Re: [openc2-imple] CACAO

[Dave Lemire <dave.lemire@g2-inc.com>]

Somewhat related: at the last Integrated Cyber, there was a presentation on "Shareable Workflows", which seems like it has at least some things in common with CACAO. There's an overview of the concept on YouTube:ÂÂhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG1S3BIpqrM. OfÂcourse, IACD went with BMPN as the basis for their approach (partly to take advantage of available open source BPMN editing tools), and the CACAO proposal explicitly deprecates XML-based solutions in favor of JSON, so likely never the twain will meet. But I thought this worth sharing nonetheless.

On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 3:54 PM duncan sfractal.com <duncan@sfractal.com> wrote:

FYI to IC-SC members in case you hadnât seen the attached on a new OASIS TC on CACAO and may be interested in joining that TC as well. CACAO is âCollaborative Automated Course of Action Operationsâ basically a standard for sharing âplaybooksâ.

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It was (maybe still will be?) an IETF group started by a common crew of OpenC2 and STIX (Bret, Allan, Jyoti are the co-authors of the IETF document (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-jordan-cacao-charter/?include_text=1) and it specifically mentions OpenC2 as one of the potential choices for the atomic actions in the playbook.

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I think CACAO is already on the IC-SC list of things that âtransportâ (or in this case âuseâ) OpenC2. If it isnât, it should be (sftractal opinion, not TC chair pronouncement). Iâm not advocating IC-SC doing anything. I assume if OpenC2 is lacking in anything CACAO needs, then theyâll tell us what needs changing/adding and weâll handle it (as opposed to them creating a parallel language because we donât have something they need). This email is just FYI so members with an interest can participate.

Â

Duncan Sparrell

sFractal Consulting LLC

iPhone, iTypo, iApologize

I welcome VSRE emails. Learn more atÂhttp://vsre.info/

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From: Chet Ensign <chet.ensign@oasis-open.org>
Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 10:29 AM
To: "tc-announce@lists.oasis-open.org" <tc-announce@lists.oasis-open.org>, "members@lists.oasis-open.org" <members@lists.oasis-open.org>, OASIS Charter Discuss List <oasis-charter-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org>, OASIS TAB <tab@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: [members] Call for Comment: proposed Charter for Collaborative Automated Course of Action Operations (CACAO) TC

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OASIS Members:

A draft TC charter has been submitted to establish the Collaborative Automated Course of Action Operations (CACAO) Technical Committee. In accordance with the OASIS TC Process Policy section 2.2: (https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/tc-process#formation) the proposed charter is hereby submitted for comment. The comment period shall remain open until 29 July 2019 23:59 UTC.

OASIS maintains a mailing list for the purpose of submitting comments on proposed charters. Any OASIS member may post to this list by sending email to: oasis-charter-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org. All messages will be publicly archived at: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oasis-charter-discuss/. Members who wish to receive emails must join the group by selecting "join group" on the group home page: http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oasis-charter-discuss/. Employees of organizational members do not require primary representative approval to subscribe to the oasis-charter-discuss e-mail.

A telephone conference will be held among the Convener, the OASIS TC Administrator, and those proposers who wish to attend within four days of the close of the comment period. The announcement and call-in information will be noted on the OASIS Charter Discuss Group Calendar.

We encourage member comment and ask that you note the name of the proposed TC (CACAO) in the subject line of your email message.

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Section 1: TC Charter

(1)(a) TC Name

Collaborative Automated Course of Action Operations (CACAO) for Cyber Security

(1)(b) Statement of Purpose

This TC will create a standard that implements the course of action playbook model for cybersecurity operations. Each type of collaborative course of action playbook, such as prevention, mitigation and remediation, will consist of a sequence of cyber defense actions that can be executed by the various technological solutions that can act on those actions. These course of action playbooks should be referenceable by other cyber threat intelligence that provides support for related data such as threat actors, campaigns, intrusion sets, malware, attack patterns, and other adversarial techniques, tactics, and procedures.

This TC may submit the specifications produced by this TC to other standards bodies (e.g., ITU-T, ETSI) for additional ratification.

Business Benefits

To defend against threat actors and their tactics, techniques, and procedures, organizations need to manually identify, create, and document prevention, mitigation, and remediation steps. These steps when grouped together form a course of action playbook that can be used to protect systems, networks, data, and users. The problem is, once these course of action playbooks have been created there is no standardized and structured way to document them or easily share them across organizational boundaries and technological solutions.

(1)(c) Scope

This solution will specifically enable:

1. the creation and documentation of course of action playbooks in a structured machine-readable format
2. organizations to digitally sign course of action playbooks
3. the securely sharing and distribution of course of action playbooks across organizational boundaries and technological solutions
4. the creation and documentation of processing instructions for course of action playbooks in a machine readable format

It is out of scope of the WG to define or recommend actual investigation, detection, prevention, mitigation, and remediation steps for a given specific threat (e.g., defining how to remediate Fuzzy Panda on Windowsâ 10). The TC will not consider how shared actions are operationalized on specific systems, except where it is necessary for those actions to interact with the playbook including the response expected for a specific action or step.

(1)(d) Deliverables

This TC has the following major goals and deliverables

Â- CACAO Use Cases and Requirements
 Â- The TC will identify and document the core requirements needed to support the common use cases that are done today.

Â- CACAO Functional Architecture: Roles and Interfaces
 Â- The TC will specify the system functions and roles that are needed to enable collaborative courses of action playbooks.

Â- CACAO Protocol Specification
 Â- The TC will identify and standardize the configuration for at least one protocol that can be used to distribute course of action playbooks over the interfaces identified in the CACAO functional architecture.

Â- CACAO Data Model
 Â- This TC will define a normative data model for CACAO using property tables similar to how the OASIS STIXv2 data model was defined. This data model will be designed to explicitly work with I-JSON and all examples will be done in JSON. The TC will also define JSON as the mandatory to implement serialization for this version of CACAO. The TC may decide to also document the data model in other non-normative forms that would be located in an appendix.

Â- CACAO Interoperability Test Documents
 Â- This TC will define and create a series of tests and documents to assist with interoperability of the various systems involved. These documents can be used by technological solutions adopting the CACAO course of action playbooks to help ensure that they do so in an interoperable manner. The TC will decide how best to publish these documents.

(1)(e) IPR Mode

This TC will operate under the Non-Assertion IPR mode as defined in the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy.

(1)(f) Audience

Security Vendors, Incident Responders, Security Operation Centers (SOCs), Cyber Defence Centers, Threat Intelligence Analysts, Large Enterprise, Governments

(1)(g) Language

The CACAO TC will conduct its business in English.

(Optional References for Section 1)

https://www.lookingglasscyber.com/blog/cacao-a-future-for-collaborative-cybersecurity-course-of-action/


Section 2: Additional Information

(2)(a) Identification of Similar Work

We do not know of any existing open source or open standard solutions that address security playbooks. There are several proprietary solutions that exist, but those are not shareable in an open standards way. Some solutions like BPMN exist that deal with process management for a business in XML format. However, this group does not believe that BPMN is the best solution for trying to solve the cyber security playbook problem. Some additional frameworks such as:

https://nifi.apache.orgâ
https://camunda.com/

may be utilized or referenced in the design of CACAO playbooks.

(2)(b) First TC Meeting

Tuesday September 24th 20th 2019 at 11:00 AM US-ET and will be done via Zoom.

(2)(c) Ongoing Meeting Schedule

The TC will plan on having bi-weekly meetings on Tuesdays at 11:00 AM US-ET.

(2)(d) TC Proposers

Bret Jordan - Bret_Jordan@symantec.com
Allan Thomson - athomson@lookingglasscyber.com
Jason Keirstead - Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com
Allen Hadden - ahadden@us.ibm.com
Arnaud Taddei - arnaud_taddei@symantec.com

(2)(e) Primary Representatives' Support

âCACAO Technical Committee represents a significant opportunity to define a standard mechanism for security playbook for security operations and incident response. LookingGlass Cyber Solutions firmly supports the creation of this TC and will provide active support in creating the specificationsâ - Allan Thomson, CTO, LookingGlass Cyber Solutions.

âThe need for automated and shareable cyber security playbooks is critical to improving operational cyber security. CACAO will enable organizations, both big and small, to prevent, mitigate, or remediate cyber threats more quickly and with greater confidence. Symantec Corporation fully supports the creation of this TC and the participation of our proposer(s) listed above.â - Bret Jordan, Director Office of the CTO, Symantec Corporation.

"The ability to efficiently collaborate across vendors on incident response actions and playbooks, will fill a critical gap in the cybersecurity operations ecosystem, and enable better outcomes for our clients. IBM Security is proud to support the formation of this TC and the participation of our proposers listed above." - Jason Keirstead - Chief Architect of Threat Management, ÂIBM Security

(2)(f) TC Convener

Bret Jordan - bret_jordan@symantec.com

(2)(g) OASIS Member Section

N/A

(2)(h) Anticipated Contributions

Introduction https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-jordan-cacao-introduction/

(2)(i) FAQ Document

N/A

(2)(j) Work Product Titles and Acronyms

CACAOÂ

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/chetÂ
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Chet Ensign

Chief Technical Community Steward
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
http://www.oasis-open.org

Mobile: +1 201-341-1393Â