3.1: Optional Describable Fields
  • title: A string with at most 1024 characters
  • short_description: A string with at most 2048 characters
  • description: Markdown string not exceeding 5000 characters

1.2: Observables

In CTIM, an Observable is a recognizable token which we can use as the basis of our investigation. Observables include things like domain names, IP addresses, file hashes, URLs and other values of similar nature.

Observables are not top level entities in CTIM. They are inline data types, included as part of both Sighting and Judgement entities, which we will learn about later.

1.2.1: Observable Field Summary

Observables must have both of the following fields:

1.2.2: What Merits an Observable?

Not all information that can be observed in a system is necessarily a good candidate for an observable record. Ideally, observables are only created when they have direct bearing on a cyber threat incident. Tokens that we can observe but which we have no reason to believe are relevant to new or ongoing cyber threats do not, therefore, need to be captured as observables in CTIM.

Example: We can observe that a user's keyboard is beige, but we don't record an observable about that fact, because keyboard color is not relevant to any known threat. However, if we notice that their system is trying to contact a known malware command and control domain, we would definitely record that fact. This seems like a trivial and obvious distinction to point out, but we will use it later to help guide our thinking when we create Sighting and Judgement entities.

1.2.3: Example Observable

{"type": "domain",
 "value": "google.com"}

1.3: Indicator Entities

An Indicator is a test, or a collection of criteria for identifying the activity, or presence of a cyber threat. Those threats could be malware, patterns of activity that might precede an attack or indicate an attack in progress, or the presence of tools and other infrastructure for the same.

1.3.1: Indicator Field Summary

1.3.1.1: Required Indicator Fields
  • type: This must be the string "indicator".
  • valid_time: Must include a :start_time datetime string, and may include an optional end_time, which must not be later than "2525-01-01:00:00:00.000Z". See below for examples.
  • producer: The name of the party or organization that produced the indicator entity, distinct from the source of the threat intelligence.
1.3.1.2: Optional Indicator Fields

These are the most important of the many optional fields. A full list of optional fields can be found in the Indicator Schema.

  • confidence: Must be one of ["Info", "Low", "Medium", "High", "None", "Unknown"].
  • severity: Must be one of ["Info", "Low", "Medium", "High", "None", "Unknown"].

1.3.2: Types of Indicators

Broadly speaking, indicators come in two types:

  1. Pattern or rule based indicators, such as those you would execute in an expert system (such as Threat Grid), or inside of a rule engine (such as Snort), or even a next generation firewall.
  2. Observable based feed and watchlist indicators, such as a feed containing known malicious IP addresses, or a feed containing URLs that are used in botnet Command and Control networks, or perhaps a feed containing known malicious SSL certificate hashes. These tend to contain lists of observables, and are updated periodically. How much stock you place in these feeds can depend on the age of their contents, the reputation of their source, and their false positive rate. Unlike the pattern or rule based indicators, observable-based feeds and watchlists often obscure the precise combinations of rules or patterns that led to the inclusion of a given observable in the feed.

1.3.3: Example Indicator

{
  "type": "indicator",
  "source": "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
  "source_uri": "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
  "title": "Example Indicator Title",
  "short_description": "Example indicator entity, provided for purposes of illustrating the correct construction of indicators in a CTIM tutorial.",
  "valid_time": {
      "start_time": "2019-02-28T00:00:00.000Z",
      "end_time": "2525-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
  },
  "confidence": "None",
  "severity": "None",
  "tags": ["example"],
  "tlp": "white",
  "producer": "Cisco Systems",
  "external_ids": [
      "ctim-tutorial-indicator-5206f31d14f7b1965dc97c1ec8febfbe45439e8872ff19782f6ac7c49a0ffc68"
  ],
  "id": "transient:ctim-tutorial-indicator-5206f31d14f7b1965dc97c1ec8febfbe45439e8872ff19782f6ac7c49a0ffc68"
}

1.4: Judgement Entities

A judgement about the intent or nature of an observable. For example, is it malicious, meaning it is malware and subverts system operations? It could also be clean and be from a known benign, or trusted source. It could also be common, something so widespread that it's not likely to be malicious.

Since a core goal of the CTIA is to provide a simple verdict service, these judgements are the basis for the returned verdicts. These are also the primary means by which users of the CTIA go from observables on their system, to the indicators and threat intelligence data in CTIA.

1.4.1: Judgement Field Summary

Judgement entities are distinct from many others in that they do not inherit from describable, but from described. This means that Judgement entities are required to have source and source_uri fields..

Judgements do not inherit describable, so do not have titles, long descriptions, or short descriptions.

1.4.1.1: Required Judgement Fields
  • observable: Each judgement must have one observable.
  • disposition: A disposition number, drawn from the mapping below.
  • disposition_name: A disposition name, drawn from the mapping below.
  • priority: An integer value 0-100 that determines the priority of a judgement. Curated feeds of black/white lists, for example known good products within your organizations, should use a 95. All automated systems should use a priority of 90, or less. Human judgements should have a priority of 100, so that humans can always override machines.
  • confidence: Must be one of ["Info", "Low", "Medium", "High", "None", "Unknown"]
  • severity: Must be one of ["Info", "Low", "Medium", "High", "None", "Unknown"]
  • valid_time: Must include a :start_time datetime string, and may include an optional end_time, which must not be later than "2525-01-01:00:00:00.000Z". Judgement valid times should be appropriate for the volatility of the observable. For example, domains and IP addresses can change hands very quickly and cease being malicious, so a valid_time of 30 days is probably warranted for them. However, sha256 hashes for a malicious executable are going to be malicious essentially forever, so we would set the end_time to "2525-01-01:00:00:00.000Z".
1.4.1.2: Optional Judgement Fields
  • reason: A short string explaining the reason for issuing the judgement, or to provide additional context.
  • reason_uri: URI to the referenced reason.
1.4.1.3: Dispositions

Judgements allow us to apply a disposition to an observable, and to provide a little bit of metadata about how certain we are in that assessment. Valid disposition numbers and names are defined in the CTIM schema, but are summarized here:

  {1 "Clean"
   2 "Malicious"
   3 "Suspicious"
   4 "Common"
   5 "Unknown"}

1.4.2: Verdicts vs. Judgements

One of the services that CTIA provides is the ability to compare multiple judgements for a given observable and very quickly render a verdict based on them.

The rules for exactly how this is performed are a bit complex, but here are some basics to know:

  1. Invalid Judgements are not considered.
  2. More recent Judgements matter more.
  3. The priority order for dispositions is Clean > Malicious > Suspicious > Unknown, so a false positive can always be overruled by explicitly creating a judgement with a Clean disposition.

A Verdict indicates the most recent and most relevant disposition for a given cyber observable, as well as the Judgement from which the verdict was derived.

1.4.3: Example Judgement

{
  "type" : "judgement",
  "source": "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
  "source_uri": "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
  "valid_time" : {
    "start_time" : "2019-03-01T19:22:45.531Z",
    "end_time" : "2019-03-31T19:22:45.531Z"
  },
  "observable" : {
    "type" : "ip",
    "value" : "187.75.16.75"
  },
  "external_ids" : [ "ctim-tutorial-judgement-4340e8cc49ff428e21ad1467de4b40246eb0e3b8da96caa2f71f9fe54123d498" ],
  "disposition" : 2,
  "disposition_name" : "Malicious",
  "priority" : 95,
  "id" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-judgement-4340e8cc49ff428e21ad1467de4b40246eb0e3b8da96caa2f71f9fe54123d498",
  "severity" : "High",
  "tlp" : "green",
  "timestamp" : "2019-03-01T19:22:45.531Z",
  "confidence" : "High"
}

1.5: Sighting Entities

A Sighting is a record of the appearance of a cyber threat Indicator match at a given date and time. This can be a pattern match in a rule matching engine or expert system, or an observable feed based indicator such as an IP or domain blacklist.

Sightings can optionally include cyber threat observables, such as domain names, URLs, IP addresses, file hashes, registry keys, and more. When a sighting includes an observable and has a relationship to an Indicator, it provides threat intelligence context about the observable, allowing a threat analyst or incident responder to understand why the observable warranted the creation of a Sighting.

1.5.1: Sighting Field Summary

1.5.1.1: Required Sighting Fields
  • observed_time: Must include a ::start_time datetime string. This field is used to document a point-in-time when the observable was seen. See below for an example.
  • confidence: Must be one of ["Info", "Low", "Medium", "High", "None", "Unknown"]
  • count: The number of times the observable was seen.
1.5.1.2: Optional Sighting Fields
  • observables: The object(s) of interest, structured as an observable, defined above.
  • relations: These are relations within a sighting which help provide any context we can about where the observable(s) came from. See below for more information.
  • internal: A boolean value describing if this sighting is internal to our network.
  • severity: Must be one of ["Info", "Low", "Medium", "High", "None", "Unknown"]
  • resolution: Must be one of ["detected" "blocked" "allowed" "contained"]
  • sensor: The OpenC2 Actuator name that best fits the device that is creating this sighting (e.g. network-firewall, sensor, endpoint, network-device, human). Valid sensor types are enumerated in the CTIM vocabularies schema.
  • targets: An enumeration of target devices where the sighting came from. See below for more information.

1.5.2: Targets

Target entries are structured as follows:

1.5.2.1: Target Field Summary
1.5.2.1.1: Required Target Fields
  • type: Must be a sensor type, as defined above.
  • observables: Must be a vector of observables, as defined above.
  • observed_time: The time at which the observable was seen.
1.5.2.1.2: Optional Target Fields
  • os: Operating system name
  • properties_data_tables: A URI leading to a data table.
1.5.2.2: Example Target
{"type": "network.firewall",
 "observables": [{"type": "ip", "value": "187.75.16.75"}],
 "observed_time": {"start_time" : "2019-03-01T20:01:27.368Z"}}

1.5.3: Observables vs Observed Relations

Earlier we discussed that not everything we are able to observe merits being turned into an observable. For sightings, this is made even more explicit by the inclusion of the relations field, which allows us to provide additional context about the observable that is the object of the sighting.

For example, imagine if we have a known malicious domain baddomain.com. At the time that we saw the domain being contacted (triggering the creation of a Sighting), we might know that the domain resolved to the IPv4 address 8.8.8.8. We know from months of tracking this malicious domain that it is bad news. However, we would not create a 2nd Judgement on the associated IPv4 address. This is because the IP isn't the actual observable that triggered our malicious judgement. It's useful context, but it isn't actually a malicious IP address. (It's actually the IP address of Google's DNS servers).

Instead, the fact that this domain resolved to this IP address at the time of the sighting should be captured in the relations key of the Sighting.

1.5.3.1: Observed Relation Field Summary
  • origin: Where is the origin of this relation info?
  • origin_uri: Optional URI of origin data.
  • source: The main observable of the sighting.
  • related: The related observable that is defined by the relation, below.
  • relation: The nature of the relationship between the observables. The relations that can exist between observables is an "open vocabulary", so you can add your own. However, we have a very thorough collection of predefined observable relations in the CTIM Schema.
1.5.3.2: Example Observed Relation
{
  "origin": "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
  "origin_uri": "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
  "source": {"type":"domain", "value": "baddomain.com"},
  "target": {"type":"ip", "value": "8.8.8.8"},
  "relation": "Resolved_To"
}

1.5.4: Example Sighting

{
  "type" : "sighting",
  "source": "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
  "source_uri": "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
  "observables" : [ {
    "type" : "ip",
    "value" : "187.75.16.75"
  } ],
  "external_ids" : [ "ctim-tutorial-sighting-7b36e0fa2169a3ca330c7790f63c97fd3c9f482f88ee1b350511d8a51fcecc8d" ],
  "id" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-sighting-7b36e0fa2169a3ca330c7790f63c97fd3c9f482f88ee1b350511d8a51fcecc8d",
  "count" : 1,
  "severity" : "High",
  "tlp" : "green",
  "timestamp" : "2019-03-01T20:01:27.368Z",
  "confidence" : "High",
  "observed_time" : {
    "start_time" : "2019-03-01T20:01:27.368Z"
  }
}

1.6: Attack Patterns

Attack patterns are a borrowed concept from STIX. The STIX definition captures much of the use cases for SecureX Threat Intelligence: "Attack Patterns are a type of TTP that describe ways that adversaries attempt to compromise targets".

1.6.1 Attack Pattern Taxonomies

MITRE (https://www.mitre.org/focus-areas/cybersecurity) offers two primary Attack Pattern taxonomies: the Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC: https://capec.mitre.org/index.html) and Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, & Common Knowledge (ATT&CK: https://attack.mitre.org/).

RE&CT (https://atc-project.github.io/atc-react/) and OWASP (https://github.com/OWASP/www-community/tree/master/pages/attacks) provide additional less structured frameworks that may become relevant in the future.

1.6.2: Attack Pattern Field Summary

1.6.2.1: Required Fields

  • description: A description of object, which may be detailed
  • id: Globally unique URI identifying this object
  • schema_version: CTIM schema version for this entity
  • short_description: A single line, short summary of the object.
  • title: A short title for this object, used as primary display and reference value
  • type: A string "attack-pattern"

1.6.2.2: Notable Optional Fields

  • external_ids: A collection of IDs including MITRE ATT&CK reference IDs (TAXXXX for tactic, TXXXX for technique, TXXXX.XXX for subtechnique)
  • external_references: A collection of external references, including external_ids with source information

1.6.3: Attack Pattern Abstraction Levels

A "level of abstraction" is an overloaded term in information systems. For the Attack Pattern entity, abstraction level refers to a CAPEC codified classification system used roughly to characterize the behavior of an attack in the description of an Attack Pattern.

Generally, the following table can help when reasoning about abstraction levels within the CTIM Attack Pattern vocabulary: | Behavior Descriptor | MITRE ATT&CK | MITRE CAPEC | | WHY | Tactic | Category | | HOW | Technique | Meta | | DETAILED HOW | Subtechnique | Standard or Detailed |

1.6.4: Attack Pattern Example

{
    "description": "The adversary is trying to get into your network.\n\nInitial Access consists of techniques that use various entry vectors to gain their initial foothold within a network. Techniques used to gain a foothold include targeted spearphishing and exploiting weaknesses on public-facing web servers. Footholds gained through initial access may allow for continued access, like valid accounts and use of external remote services, or may be limited-use due to changing passwords.",
    "abstraction_level": "category",
    "schema_version": "1.1.0",
    "type": "attack-pattern",
    "source": "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
    "external_ids": [
      "ctim-tutorial-attack-pattern-ffd5bcee-6e16-4dd2-8eca-7b3beedf33ca",
      "ATT&CK-TA0001"
    ],
    "short_description": "Initial Access",
    "title": "Initial Access",
    "external_references": [
      {
        "source_name": "mitre-attack",
        "url": "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
        "external_id": "TA0001"
      }
    ],
    "source_uri":  "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md"
    "id": "transient:ctim-tutorial-attack-pattern-5be8e308-f326-456a-9645-fecb8803a19a",
    "tlp": "green",
    "kill_chain_phases": [
      {
        "kill_chain_name": "mitre-attack",
        "phase_name": "initial-access"
      },
      {
        "kill_chain_name": "lockheed-martin-cyber-kill-chain",
        "phase_name": "exploitation"
      }
    ],
    "timestamp": "2019-07-19T17:41:41.425Z",
  }

1.7: Course of Action Entities

Like Attack Patterns, Course of Action entities are borrowed from STIX. In the same way, the STIX definition serves the purpose of the CTIM: an action taken either to prevent an attack or to respond to an attack that is in progress.

To serve this purpose, Course of Action entities are contextualized by the attack that they mitigate. A Course of Action without this context is like a solution without a problem: it is nonsensical. This context occurs via a relationship with type "mitigates" to an attack pattern, incident, malware, or tool.

1.7.1: Course of Action Field Summary

  • id: Globally unique URI identifying this object
  • schema_version: CTIM schema version for this entity
  • type: A string "course-of-action"
  • valid_time: Must include a :start_time datetime string, and may include an optional end_time, which must not be later than "2525-01-01:00:00:00.000Z". See below for examples.

1.7.2: Course of Action Example

{
    "description": "Set and enforce secure password policies for accounts.",
    "valid_time": {
      "start_time": "2020-05-29T17:13:35.467Z",
      "end_time": "2525-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
    },
    "schema_version": "1.1.3",
    "type": "coa",
    "source": "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
    "external_ids": [
      "ctim-tutorial-course-of-action--90c218c3-fbf8-4830-98a7-e8cfb7eaa485",
    ],
    "title": "Password Policies",
    "external_references": [
      {
        "source_name": "mitre-attack",
        "url": "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
        "external_id": "M1027"
      }
    ],
    "source_uri": "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
    "id": "transient:ctim-tutorial-coa-36dd66b0-8be0-419d-8418-3b8b448e4995",
    "timestamp": "2022-10-21T15:52:23.327Z",
  }

1.8: Relationship Entities

Ultimately, CTIM allows us to model our threat intelligence as a hypertext graph. In this graph, each entity is a node with its own URI, and the nodes of this graph are connected via Relationships, which form its edges.

1.8.1: Relationship Field Summary

In addition to being derived from the base, sourceable, and describable entity definitions defined above, relationships require the following fields:

  • relationship_type: A string describing the relationship type. Standard supported relationship types are defined in the CTIM Vocabulary Schema, and the best practices for how to define entity relationships is documented below.
  • source_ref: Required. ID of the source entity of the relationship. On a directed graph, this is the node the arrow begins at.
  • target_ref: Required ID of the target entity of the relationship. On a directed graph, this is the node the arrow points to.

1.8.2: Notes on Relationship Polarity

The polarity of relationships describes the direction that the arrow points on a directed graph: Relationships always point FROM the source_ref, and TOWARD the target_ref in the relationship.

Therefore, there are some relation_type fields which are expected to be used in certain scenarios. In our Common Relation Types document, we define, for example, that a judgement would be "based on" an indicator, but not vice versa. Relationships from Indicators do not point toward Judgements. So, to represent this relationship, we'd have the Judgement entity identified as the source_ref, and the indicator entity identified as the target_ref. These fields are not interchangeable, and the polarity of the relationship does matter. Please read through the documentation on common relation types for more information.

1.8.3: Example Relationship

{
  "type" : "relationship",
  "source": "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
  "source_uri": "",
  "source_ref" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-judgement-4340e8cc49ff428e21ad1467de4b40246eb0e3b8da96caa2f71f9fe54123d498",
  "target_ref" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-indicator-c56de1c94c1ce862c4e6d9883393aacc58275c0c4dc4d8b48cc4db692bf11e4f",
  "relationship_type" : "based-on",
  "external_ids" : [ "ctim-tutorial-relationship-2c1f3fcaf89d294bf7d038f470f6cb4a81dc1fad6ff5deeed18a41bf6fe14e4d" ]
}

Note: At this point you may be wondering what all of these "transient:..." ids are all about. We'll dig into those details in the next section.

1.9: Bundle Entities

In order to really understand bundles, we need to take a step back and take another look at Relationships.

1.9.1: Getting UUIDs for Relationships

Up until this point we have intentionally glossed over an important detail in the creation of relationships: how do we create them if we don't have the URLs for the entities we want to relate?

If a Relationship entity requires 2 IDs, and if IDs in CTIA are always URIs, then we need the URI for the source_ref, and the URI for the target_ref before we can specify a Relationship. As you might imagine, this can become burdensome.

1.9.1.1: Defining Relationships Without Bundles

This is how we used to assemble relationships, before bundles:

  1. Search for (with a GET request) or create and POST the source entity in order to get its URI for the source_ref (1-2 HTTP requests)
  2. Search for (with a GET request) or create and POST the target entity in order to get its URI for the target_ref (1-2 HTTP requests)
  3. Once you have both of the required URIs, create and POST a Relationship entity (1 HTTP request).

It used to require 3-5 HTTP requests for every relationship. If you knew that both the source and target entities were brand new, you could get the job done with only 3 POST requests. However, even with persistent sessions, this was never going to scale to our needs.

And so, we added the bundle import API mechanism to CTIA. The purpose of the bundle import mechanism is twofold:

  1. First, we needed a mechanism that would allow us to define entities AND how they relate in a single bundle, and POST all of the contents of that bundle in the same HTTP request, and let CTIA automatically handle the complications around wiring all of the relationships to point at the correct URIs for the posted entities.
  2. Second, we needed a way to prevent the accidental creation of duplicate entities. Particularly in the case of indicators, we did not want there to be duplicate entities that differ only in their id field, but are identical in every other way.

1.9.1.2: Defining Relationships Using Bundles

  • [ ] The new way: Using transient IDs

    • transient IDs
    • features of the CTIA bundle import API endpoint

1.9.2: Bundle Field Summary

In addition to the required "type":"bundle" field and the strongly recommended source and source_uri fields, bundles can contain lists of various CTIM entity types. Most of them are outside the scope of this tutorial, but they are all defined in great depth in the CTIM Bundle schema.

1.9.2.1: Optional Bundle Fields
  • actors: A list of CTIM actor entities.
  • attack_patterns: A list of CTIM attack pattern entities.
  • campaigns: A list of CTIM campaign entities.
  • coas: A list of CTIM coa entities.
  • feedbacks: A list of CTIM feedback entities.
  • incidents: A list of CTIM incident entities.
  • indicators: A list of CTIM indicator entities.
  • judgements: A list of CTIM judgement entities.
  • malwares: A list of CTIM malware entities.
  • relationships: A list of CTIM relationship entities.
  • sightings: A list of CTIM sighting entities.
  • tools: A list of CTIM tool entities.
  • verdicts: A list of CTIM verdict entities.
  • data_tables: A list of CTIM data_table entities.
  • weaknesses: A list of CTIM weakness entities.
  • vulnerabilities: A list of CTIM vulnerability entities.

1.9.3: Example Bundle

At long last, we have our example bundle:

{
  "type" : "bundle",
  "source" : "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
  "source_uri" : "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
  "sightings" : [ {
    "observables" : [ {
      "type" : "ip",
      "value" : "187.75.16.75"
    } ],
    "type" : "sighting",
    "source" : "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
    "external_ids" : [ "ctim-tutorial-sighting-7b36e0fa2169a3ca330c7790f63c97fd3c9f482f88ee1b350511d8a51fcecc8d" ],
    "source_uri" : "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
    "id" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-sighting-7b36e0fa2169a3ca330c7790f63c97fd3c9f482f88ee1b350511d8a51fcecc8d",
    "count" : 1,
    "severity" : "High",
    "tlp" : "green",
    "timestamp" : "2019-03-01T22:26:29.229Z",
    "confidence" : "High",
    "observed_time" : {
      "start_time" : "2019-03-01T22:26:29.229Z"
    }
  } ],
  "judgements" : [ {
    "valid_time" : {
      "start_time" : "2019-03-01T22:26:29.229Z",
      "end_time" : "2019-03-31T22:26:29.229Z"
    },
    "observable" : {
      "type" : "ip",
      "value" : "187.75.16.75"
    },
    "type" : "judgement",
    "source" : "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
    "external_ids" : [ "ctim-tutorial-judgement-4340e8cc49ff428e21ad1467de4b40246eb0e3b8da96caa2f71f9fe54123d498" ],
    "disposition" : 2,
    "source_uri" : "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
    "disposition_name" : "Malicious",
    "priority" : 95,
    "id" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-judgement-4340e8cc49ff428e21ad1467de4b40246eb0e3b8da96caa2f71f9fe54123d498",
    "severity" : "High",
    "tlp" : "green",
    "timestamp" : "2019-03-01T22:26:29.229Z",
    "confidence" : "High"
  } ],
  "indicators" : [ {
    "description" : "The IP Blacklist is automatically updated every 15 minutes and contains a list of known malicious network threats that are flagged on all Cisco Security Products. This list is estimated to be 1% of the total Talos IP Reputation System.",
    "valid_time" : {
      "start_time" : "2019-03-01T22:26:29.229Z",
      "end_time" : "2525-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
    },
    "producer" : "Cisco TALOS",
    "type" : "indicator",
    "source" : "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
    "external_ids" : [ "ctim-tutorial-indicator-c56de1c94c1ce862c4e6d9883393aacc58275c0c4dc4d8b48cc4db692bf11e4f" ],
    "short_description" : "The TALOS IP Blacklist lists all known malicious IPs in the TALOS IP Reputation System.",
    "title" : "TALOS IP Blacklist Feed",
    "source_uri" : "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
    "id" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-indicator-c56de1c94c1ce862c4e6d9883393aacc58275c0c4dc4d8b48cc4db692bf11e4f",
    "tlp" : "green"
  } ],
  "relationships" : [ {
    "type" : "relationship",
    "source" : "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
    "source_uri" : "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
    "source_ref" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-judgement-4340e8cc49ff428e21ad1467de4b40246eb0e3b8da96caa2f71f9fe54123d498",
    "target_ref" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-indicator-c56de1c94c1ce862c4e6d9883393aacc58275c0c4dc4d8b48cc4db692bf11e4f",
    "relationship_type" : "based-on",
    "external_ids" : [ "ctim-tutorial-2c1f3fcaf89d294bf7d038f470f6cb4a81dc1fad6ff5deeed18a41bf6fe14e4d" ],
    "short_description" : "judgement ctim-tutorial-judgement-4340e8cc49ff428e21ad1467de4b40246eb0e3b8da96caa2f71f9fe54123d498 is based-on indicator ctim-tutorial-indicator-c56de1c94c1ce862c4e6d9883393aacc58275c0c4dc4d8b48cc4db692bf11e4f"
  }, {
    "type" : "relationship",
    "source" : "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial",
    "source_uri" : "https://github.com/threatgrid/ctim/blob/master/src/doc/tutorials/modeling-threat-intel-ctim.md",
    "source_ref" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-sighting-7b36e0fa2169a3ca330c7790f63c97fd3c9f482f88ee1b350511d8a51fcecc8d",
    "target_ref" : "transient:ctim-tutorial-indicator-c56de1c94c1ce862c4e6d9883393aacc58275c0c4dc4d8b48cc4db692bf11e4f",
    "relationship_type" : "sighting-of",
    "external_ids" : [ "ctim-tutorial-0664295d5da504180b4f232a0d5e95908fcbd6eb052b6e97f294ddfb6a7b11b8" ],
    "short_description" : "sighting ctim-tutorial-sighting-7b36e0fa2169a3ca330c7790f63c97fd3c9f482f88ee1b350511d8a51fcecc8d is sighting-of indicator ctim-tutorial-indicator-c56de1c94c1ce862c4e6d9883393aacc58275c0c4dc4d8b48cc4db692bf11e4f"
  } ]
}

1.9.4: POSTing Bundles to CTIA

As described above, we supply the external ID prefix to CTIA via the external-key-prefixes query parameter. So, in order to POST our bundle to CTIA, you'd run the following command:

curl -X POST --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --header 'Accept: application/json' --header 'Authorization: <your auth>' -d '{"type":"bundle", \
  "source": "Modeling Threat Intelligence in CTIM Tutorial", \
  ... }' 'https://localhost:3000/ctia/bundle/import?external-key-prefixes=ctim-tutorial-'

When the bundle is posted, CTIA will perform the following:

  1. Search for existing entities that already have the External IDs starting with the ctim-tutorial- prefix.
  2. If existing entities with matching external_ids to the ones supplied in the bundle are found in storage, then all relationship references to that entity in the bundle will be replaced with references to the URI for the existing entity in storage. Duplicate entities with the same "ctim-tutorial-" external IDs will not be created.
  3. For each entity in the bundle, if no existing entity matching the supplied "ctim-tutorial-" external IDs is found in storage, CTIA will create a new entity and replace the transient ID reference in any relationships with the URI for the newly created entity.
  4. Once all of the references are thus resolved, CTIA will POST the relationship entities to storage using its bulk route.
❮Modeling Incidents in CTIM

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