Brought to you by Active Countermeasures.

RITA is an open source framework for network traffic analysis.

The framework ingests Bro/Zeek Logs in TSV format, and currently supports the following major features:

• Beaconing Detection: Search for signs of beaconing behavior in and out of your network
• DNS Tunneling Detection Search for signs of DNS based covert channels
• Blacklist Checking: Query blacklists to search for suspicious domains and hosts

The automatic installer is officially supported on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Security Onion*, and CentOS 7

• Download the latest install.sh file from the release page
• Make the installer executable: chmod +x ./install.sh
• Run the installer: sudo ./install.sh

* Please see the Security Onion RITA wiki page for further information pertaining to using RITA on Security Onion.

To install each component of RITA by hand, check out the instructions in the docs.

See this guide for upgrade instructions.

• Operating System - The preferred platform is 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The system should be patched and up to date using apt-get.
• Processor (when installed alongside Bro/Zeek) - Two cores plus an additional core for every 100 Mb of traffic being captured. (three cores minimum). This should be dedicated hardware, as resource congestion with other VMs can cause packets to be dropped or missed.
• Memory - 16GB minimum. 64GB if monitoring 100Mb or more of network traffic. 128GB if monitoring 1Gb or more of network traffic.
• Storage - 300GB minimum. 1TB or more is recommended to reduce log maintenance.
• Network - In order to capture traffic with Bro/Zeek, you will need at least 2 network interface cards (NICs). One will be for management of the system and the other will be the dedicated capture port. Intel NICs perform well and are recommended.

RITA's config file is located at /etc/rita/config.yaml though you can specify a custom path on individual commands with the -c command line flag.

❗ IMPORTANT ❗

• The Filtering: InternalSubnets section must be configured or you will not see any results in certain modules (e.g. beacons, long connections). If your network uses the standard RFC1918 internal IP ranges (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16) you just need uncomment the default InternalSubnets section already in the config file. Otherwise, adjust this section to match your environment. RITA's main purpose is to find the signs of a compromised internal system talking to an external system and will automatically exclude internal to internal connections and external to external connections from parts of the analysis.

You may also wish to change the defaults for the following option:

• Filtering: AlwaysInclude - Ranges listed here are exempt from the filtering applied by the InternalSubnets setting. The main use for this is to include internal DNS servers so that you can see the source of any DNS queries made.

Note that any value listed in the Filtering section should be in CIDR format. So a single IP of 192.168.1.1 would be written as 192.168.1.1/32.

• Option 1: Generate PCAPs outside of Bro/Zeek

  • Generate PCAP files with a packet sniffer (tcpdump, wireshark, etc.)
  • (Optional) Merge multiple PCAP files into one PCAP file
    • mergecap -w outFile.pcap inFile1.pcap inFile2.pcap
  • Generate Bro/Zeek logs from the PCAP files
    • bro -r pcap_to_log.pcap local "Log::default_rotation_interval = 1 day"

• Option 2: Install Bro/Zeek and let it monitor an interface directly [instructions]

  • You may wish to compile Bro/Zeek from source for performance reasons. This script can help automate the process.
  • The automated installer for RITA installs pre-compiled Bro/Zeek binaries by default
    • Provide the --disable-bro flag when running the installer if you intend to compile Bro/Zeek from source

After installing RITA, setting up the InternalSubnets section of the config file, and collecting some Bro/Zeek logs, you are ready to begin hunting.

Filtering and whitelisting happens at import time. These optional settings can be found alongside InternalSubnets in the configuration file.

RITA will process Bro/Zeek TSV logs in both plaintext and gzip compressed formats. Note, if you are using Security Onion or Bro's JSON log output you will need to switch back to traditional TSV output.

• Option 1: Create a One-Off Dataset
  • rita import path/to/your/bro_logs dataset_name creates a dataset from a collection of Bro/Zeek logs in a directory
  • Every log file directly in the supplied directory will be imported into a dataset with the given name
  • Once a dataset has been created in this fashion, no other data may be imported into the dataset
• Option 2: Create a Rolling Dataset
  • Rolling datasets allow you to progressively analyze the last 24 hours of log data
  • RITA cycles data into and out of rolling databases in "chunks". Chunks are even divisions of a day.
    • For example, a rolling database configured to hold data in 4 chunks will import logs 6 hours at a time
  • rita import --rolling --numchunks # --chunk # path/to/your/bro_logs dataset_name imports the logs in a given directory which match the period of time derived from the numchunks and chunk arguments
  • numchunks controls how much data will be processed each time a rolling import is ran
    • The value supplied for numchunks must evenly divide 24
    • Valid choices are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24
    • Each choice will process new data in 24, 12, 8, 4, 3, 2, and 1 hour periods, respectively
  • chunk tells RITA which period of data to import
    • The value supplied for chunk must be between 1 and numchunks (inclusive)
    • If numchunks is set to 4, and chunk is set to 2, RITA will import logs from 6 am to noon
  • Rolling databases should be routinely updated with new data
    • numchunks should remain constant each time import is ran on the same rolling dataset
    • chunk should loop through 1 to numchunks (inclusive) as new data becomes available
    • chunk should be reset to 1 once the last chunk has been imported. This causes the previous chunk 1 to be removed from the dataset before the new data is imported and ensures that the rolling dataset always contains at most 24 hours worth of data.
  • RITA depends on the default naming scheme Bro/Zeek uses for hourly rotated logs. If your logs have been renamed, rolling imports will not work. In this case you should use Option 1 for creating a one-off dataset instead.

• Use the show-X commands
  • show-databases: Print the datasets currently stored
  • show-beacons: Print hosts which show signs of C2 software
  • show-bl-hostnames: Print blacklisted hostnames which received connections
  • show-bl-source-ips: Print blacklisted IPs which initiated connections
  • show-bl-dest-ips: Print blacklisted IPs which received connections
  • show-exploded-dns: Print dns analysis. Exposes covert dns channels
  • show-long-connections: Print long connections and relevant information
  • show-strobes: Print connections which occurred with excessive frequency
  • show-useragents: Print user agent information
• By default RITA displays data in CSV format
  • -H displays the data in a human readable format
  • Piping the human readable results through less -S prevents word wrapping
    • Ex: rita show-beacons dataset_name -H | less -S
• Create a html report with html-report

Please create an issue on GitHub if you have any questions or concerns.

To contribute to RITA visit our Contributing Guide

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