Overview:

The Splunk Add-on for Recorded Future is designed specifically for Splunk Enterprise Security.

This Add-on integrates with the Splunk ES Threat Intelligence Framework by adding a feed containing information security threat indicators from Recorded Future. With this added feature, defenders can automate the process of finding connections between internal incidents and external sources. This can work bidirectionally: searching Recorded Future for more context around internally observed indicators, or testing trending indicators from open source reporting against internal data sets.

The Add-on also simplifies the workflow of analysts working within the ES environment by adding contextual actions to the Incident Review and event searching and reporting views. This includes information on IPs, domains, file hashes and CVEs.

For more information on Recorded Future, visit www.recordedfuture.com.

Documentation:

Requirements

• Splunk ES must be installed on the Splunk system
• A valid Recorded Future API token is required.
• The Splunk server running the app must be able to download a CSV
  file containing Recorded Future's IP risk list from
  https://api.recordedfuture.com/.

Installation

To install this Add-on, perform the following steps:

1. Download the latest TA release from Splunkbase (apps.splunk.com)
2. In Splunk, select "Manage Apps" from the drop-down menu next
   to the Splunk logo on the upper left of the screen
3. Select "Install app from file"
4. Browse to the location of the TA-recorded_future.spl file,
   select it and upload. Restart Splunk when prompted to do so.
5. Go back to "Manage Apps". Locate "Splunk ES Add-on for
   Recorded Future" in the list and run "Set up".
6. Go to Settings->Data inputs->Scripts. Enable the script
   get-rf-threatlists.py that corresponds to your platform
   (Windows or *nix).
7. In the Enterprise Security menu bar,
   click Configure -> Incident Management -> Incident Review Settings.

8. Click the button 'Add new entry' in the "Incident Review -
   Event Attributes" section. Add the following Label and Field
   combinations:

   Label                            Field
   ---------------------            ----------------------
   RF Risk Score                    rf_a_risk_score
   RF Risk Score Threshold          rf_risk_score_threshold
   RF Triggered Rules               rf_b_risk_string
   RF Evidence Details              rf_evidence_details_0
   RF Evidence Details 2            rf_evidence_details_1
   RF Evidence Details 3            rf_evidence_details_2
   RF Evidence Details 4            rf_evidence_details_3
   RF Evidence Details 5            rf_evidence_details_4
   RF Evidence Details (remaining)  rf_evidence_details_rest
   

9. A restart of the Splunk instance will be required once the
   installation has completed.

10. If you haven't already done so, enable the Enterprise
    Security correlation search called "Threat Activity Detected"
    a. In the Enterprise Security menu bar,
    click Configure -> Content Management
    b. In the filter bar, type "Threat Activity Detected"
    c. Click the link 'Enable' to enable the correlation search
11. Optionally, make the logs from the app available in the Splunk
    GUI. Ex:
    - Add an index _TA-recorded_future
    - Setup a Data input that monitors
    $SPLUNK_HOME/var/log/TA-recorded_future and insert these events
    into the new index.

Alternatively, you can download the Add-on using the Splunk Web interface's "Find more apps online" feature. Steps 5 and onwards above must still be completed.

Upgrade from 2.x versions

The lookup file's name has changed, the old file should be removed. Please delete:

$SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/TA-recorded_future/lookups/rf-threatlist.csv

Setup

After installation, you will need to set up the Add-on for Recorded Future to communicate with the Recorded Future API. The setup page will request your API token, and the Add-on will not import threat information without this. This is described in step 4 of the installation procedure above.

In the setup view it's also possible to add proxy information if the Splunk server lacks direct Internet
access. The format for the proxy configuration is "https://proxy.example.com:1234" (please note that Splunk
only allows https based proxies).

It is also possible to increase the verbosity of the logging in the Setup view by checking the enable
debug logging checkbutton.

Advanced setup

The script which retrieves the lists of IP number etc will select a Risk Score Threshold which will
produce a set number of entries in the list. By default this number is 25.000. This number can be
changed by editing the file recorded_future.conf in the local directory in the app directory. Ex:

[ip_risk_list]
max_entries = 25000

Be aware of that increasing this number will significantly increase the load on the server.

External data access and scripts

The app uses a script to retrieve threat information from Recorded Future. This script is run (default every 60 minutes) from a stanza in inputs.conf. This threat information contains IP numbers, Domain names and Hashes which are considered suspicious or malicious by Recorded Future. Each entity has a Risk Score and evidence of why that is assigned to it. The data contains all entities with a Risk Score of 25 or more (100 being the maximum).

During the execution one https call is made to https://api.recordedfuture.com/ to retrieve the information which is then processed and stored on the Splunk server for each type of data.

Cluster considerations

If using a large risk lists (see the Setup section above) it may be advisable to avoid transferring it across cluster nodes. This will however force the lookups to be performed locally on the search head, putting additional strain on that node.

If you want it to perform the search locally, then you can:
- add the parameter local=true to the custom search,
- you can blacklist the lookup file from the indexers:
https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/6.4.3/Admin/Distsearchconf

If the Knowledge bundle is too large it may be necessary to lower the max_entries values in recorded_future.conf.

In the README folder of the app directory there is a more detailed instruction about how to deploy the app in a search head cluster environment.

More information

For more information and to set up your trial or paid subscription, please contact splunk@recordedfuture.com (US east coast business hours).