MILE Working Group J. Field
Internet-Draft Pivotal
Intended status: Informational S. Banghart
Expires: November 4, 2017 NIST
May 3, 2017

Definition of ROLIE CSIRT Extension
draft-banghart-mile-rolie-csirt-01

Abstract

This document extends the Resource-Oriented Lightweight Information Exchange (ROLIE) core to add the information type categories and related requirements needed to support Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) use cases. The indicator and incident information types are defined as ROLIE extensions. Additional supporting requirements are also defined that describe the use of specific formats and link relations pertaining to the new information types.

Contributing to this document

The source for this draft is being maintained in GitHub. Suggested changes should be submitted as pull requests at <https://github.com/CISecurity/ROLIE>. Instructions are on that page as well. Editorial changes can be managed in GitHub, but any substantial issues need to be discussed on the MILE mailing list.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on November 4, 2017.

Copyright Notice

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Threats to computer security are evolving ever more rapidly as time goes on. As software increases in complexity, the number of vulnerabilities in systems and networks can increase exponentially. Threat actors looking to exploit these vulnerabilities are making more frequent and more widely distributed attacks across a large variety of systems. The adoption of liberal information sharing amongst attackers allows a discovered vulnerability to be shared and used to attack a vulnerable system within a narrow window of time. As the skills and knowledge required to identify and combat these attacks become more and more specialized, even a well established and secure system may find itself unable to quickly respond to an incident. Effective identification of and response to a sophisticated attack requires open cooperation and collaboration between defending operators, software vendors, and end-users. To improve the timeliness of responses, automation must be used to acquire, contextualize, and put to use shared computer security information.

CSIRTS share two primary forms of information: incidents and indicators. Using these forms of information, analysts are able to perform a wide range of activities both proactive and reactive to ensure the security of their systems.

Incident information describes a cyber security incident. Such information may include attack characteristics, information about the attacker, and attack vector data. Sharing this information helps analysts within the sharing community to inoculate their systems against similar attacks, providing proactive protection.

Indicator information describes the symptoms or necessary pre-conditions of an attack. Everything from system vulnerabilities to unexpected network traffic can help analysts secure systems and prepare for an attack. Making this information available for sharing aids in the proactive defense of systems both within an operating unit but also for any CSIRTs that are part of a sharing consortium.

As a means to bring automation of content discovery and dissemination into the CSIRT domain, this specification provides an extension to the Resource-Oriented Lightweight Information Exchange (ROLIE) core [I-D.ietf-mile-rolie] designed to address CSIRT use cases. The primary purpose of this extension is to define two new information types: incident, and indicator, along with formats and link relations that support these information-types.

2. Terminology

The key words "MUST," "MUST NOT," "REQUIRED," "SHALL," "SHALL NOT," "SHOULD," "SHOULD NOT," "RECOMMENDED," "MAY," and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

Definitions for some of the common computer security-related terminology used in this document can be found in Section 2 of [RFC5070].

3. New information-types

This document defines the following two information types:

3.1. The "incident" information type

The "incident" information type represents any information describing or pertaining to a computer security incident. This document uses the definition of incident provided by [RFC4949]. Provided below is a non-exhaustive list of information that may be considered to be an incident information type.

Note again that this list is not exhaustive, any information that in is the abstract realm of an incident should be classified under this information-type.

3.2. The "indicator" information type

The "indicator" information type represents computer security indicators or any information surrounding them. This document uses the definition of indicator provided by [RFC4949]. Some examples of indicator information is provided below, but note that indicator is defined in an abstract sense, to be understood as a flexible and widely-applicable definition.

This list is intended to provide examples of the indicator information-type, not to define it.

4. Usage of CSIRT Information Types in the Atom Publishing Protocol

These requirements apply when a ROLIE repository contains any Collections with categories with scheme attributes of either CSIRT information type, or if the CSIRT information types appear in the Categories document.

4.1. / (forward slash) Resource URL

The forward slash resource URL MUST be supported as defined in Section 5.5 [I-D.ietf-mile-rolie]. Note that this is a stricter requirement than the core document.

5. Usage of CSIRT Information Types in the atom:feed element

This document does not define any additional requirements for Feeds.

6. Usage of CSIRT Information Types in an atom:entry

This document defines the following requirements for any Entries that are of the CSIRT information type categories.

6.1. Use of the atom:link element

These sections define requirements for atom:link elements in Entries. Note that the requirements are determined by the information type that appears in either the Entry or in the parent Feed.

6.1.1. Link relations for the 'incident' information-type

If the category of an Entry is the incident information type, then the following requirements MUST be followed for inclusion of atom:link elements.