Version 4.12.0-beta1

Note: this is a prerelease.

[TBD: release notes for the final release 4.12.0-beta1]

Version 4.5.0

Features and Notable Changes

System/Configuration/Programming-Only

• [data sources, setup, config, etc/docker, tests] Globally renamed the parser class SpamhausEdrop202303Parser to SpamhausEdropParser (defined in n6datasources.parsers.spamhaus and referred to in a few other places -- in particular, being the name of the-parser-dedicated configuration section!) and the executable script n6parser_spamhausedrop202303 to n6parser_spamhausedrop; also, fixed n6datasources.tests.parsers.test_spamhaus.TestSpamhausEdropParser by removing its attribute PARSER_RAW_FORMAT_VERSION_TAG. The rationale for these changes is that the actual parser has never had any raw format version tag assigned.

Less Notable Changes and Fixes

• [data pipeline, lib] n6filter: fixed an event-ownership-criteria-related bug (in n6lib.auth_api.InsideCriteriaResolver's machinery...) regarding handling the (practically hardly probable yet not impossible) corner case of the 0.0.0.0/32 IP network being set in Auth DB as such a criterion... The bug might make n6filter reject all incoming data (because of raised exceptions).

• [tests, docs] Made non-major enhancements and fixes regarding some unit tests and documentation.

Programming-Only

• [tests] n6datasources.tests.parsers._parser_test_mixin: enhanced certain ParserTestMixin-provided checks related to raw format version tags.

Version 4.4.0

Features and Notable Changes

• [data sources, config] Added support for the shadowserver.msmq source (just by adding the parser for it, as there already exists one common collector for all shadowserver.* sources).

• [data sources, config] Removed support for the following sources: blueliv.map and darklist-de.bl (removed both collectors and parsers!) as well as shadowserver.modbus (removed just this source's parser).

• [data sources] The parsers for the dataplane.* sources have been changed to support the current data format (there was a need to change the delimiter and the row parsing mechanism...).

• [data sources] The collector for the abuse-ch.ssl-blacklist source (implemented in n6datasources.collectors.abuse_ch as the class named AbuseChSslBlacklistCollector) used to be able to load the collector state in a legacy format related to the value of the class attribute row_time_legacy_state_key -- that format is no longer supported, as the base class _BaseAbuseChDownloadingTimeOrderedRowsCollect no longer makes use of that attribute. Note: these changes are relevant and breaking only if you need to load your collector state in that old format -- almost certainly you do not.

• [data sources] A new processing mechanism has been added to numerous existing parsers for shadowserver.* sources (by enhancing the _BaseShadowserverParser class, defined in the n6datasources.parsers.shadowserver module) -- concerning events categorized as "amplifier". The mechanism is activated when a CVE-...-like-regex-based match is found in the tag field of the input data -- then the parser, apart from yielding an event (hereinafter referred to as a basic event) with category set to "amplifier", also yields an extra event -- which is identical to the basic one, except that its category is set to "vulnerable" and its name is set to the regex-matched value (which is, basically, the CVE identifier). Because of that, name and category should no longer be declared as parser's constant_items, so now _BaseShadowserverParser provides support for additional_standard_items (which is a parser class's attribute similar to constant_items). For relevant parser classes, the name and category items have been moved from their constant_items to their additional_standard_items.

• [data sources] Now the generic *.misp collector supports loading state also in its legacy Python-2-specific format.

• [data sources, data pipeline, lib] A new restriction (implemented in n6lib.data_spec.fields, concerning the IPv4FieldForN6 and AddressFieldForN6 classes) is that, from now on, the zero IP address (0.0.0.0) is neither a valid component IP within a record dict's address (i.e., its items' ip) or enriched (i.e., keys in the mapping being its second item), nor a valid value of a record dict's dip. Note that this restriction regards all parsers and most of the other data pipeline components (via the machinery of n6lib.record_dict.RecordDict et consortes...).

• [data pipeline] The name of the AMQP input queue declared by n6enrich has been changed (!) from enrichement to enrichment.

• [data pipeline] The n6enrich pipeline component (implemented in n6datapipeline.enrich): from now on, the zero IP address (0.0.0.0), irrespective of its exact formatting (i.e., regardless whether some octets are formatted with redundant leading zeros), is no longer taken into account when IPs are extracted from urls, and when fqdns are resolved to IPs.

• [data pipeline, event db, config] From now on, when n6recorder, during its activity (i.e., within Recorder.input_callback()...), encounters an exception which represents a database/DB API error (i.e., an instance of a MySQLdb.MySQLError subclass, possibly wrapped in (an) SQLAlchemy-specific exception(s)...) whose error code (i.e., <exception>.args[0] being an int, if any) indicates a fatal condition -- then a SystemExit(<appropriate message>) is raised, so that the AMQP input message is requeued and the n6recorder executable script exits with a non-zero status. The set of error codes which are considered fatal (i.e. which trigger this behavior) is configurable -- by setting the fatal_db_api_error_codes configuration option in the recorder section; by default, that set includes only one value: 1021 (i.e., the ERR_DISK_FULL code -- see: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb-error-codes/).

• [portal, rest api, stream api, data pipeline, lib] A security-related behavioral fix has been applied to the event access rights and event ownership machinery (implemented in n6lib.auth_api...): from now on, IP-network-based access or ownership criteria (those stored in the criteria_ip_network and inside_filter_ip_network tables of Auth DB) referring to networks that contain the zero IP address (0.0.0.0) are translated to IP address ranges whose lower bound is 0.0.0.1 (in other words, 0.0.0.0 is excluded). Thanks to that, events without ip are no longer erroneously considered as matching such IP-network-based criteria. In practice, from the security point of view, the fix is most important when it comes to Portal and REST API (considering that those components query Event DB, in whose records the absence of an IP is, for certain technical reasons, represented by the value 0 rather than NULL). For other involved components, i.e., n6filter and n6anonymizer/Stream API, the security risk was rather small or non-existent. Note: as the fix is also related to n6filter, it affects values of min_ip in the inside_criteria part of the JSON returned by the Portal API's endpoint /info/config; they are displayed by the Portal's GUI in the Account information view, below the IP network filter label -- as IP ranges' lower bounds.

• [portal, rest api, lib] A behavioral fix related to the one described above (yet, this time, not related to security) has been applied to the procedure of translation of the ip.net request parameter to the corresponding fragment of Event DB queries (see: the ip_net_query() method of n6lib.db_events.n6NormalizedData...): from now on, each value that refers to a network which contains the zero IP address (0.0.0.0) is translated to an IP address range whose lower bound is 0.0.0.1 (in other words, 0.0.0.0 is excluded); thanks to that, events with no ip are no longer erroneously included in such cases.

• [portal, rest api, lib] A new restriction (implemented in n6lib.data_spec.fields, concerning the IPv4FieldForN6 and AddressFieldForN6 classes) is that the zero IP address (0.0.0.0) is no longer a valid value of the ip and dip request parameters received by REST API's endpoints and analogous Portal API's endpoints. Also, regarding the Portal's GUI, the front-end validation part related to the IP search parameter has been appropriately adjusted.

• [portal, rest api, lib] The mechanism of result data cleaning (implemented as a part of a certain non-public stuff invoked in n6lib.data_spec.N6DataSpec.clean_result_dict()) has been enhanced in such a way that the address field of cleaned result dicts no longer includes any items with ip equal to the zero IP address (0.0.0.0), i.e., they are filtered out even if they appear in some Event DB records (they could when it comes to legacy data). Note that it is complemented by the already existing mechanism of removing from raw result dicts any ip and dip fields whose values are equal to the zero IP address (see: n6lib.db_events.make_raw_result_dict()...).

• [test rest api, config, lib] n6lib.generate_test_events: several changes and enhancements regarding the RandomEvent class have been made, including backward incompatible additions/removals/modifications of options defined by its config spec, affecting the way the optional test REST API application (provided by n6web.main_test_api et consortes...) is configured using generator_rest_api.* options... Also, most of the RandomEvent's configuration-related stuff has been factored out to a new mixin class, RandomEventGeneratorConfigMixin.

System/Configuration/Programming-Only

• [data sources, data pipeline, config, etc/docker] Added, fixed, changed and removed several config prototype (*.conf) files in the directories: N6DataSources/n6datasources/data/conf/, N6DataPipeline/n6datapipeline/data/conf/ and etc/n6/. Note: for some of them, manual adjustments in user's actual configuration files are required (see the relevant comments in those files...).

• [setup, lib] N6Lib's dependencies: changed the version of dnspython from 1.16 to 2.4. Also, added a new dependency, importlib_resources, with version locked as >=5.12, <5.13.

• [setup, data pipeline] N6DataPipeline's dependencies: temporarily locked the version of intelmq as <3.2.

Programming-Only

• [data pipeline] n6datapipeline.enrich.Enricher: renamed the url_to_fqdn_or_ip() method to url_to_hostname(), and changed its interface regarding the return value: now it is always either a non-empty str or None.

• [lib] n6lib.common_helpers and n6sdk.encoding_helpers: renamed the try_to_normalize_surrogate_pairs_to_proper_codepoints() function to replace_surrogate_pairs_with_proper_codepoints().

• [lib] Removed three functions from n6lib.common_helpers: is_ipv4(), is_pure_ascii() and lower_if_pure_ascii().

• [lib] n6lib.db_events: removed IPAddress's constant attributes NONE and NONE_STR (instead of them use the n6lib.const's constants LACK_OF_IPv4_PLACEHOLDER_AS_INT and LACK_OF_IPv4_PLACEHOLDER_AS_STR).

• [lib] n6lib.record_dict: removed RecordDict's constant attribute setitem_key_to_target_key (together with some internal experimental mechanism based on it...).
  ...

Version 4.0.1

• [docs, setup] Fixed generation of the docs by upgrading mkdocs to the version 1.2.4.

Version 4.0.0

This release is a big milestone.

Among others:

• the n6 Portal gained support for OpenID Connect-based single sign-on (SSO) authentication;

• the n6 Stream API (STOMP-based) now supports authentication based on API keys (those which have already been accepted by the n6 REST API); the new mechanism, implemented as a part of the N6BrokerAuthApi package, replaces the previously used mechanism (which was based on X.509 client certificates);

• added a significant number of components obtaining and processing security event data from external sources: 26 collectors and 86 parsers; now, in total, we have 35 collectors and 91 parsers (see the N6DataSources package);

• got rid of the Python-2-compatible legacy code (most of which were Python 2 versions of collectors and parsers) that used to reside in N6Core; the accompanying Python 2 packages (N6CoreLib, N6Lib-py2 and N6SDK-py2) have also been removed; note that the components related to active data sources have been migrated to Python 3 (8 collectors and 7 parsers -- now they reside in N6DataSources); therefore, n6 is now Python-3-only (finally!);

• significant performance improvements have been accomplished: certain kinds of data queries (via the n6 REST API or n6 Portal) have become much faster, and n6aggregator's memory consumption has been considerably reduced;

• also, many minor improvements, a bunch of fixes, some refactoring and various cleanups have been made.

Note that some of the changes are not backwards-compatible.

Version 3.0.1

• [docs] A bunch of fixes and improvements regarding the documentation, including major changes to its structure, layout and styling.

• [setup] do_setup.py: regarding the default value of the option --additional-packages under Python 3, the version of the mkdocs package has been pinned (1.2.3), and the mkdocs-material package (providing the material docs theme) has been added (and its version is also pinned: 8.0.3); regarding the same under Python 2, the mkdocs package has been removed.

Version 3.0.0

This release is a big milestone. It includes, among others:

• migration to Python 3

• in the n6 data pipeline infrastructure: optional integration with IntelMQ

• in the n6 Portal: a new frontend (implemented using React), two-factor authentication (based on TOTP), user's/organization's own data management (including config update and password reset forms, with related e-mail notices), and other goodies...

• in the n6 REST API: API-key-based authentication

• and many, many more improvements, a bunch of fixes, as well as some refactoring, removals and cleanups...

Note that many of the changes are not backwards-compatible.

Also, note that most of the main elements of n6 -- namely: N6DataPipeline, N6DataSources, N6Portal, N6RestApi, N6AdminPanel, N6BrokerAuthApi, N6Lib and N6SDK -- are now Python-3-only (more precisely: are compatible with CPython 3.9).

---

The legacy, Python-2-only stuff -- most of which are collectors and parsers (external-data-sources-related components) -- reside in N6Core and N6CoreLib; the collectors and parsers placed in N6Core, if related to non-obsolete external data sources, will be gradually migrated to Python-3-only N6DataSources (so that, finally, we will be able to rid of N6Core and N6CoreLib). There are also Python-2-only variants of N6Lib and N6SDK: N6Lib-py2 and N6SDK-py2 (needed only as dependencies of N6Core/N6CoreLib).

Version 2.0.0

This was the first public release of n6 (on 2018-06-22).