pcr and

Frank argus-mailinglist-1524134246 at f-block.org
Fri Apr 20 11:19:59 EDT 2018


Hi Carter,

thx for your quick answer.

1. That did the trick, thx!


2. Yes, i've set ARGUS_FLOW_KEY="CLASSIC_5_TUPLE"

The reasons for my big ARGUS_FLOW_STATUS_INTERVAL value:
- i don't need instant live updates about active flows
- i don't want those updates filling up my log files ( we have many long
connections going on, and when there is a status update entry for each
of them every second, it gets unnecessarily big)
- As far as i understand, flow information are written as soon as the
flow is "done" (timeout reached, connection closed,...), so this value
shouldn't affect those, right?

Ok, what i want in the end is a list of saddr daddr pairs that have long
connections with each other, based on the mean field.
I have for example those records:

rafilteraddr -r argus.out -f /tmp/filter -p0  -s -state -s -flgs -s -dir
-s +mean +seq
   StartTime  Proto            SrcAddr  Sport            DstAddr  Dport 
TotPkts   TotBytes       Mean     Seq     
    21:37:19    tcp       10.10.10.10.42972         
10.20.20.20.https     32536   26592499       1790     30487007
    22:07:19    tcp       10.10.10.10.42972         
10.20.20.20.https      4961    3942584       1795     30487007
    22:37:21    tcp       10.10.10.10.42972         
10.20.20.20.https      1125     272903       1791     30487007
    23:07:21    tcp       10.10.10.10.42972         
10.20.20.20.https       494     138085        780     30487007
[...]
    06:19:14    tcp       10.10.10.10.23391         
10.20.20.20.https       730      72320       1793     31292145
    06:49:16    tcp       10.10.10.10.23391         
10.20.20.20.https       647      57559       1796     31292145
    07:19:22    tcp       10.10.10.10.23391         
10.20.20.20.https       701      70449       1793     31292145
    07:49:25    tcp       10.10.10.10.23391         
10.20.20.20.https       685      60024       1794     31292145
    08:19:26    tcp       10.10.10.10.23391         
10.20.20.20.https       727      72165       1799     31292145
    08:49:35    tcp       10.10.10.10.23391         
10.20.20.20.https       672      59209       1793     31292145


There are two connections (the first lines are from the day before )
As i can't aggregate on the sequence number, i use the following command
as my first aggregation step:

rafilteraddr -r argus.out -f /tmp/filter -w - | racluster -m proto saddr
sport daddr dport -M norep -p0  -s -state -s -flgs -s -dir -s +mean +seq
+trans +sum
   StartTime  Proto            SrcAddr  Sport            DstAddr  Dport 
TotPkts   TotBytes       Mean     Seq       Trans        Sum
    06:19:14    tcp       10.10.10.10.23391         
10.20.20.20.https      8231     776687          0     31292145     
0          0
    21:37:19    tcp       10.10.10.10.42972         
10.20.20.20.https     39116   30946071          0     30487007     
0          0


I use the '-M norep' option, as without it, i get this, which gives me
the mean duration time over all records, but not for connections:
   StartTime  Proto            SrcAddr  Sport            DstAddr  Dport 
TotPkts   TotBytes       Mean     Seq       Trans        Sum
    06:19:14    tcp       10.10.10.10.23391         
10.20.20.20.https      8231     776687       1789     31292145    
12      21468
    21:37:19    tcp       10.10.10.10.42972         
10.20.20.20.https     39116   30946071       1539     30487007     
4       6156


And in my last step, i aggregate with saddr daddr:

rafilteraddr -r argus.out -f /tmp/filter -w - | racluster -m proto saddr
sport daddr dport -M norep -w - | racluster -m saddr daddr -p0  -s
-state -s -flgs -s -dir -s +mean +seq +trans +sum
   StartTime  Proto            SrcAddr  Sport            DstAddr  Dport 
TotPkts   TotBytes       Mean     Seq       Trans        Sum
    21:37:19    tcp       10.10.10.10               
10.20.20.20.https     47347   31722758      13877     31292145     
2      27753

For this scenario, it works as expected: there were 2 connections
between those two ip addresses, with a total duration of 27753 and mean
13877.

But as i said, the remaining problem are connections that use the same
5-tuple for multiple connections/flows as with ntp.
Did i understand/do somehting wrong here?


3. Ah, okay, understood.

Thx and Regards,
Frank


On 04/20/2018 03:38 PM, Carter Bullard wrote:
> Hey Frank,
> The PCR requires that you have ARGUS_GENERATE_APPBYTE_METRIC set in argus.  The PCR is based on the values of sappbytes and dappbytes, so as a sanity check, print these fields using ra to see if the metric is being generated.
>
> So not sure what you’re wanting to achieve in 2.  The 5-tuple aggregation is the default, as that is the “basic” way of forming flows.  Its always better if you include the command line that you are using, so we can see whats up.
>
> But, why use such a large ARGUS_FLOW_STATUS_INTERVAL, I use either 5 or 1, and never go much higher.  This is the definition of your “quantum" of observation. With a 3 hour interval, man, do you have to wait a long time before anything comes out if your monitoring live traffic.  Biggest problem is that your going to see a lot of port reuse in 3 hours, so flows will collide, and you’ll get large flow duration times.  If you use default aggregation, then the mean, stddev, max and min are calculated using the ‘due’ field of each record.  So it looks like it is working.
>
> Use a small ARGUS_FLOW_STATUS_INTERVAL, and then use aggregation to build up the long lived flows.
>
> So, #3 is a ‘gotcha’ of sorts.  “tcp” and “udp” are really shortcut aliases, tcp means “ip proto tcp”, so you're generating filter errors by accident ???  Because tcp and udp and icmp are used so often, they are aliased, seems that all the other protocols (i.e udplite) need the ip proto.
>
> So this works…
>    
>    ra -b - not udp
>    ra -b - not \(ip proto 17\)
>
> So quoting them makes them a string, rather than the keyword, and we then lookup them up, rather than assign the value.  Sorry for that inconvenience.  
>
> Carter
>
>> On Apr 20, 2018, at 6:39 AM, Frank <argus-mailinglist-1524134246 at f-block.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> i'm new to the list and to argus, so i hope i don't repeat already asked
>> questions.
>> First of all: i really like the workflow of argus and its functionality.
>> But i encountered some obstacles that however might also be caused by my
>> misunderstanding.
>>
>> Argus server and client version: 3.0.8.2
>>
>>
>> 1. Is it possible that the PCR functionality is broken? I always get a
>> PCR of -0
>>
>> ra -r argus.out -s sbytes dbytes pcr | head
>> SrcBytes  DstBytes  PCRatio
>> 83        126       -0.000000
>> 1644    4213      -0.000000
>> 83        126       -0.000000
>> 194       0         -0.000000
>> 194       0         -0.000000
>> 73        89        -0.000000
>> 73        101       -0.000000
>> 74        60        -0.000000
>> 3351      4025      -0.000000
>>
>>
>> 2. Did i see right that it is not possible to aggregate on the argus
>> sequence number, or did i overlook something? The main reason i'd
>> want/need this is for an accurate mean duration time. The best i was
>> able to accomplish was an aggregation (via racluster) over proto src/dst
>> addr/port, but this does e.g. not work with ntp queries.
>> I've set ARGUS_FLOW_STATUS_INTERVAL=1800 , and when i look for long
>> connections and aggregate with '-m proto saddr sport daddr dport' , i
>> get a maximum mean time of 1800, as each status message seems to be
>> treated as a separate flow (at least it looks that way to me). When i
>> also use -M norep, it works for all connections where the selected
>> features are unique for the connection, but, as mentioned before, does
>> not work with ntp connections, or for chatty hosts that use the same
>> source port for a destination host twice or more.
>>
>>
>> 3. Another issue that i encounter is a weird filtering behaviour.
>> For example:
>>
>> ra -r argus.out -- 'not (ip proto udp)'
>> ra[26153]: 1524219408.776398 filter syntax error: 'not (ip proto udp)'
>>
>> ra -r argus.out -- 'not (ip proto tcp)'
>> ra[26219]: 12:19:04.157946 filter syntax error: 'not (ip proto tcp)'
>>
>> ra -r argus.out -- 'not (ip proto udp or tcp)'
>> ra[26233]: 12:19:31.355346 filter syntax error: 'not (ip proto udp or ...'
>>
>> But this works:
>> ra -r argus.out -- 'not (ip proto "udp")'
>> ra -r argus.out -- 'not (ip proto 17 or tcp)'
>> ra -r argus.out -- 'not (ip proto "udp" or tcp)'
>> ra -r argus.out -- 'not udp and not tcp'
>>
>>
>> Thanks in advance and regards,
>> Frank
>>
>>
>>




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