Re: [cti] Re: [EXT] RE: [cti] Option 1 vs. Option 7 Powerpoint Example

["Jason Keirstead" <Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com>]

What I have come to realize, in conjunction
with what Allan is pointing out, is the fundamental disconnect between
an event-based concern and a state-based concern is the following: 

* an event-based system has no need
to currently maintain the observed_data object* - it is likely currently
thrown away. The observations inside are consumed for whatever purposes
they are meant for, but the container is likely not preserved.

This is why this discussion I think
is so hard to have. The relationships to objects inside an observable container,
only make sense if the container is even thought as data that needs to
be preserved at all - which implies it is conveying persistent state, not
just events to be accumulated. 

It's two totally different use cases.

-
Jason Keirstead
Lead Architect - IBM Security Connect
www.ibm.com/security

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those
who hustle." - Unknown 




From:      
 Bret Jordan <Bret_Jordan@symantec.com>
To:      
 "Kelley, Sarah
E." <skelley@mitre.org>, Allan Thomson <athomson@lookingglasscyber.com>,
Gary Jay Katz <gary.katz@FireEye.com>, "cti@lists.oasis-open.org"
<cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date:      
 10/31/2018 04:22 PM
Subject:    
   [cti] Re: [EXT]
RE: [cti] Option 1 vs. Option 7 Powerpoint Example
Sent by:    
   <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>

---

All,

When I look at it, the problem I see / hear from Gary / Jeff / Sean / Sarah is that internal relationships on the observable container do not really work for what people need. Thus having external relationships and all their goodness is what people need.

You can do that in one of three ways.  

a) Make cyber observables top level objects (option 1 prime from previous discussions)
b) Provide some sort of deep referencing inside of Observed Data (people have consistently shot down this idea)
c) Try and pull out the relationships that really need to be external and leave the rest. (A combination of option 7 with some tweaks that John Wunder has brought up)

So options a, b, and c are technically all possible, though option b where you do deep referencing inside of an Observed Data is just awful and will probably be the no-end-to-pain.

Bret

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From: cti@lists.oasis-open.org <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
on behalf of Kelley, Sarah E. <skelley@mitre.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 12:04:09 PM
To: Allan Thomson; Gary Jay Katz; cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [EXT] RE: [cti] Option 1 vs. Option 7 Powerpoint Example
 
Allan (and all),
 
I think this is a really profound realization.
I have been coming at this with a âstate-basedâ idea, as in âgive me
everything you know about Xâ. Having worked in a SOC, I also realize the
use cases for âevent-basedâ data.  I, for one, would be curious
about your possible ideas for being able to represent both.
 
Thanks,
 
Sarah Kelley
Lead Cybersecurity Engineer, T8B2
Defensive Operations
The MITRE Corporation
703-983-6242
skelley@mitre.org

 
From: cti@lists.oasis-open.org <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
On Behalf Of Allan Thomson
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 10:44 AM
To: Gary Jay Katz <gary.katz@FireEye.com>; cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [cti] Option 1 vs. Option 7 Powerpoint Example
 
Gary â thanks for sharing.
 
One of the things that Iâve realized as
part of reviewing the use cases is the differences in how we talk about
things.
 
Iâve come to the conclusion that we are
talking about 2 different aspects of our problem set.

1. Event-based
   Vs
1. State-based

From my perspective, Option 1 is really
representing a state of entities and connectedness between those entities
after multiple events have occurred.
 
Option 7 (current observed-data model)
represents discrete individual events that would occur over time.
 
This would be similar to having a state-machine
defined (I,.e. the resultant intel model) and then individual events (intel
events) that cause you to update the state-model. 
 
Think of the intel model as the campaigns,
actors, email-addresses, ipsâ.etc.
 
Think of the events as changes to those
intel objects (i.e. observed data model).
 
Conflating the 2 of these is not the solution.
 
The question is whether we are defining
STIX to communicate event-based model or a state-based model.
 
I think we should consider the possibility
that both are valid things to do and therefore we should consider how to
approach using STIX to clearly articulate when we are

1. Sending discrete events that have been observed at a specific time and any associated meta data to that event
2. Sending a state model that represents the collective intelligence and associated relationships across that state built up over time

I think if we recognize that both models
require something different and factor that into our STIX data model discussion
then we might find a way to solve both.
 
I have some ideas but this email is already
too long.
 
Allan
 
From: "cti@lists.oasis-open.org"
<cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
on behalf of Gary Jay Katz <gary.katz@FireEye.com>
Date: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 6:20 AM
To: "cti@lists.oasis-open.org"
<cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [cti] Option 1 vs. Option 7 Powerpoint Example
 
Thank you to everyone for taking time to
discuss Option 1 and Option 7.  As usual, Jane did an excellent job
capturing the discussion, including screen shots from the presentation.
 John-Mark requested that I resend out the slides from yesterdayâs
discussion with any updates, which I believe is valuable as it will allow
us to continue the discussion over email.  As an update, I did include
an optional Observed Data object in Option 1.  The inclusion of an
Observed Data object would show that the producer directly observed the
email with an attachment vs. indirectly having that information (ex. Gathered
the information from external reporting).  
 
The purpose of this example is to show
a very reasonable use-case for a cyber security analyst and discuss how
that data can be represented in the STIX standard using either Option 1
or Option 7.  I have not created JSON versions of the example in both
Option 1 and Option 7 form.  My assumption would be, to Allanâs point,
that the Option 1 version is more verbose, although only slightly.  This
does mean that the data size of the document is larger and to earlier points,
in other use cases this difference can be even larger.  This example
though highlights an even larger issue.  Option 7 does not allow some
common useful relationships to be represented within the format.  Having
relationships to show that a file found in an email, which analysis shows
beacons to a C2 that resolved to a specific domain is not possible in Option
7.  The receiver must infer this information through 3 disjointed
objects.  
 
Our greatest risk to adoption is not asking
companies and organizations to update their STIX implementations to support
Option 1 or the increase in data size for certain use cases.  Our
greatest risk is having the trust of the userbase.  One day, far in
the future (if we do our jobs well), analysts will not even be aware of
STIX being used in the background to transfer their data.  Today though,
they are paying attention, they will be asked by their leadership to look
at the standard and provide their opinion on how valuable it is to adopt
STIX, and analysts will not understand why they canât represent a file
found in an email has a C2 beacon that resolves to a domain (or something
similar).  The answer to just trust us that the receiver is going
to auto-correlate that information back together, probably wonât fly.
 
 
Some of these issues were masked by the
limited use cases possible in STIX 2.0 and 2.1.  As the standard evolves
to support Malware, Infrastructure and Incident objects these issues will
become very pronounced.  We will continue to put band-aids on the
standard as a result of the deficiency (ex. See the malware proposal submitted
by Jeff Mates and I earlier this year).  Option 1 will resolve these
deficiencies.  Will it take work and effort, yes, but that work and
effort will only continue to grow the longer we wait.
 
-Gary
 
Some Metrics on the two implementations
of the use cases:
Option 1:
8 Objects (1 optional)  (2 SDOs, 6
SOOs)
5 Embedded refs (3 optional)
6 Relationships (6 SROs)
 
Option 7
15 Objects* (6 SDOs, 9 cyber observables)
5 Embedded refs (2 within Malware not shown)
2 Relationships (2 SROs) â Note some relationships
in the example cannot be represented in this option
* Cyber Observables are not full objects
in this option.  Therefore must be embedded in an SDO but are lighter
objects that take less text to represent.
 
 
From: <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
on behalf of Jane Ginn <jg@ctin.us>
Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2018 at 6:10 PM
To: "cti@lists.oasis-open.org"
<cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [cti] Groups - Weekly Working Call - Notes uploaded
 
Submitter's message
CTI TC:

Here is the PDF of the notes from the Working Call. I included the figures
in this version.

Best regards,

-- Ms. Jane Ginn

Document Name: Weekly Working Call - Notes

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Description
Discussed Option 1 and Option 7 for Cyber Observables
Download Latest Revision
Public Download Link

---

Submitter: Ms. Jane Ginn
Group: OASIS Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) TC
Folder: Meeting Notes
Date submitted: 2018-10-30 15:10:05

 
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