LogPrécis: Unleashing Language Models for Automated Malicious Log Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Boffa, Matteo, Valentim, Rodolfo Vieira, Vassio, Luca, Giordano, Danilo, Drago, Idilio, Mellia, Marco, Houidi, Zied Ben
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Boffa, Matteo
Valentim, Rodolfo Vieira
Vassio, Luca
Giordano, Danilo
Drago, Idilio
Mellia, Marco
Houidi, Zied Ben
author_facet Boffa, Matteo
Valentim, Rodolfo Vieira
Vassio, Luca
Giordano, Danilo
Drago, Idilio
Mellia, Marco
Houidi, Zied Ben
contents The collection of security-related logs holds the key to understanding attack behaviors and diagnosing vulnerabilities. Still, their analysis remains a daunting challenge. Recently, Language Models (LMs) have demonstrated unmatched potential in understanding natural and programming languages. The question arises whether and how LMs could be also useful for security experts since their logs contain intrinsically confused and obfuscated information. In this paper, we systematically study how to benefit from the state-of-the-art in LM to automatically analyze text-like Unix shell attack logs. We present a thorough design methodology that leads to LogPrécis. It receives as input raw shell sessions and automatically identifies and assigns the attacker tactic to each portion of the session, i.e., unveiling the sequence of the attacker's goals. We demonstrate LogPrécis capability to support the analysis of two large datasets containing about 400,000 unique Unix shell attacks. LogPrécis reduces them into about 3,000 fingerprints, each grouping sessions with the same sequence of tactics. The abstraction it provides lets the analyst better understand attacks, identify fingerprints, detect novelty, link similar attacks, and track families and mutations. Overall, LogPrécis, released as open source, paves the way for better and more responsive defense against cyberattacks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_08309
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LogPrécis: Unleashing Language Models for Automated Malicious Log Analysis
Boffa, Matteo
Valentim, Rodolfo Vieira
Vassio, Luca
Giordano, Danilo
Drago, Idilio
Mellia, Marco
Houidi, Zied Ben
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Networking and Internet Architecture
The collection of security-related logs holds the key to understanding attack behaviors and diagnosing vulnerabilities. Still, their analysis remains a daunting challenge. Recently, Language Models (LMs) have demonstrated unmatched potential in understanding natural and programming languages. The question arises whether and how LMs could be also useful for security experts since their logs contain intrinsically confused and obfuscated information. In this paper, we systematically study how to benefit from the state-of-the-art in LM to automatically analyze text-like Unix shell attack logs. We present a thorough design methodology that leads to LogPrécis. It receives as input raw shell sessions and automatically identifies and assigns the attacker tactic to each portion of the session, i.e., unveiling the sequence of the attacker's goals. We demonstrate LogPrécis capability to support the analysis of two large datasets containing about 400,000 unique Unix shell attacks. LogPrécis reduces them into about 3,000 fingerprints, each grouping sessions with the same sequence of tactics. The abstraction it provides lets the analyst better understand attacks, identify fingerprints, detect novelty, link similar attacks, and track families and mutations. Overall, LogPrécis, released as open source, paves the way for better and more responsive defense against cyberattacks.
title LogPrécis: Unleashing Language Models for Automated Malicious Log Analysis
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.08309