Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs

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

I feel like the profile conversation does not get well served by trying to use it to discuss it as a "maturity scale" - they are not really the same thing. CybOX*, STIX and TAXII are very robust protocols that have *a lot* of optional information, and not all of that information is relevant to all consumers or producers of STIX. Just because a product only supports a given profile does not mean that product is not mature... the information in other profiles may not be in any way relevant to that product class, and the product class will likely never support any more as a result.

This is why profiles are so important, because in order for products to inter-operate using these protocols, people using them need to "know what to expect" when they connect the products.

* As well, trying to call out the importance of CybOX in the profile conversation, simply because I don't see it mentioned much in these emails... the CybOX objects supported is a critical component of any profile in my opinion. I foresee a lot of consumer products not being able to support the full set of all possible CybOX objects and their operators.

-
Jason Keirstead
Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
www.ibm.com/security | www.securityintelligence.com

Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown


Mark Clancy ---2015/07/09 01:38:42 PM---Maybe the context that would be helpful to add is what does the thing implementing TAXII\STIX\Cybox

From: Mark Clancy <mclancy@soltra.com>
To: Terry MacDonald <terry.macdonald@threatloop.com>, Eric Burger <Eric.Burger@georgetown.edu>
Cc: "cti@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date: 2015/07/09 01:38 PM
Subject: Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs
Sent by: <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>

---

Maybe the context that would be helpful to add is what does the thing implementing TAXII\STIX\Cybox actually do?
Does it consume specific data, does it publish specific data, or does it aggregate/link all data ?
 
The STIX profile attempted to address this with kind of saying. “Hey this is what I actually support”. If I am a CTI producer focusing on one thing like say DDoS attacks that narrow subset of Stix and Cybox objects defined in the profile may well be the maximum content I would every produce anyway so having a maturity of "X" is the max that I could ever be and similarly if I was a defensive tool that re-directed access to evil web sites support cybox object with Windows Registry keys are fairly irrelevant.  On the other hand if I am sharing hub/aggregation portal or a SIEM those same levels of support in the STIX profile are way below what a customer of that platform would expect.  Those should not get treated in the same way on a maturity curve. 
 
The downside of a "maturity scale" is that it can be viewed as penalizing specialty services/tools that don't need every widget to have maximum effectiveness for what they do where as you kind of want to point out that another platform is less mature as it left a lot of capability on the table with their implementation and therefore have sub-optimal effectiveness given what it could be doing to feel that pressure.
 
So what the heck should we do?
 
We need to put life into the STIX profiles.
We need to figure out a way to differentiate STIX profiles where the maximum needed to do the purpose has been achieved and where things are left on the table. 
 
 For the buyer of a solution this is the critical difference and if we can’t express that difference some how that in my experience tend to lay blame (in the mind of the buyer) with the standards not the implementation by their suppliers.
 
-Mark

Mark Clancy
Chief Executive Officer
SOLTRA | An FS-ISAC and DTCC Company
+1.813.470.2400 office | +1.610.659.6671 US mobile |​  +44 7823 626 535  UK mobile
mclancy@soltra.com | soltra.com
 
One organization's incident becomes everyone's defense.
 
​

---

From: cti@lists.oasis-open.org <cti@lists.oasis-open.org> on behalf of Terry MacDonald <terry.macdonald@threatloop.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 8:26 PM
To: Eric Burger
Cc: cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs 
 
Yes, well stated Pat. I especially like the notion of describing what you need and nothing more. 

Cheers

Terry MacDonald | STIX, TAXII, CybOX Consultant

M: +61-407-203-026
E: terry.macdonald@threatloop.com
W: www.threatloop.com



Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this email do not represent the sentiment of any other party except my own. My views do not necessarily reflect those of my employers.

On 9 July 2015 at 03:45, Eric Burger <Eric.Burger@georgetown.edu> wrote:

I am normally allergic to profiles, but as Bret says, let’s look at this from the perspective of the customer or the product manager. They are not buying STIX. They are buying in to an information sharing ecosystem. No matter how much we wish they did, they will not care whether it is STIX, IODEF, OpenIOC, or carrier pigeon under the hood. We offer that by building STIX-enabled products (product manager), your products will seamlessly fit into the ecosystem, which makes the product more attractive to customers.

We are WAY too early in the process to define levels of STIXiness. However, the profiles (should) fit into use cases. Use cases (should) reflect what customers want to buy (use cases that need solving) and as such what people want to build.

So, I would offer while we are not ready (I’m thinking years here) for building a maturity model, we are getting close (I’m thinking 18 months here) for having ‘profiles’ or “documented use cases” that enumerate which of the optional components of the CTI suite a product needs to have to meaningfully address the use case.


On Jul 8, 2015, at 1:13 PM, Barnum, Sean D. <sbarnum@mitre.org> wrote:

+1 Well stated, Pat. I think that profiles are a key part of use case breakdown on these issues.

sean

From: Patrick Maroney <Pmaroney@Specere.org>
Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 at 12:45 PM
To: "Barnum, Sean D." <sbarnum@mitre.org>, Steve Cell <ikirillov@mitre.org>, Terry MacDonald <terry.macdonald@threatloop.com>, "Jordan, Bret" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>
Cc: David Eilken <deilken@fsisac.us>, "Struse, Richard" <Richard.Struse@HQ.DHS.GOV>, Eric Burger <Eric.Burger@georgetown.edu>, "cti@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs

I may be missing something here and have been hesitating throwing in my usual advocacy for STIX Profiles [Plus] as a method to help manage complexity, interoperability, different world views, use cases, etc.,

We've had almost identical conversations when defining the two initial "Standard STIX Profiles" (1) Simple, (2) Complex. The objective of this exercise was to establish consensus for two initial Community driven "Standard" STIX Profiles and then use these and iterate over them to revise or create new Community "Standard" STIX Profiles.

Dr. Burger makes good arguments on these topics, which I will attempt to paraphrase:

(1) The CTI language should be precise both in terms of how one expresses any given "thing" and similarly precise in how one interprets "things" expressed in this manner.

(2) The language should (must?) limit the ability to represent a given "thing" in multiple ways.

I have always agreed with these objectives.

However, I still see extended STIX Profiles (Human and Machine readable) as a viable approach to providing an Abstraction Layer to help manage Complexity, establish and iterate on common Use Cases, clearly specify what I can convey/consume (from Simple to Complex), and to describe methods and any assumptions (e.g. Tokenization, TLP Mapping Transforms, COA).

Context for my World View is that CTI provides the Inter-exchange mechanisms for specific dialogs between specific members of a very specific Community of Trust and/or Operational Domains. Many variations of these CTIX Communities/Operational Domains will be established. So from these perspectives there is never any intent to forge "One Ring to Rule Them All". Understand there are also those quite legitimately seeking a unified "STIX" package (although I might quip that Einstein was quite legitimately seeking similar unification ;-).

Also note that I've argued for the addition of a very explicit form of STIX Profile: I only describe the things I can (1) Convey, (2) Consume, and/or (3) Understand. this proposed form of STIX Profile can be extremely simple and only needs to enumerate what I can (1) Convey and (2) Consume. This form of STIX Profile would include provisions to optionally share information on policies, exception handling, etc (i.e., My Policy for Undefined Content: (1) Ignore, (2) Discard, (3) Save for future consideration/reprocessing, (4) Reject Entire Package, (5) Hold and Contact Source. However, Key take-away here is: You only describe what you need and nothing more.


Perhaps a different way of expressing the underlying concept of what I'm proposing for consideration :

Before sending our "Little CTI" out in the world on her own: Let's define some initial boundaries and give her some training wheels. As she explores, try's new things, makes mistakes, learns, and continue to expand her horizons, we can eventually remove the Training Wheels.


I was planning to wait for the CTI TC re-organization dust to settle before re-engaging the community in discourse on extending STIX Profiles. However, I wanted to raise it here in the contexts of the ongoing discussions on complexity, interoperability, maturity levels, impediments, to adoption, etc.

Patrick Maroney
Office: (856)983-0001
Cell:: (609)841-5104
Email: pmaroney@specere.org

From: <cti@lists.oasis-open.org> on behalf of Sean Barnum <sbarnum@mitre.org>
Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 at 10:15 AM
To: "Kirillov, Ivan A." <ikirillov@mitre.org>, Terry MacDonald <terry.macdonald@threatloop.com>, "Jordan, Bret" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>
Cc: David Eilken <deilken@fsisac.us>, Richard Struse <Richard.Struse@HQ.DHS.GOV>, Eric Burger <Eric.Burger@georgetown.edu>, "cti@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs

+!
I think Ivan hit the nail squarely on the head here. I think this is the only way that a maturity model can be effective. Blurring the lines together will generally mean the maturity levels are misleading.

sean

From: <Kirillov>, Steve Cell <ikirillov@mitre.org>
Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 at 8:35 AM
To: Terry MacDonald <terry.macdonald@threatloop.com>, "Jordan, Bret" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>
Cc: David Eilken <deilken@fsisac.us>, "Struse, Richard" <Richard.Struse@HQ.DHS.GOV>, Eric Burger <Eric.Burger@georgetown.edu>, "cti@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs

Interoperability is important, but I’m a little wary of having any sort of abstract system of maturity levels without additional context. The thing is, STIX and CybOX support so many different use cases that just saying that one has to meet a certain threshold with regards to a particular maturity level isn’t terribly useful and in my view could be harmful. For example, if my product is only focused on the generation of simple network indicators (IPs, URLs, etc.), why should I have to support every CybOX Object? Also, just saying that one supports a CybOX Object doesn’t necessarily mean that one supports every field in the Object, which is quite relevant for some of the larger objects out there (e.g., the Windows Executable File).

Instead, I would suggest that we begin by documenting, even at a high level, the particular use cases that we wish to support with STIX and CybOX. These could then, in turn, have their own native set of maturity levels (defined independently for STIX and/or CybOX as appropriate ). I could envision this as a taxonomy, e.g.,

• Indicator Characterization/Sharing
  • Host-based Indicator Sharing
    • STIX
      • Level 1: Basic Context
      • Level 2: Level 1 + Supports Sightings
    • CybOX
      • Level 1: Supports File Object
        • File_Path field
        • Hashes field
      • Level 2: Level 1 + Supports Windows Registry Key Object
  • Network Indicator Sharing
• TTP/Malware Characterization Sharing
  • Basic TTP/Malware Characterization
Still arbitrary, but at least we could then tell vendors that if they want to minimally/somewhat/fully support a particular use case in TAXII they need to do XYZ. Also, if we do go down this road of per-use case based maturity levels, I’d recommend limiting the number of levels to 3 to keep things sane:
• Level 1: minimal support – very basic, incomplete support
• Level 2: partial support – typical/average support (with what is commonly expected with regards to the use case)
• Level 3: full support – fully supports the use case, in all facets

Regards,
Ivan

From: Terry MacDonald <terry.macdonald@threatloop.com>
Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 7:26 PM
To: Bret Jordan <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>
Cc: David Eilken <deilken@fsisac.us>, Richard Struse <Richard.Struse@HQ.DHS.GOV>, Eric Burger <Eric.Burger@georgetown.edu>, "cti@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs

I agree. I like the way this is headed.

I would like to see each SC produce a list of levels that help guide vendors towards a development roadmap for their products. The number of levels could be different for each SC if that makes sense to the SC, but would also align as closely as possible with the equivalent level of the other SCs e.g. TAXII Level 2 would work with STIX Level 2 and CybOX Level 2. I prefer separate maturity levels per SC as it frees products to support STIX and CybOX, but not TAXII, or to be fully STIX compliant but not support all CybOX objects. It will give vendors a better chance of documenting their maturity more accurately, and as mentioned gives each SC the ability to identify what the requirements of each level are independently.

Cheers

Terry MacDonald | STIX, TAXII, CybOX Consultant

M: +61-407-203-026
E: terry.macdonald@threatloop.com
W: www.threatloop.com



Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this email do not represent the sentiment of any other party except my own. My views do not necessarily reflect those of my employers.

On 7 July 2015 at 06:55, Jordan, Bret <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com> wrote:
The thing I like about this, if it is simple enough to understand and figure out/test for, is it gives developers/product managers a line in the sand to shoot for.

I often get asked by many a vendor, "how much of STIX / TAXII do I need to implement to do XYZ?"


Thanks,

Bret



Bret Jordan CISSP
Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
Blue Coat Systems
PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
"Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

On Jul 6, 2015, at 14:50, David Eilken <deilken@fsisac.us> wrote:

Eric, I was just about to chime in that we do need some maturity measurements (vs testing/ validation), but I it didn't sound like you are necessarily in contention with that, and I wouldn't advocate for layers and layers of testing.

More on Maturity Measurements, since we recently took a stab at it (below). To Mark's previous points, there is value in essentially chunking the STIX profile into different levels of maturity and also identifying certain features (STIX Editing for example) as measurements of more mature implementations. Same could be done for TAXII (ingesting STIX from a Feed is simple compared to pushing data back to an Inbox). This approach starts to overlap with the more "qualitative" aspects that Jane referred to.

Level 1: Supports a subset of STIX object types (Indicators). Supports a subset of CybOx object types (observables)
Level 2: In addition to level 1, adds basic context like: title, description, types, date/times, producer, etc.
Level 3: In addition to level 2, adds support for Sightings
Level 4: In addition to level 3, adds all STIX and CybOx object types.
Level 5: In addition to level 4, adds support for STIX object updates and Revocation


Testing and measuring maturity would essentially be separate items. One would test sample data against a submitted profile for validation/ interoperability, and then measure it's maturity.


Dave


________________________________________
From: cti@lists.oasis-open.org <cti@lists.oasis-open.org> on behalf of Struse, Richard <Richard.Struse@HQ.DHS.GOV>
Sent: Monday, July 6, 2015 1:09 PM
To: Eric Burger; cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs

I think we are actually in agreement. I'm not advocating heavyweight "suites" of exhaustive tests but I do think we will benefit from a shared understanding of the basic outlines of what it means to be interoperable. Definitely a question that the SC would need to tackle.

-----Original Message-----
From: cti@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:cti@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Eric Burger
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 3:47 PM
To: cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs

Believe it or not, I would shy away from any measurements short of what we say someone needs to do to meet a profile, which is the profile definition itself.

Likewise, I would shy away from test or verification suites. The industry’s experience with standards with elaborate verification suites has been the protocols fail because it takes ages to build the verification suites, they are obsolete when published, which ossifies the underlying specification.

In a decade after everyone is using STIX and TAXII, we can think about formal acceptance suites.

If the specifications are so obfuscated we need specifications to specify what the specifications specify, we have failed.

On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:39 PM, Struse, Richard <Richard.Struse@hq.dhs.gov> wrote:

Makes sense.

If we (the CTI TC) focus on defining what interoperability means for
STIX/TAXII/CybOX and how to measure/verify it, that leaves the door open for
third-party organizations such as testing labs to conduct interoperability
tests using the CTI TC-defined benchmarks.

-----Original Message-----
From: cti@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:cti@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf
Of Eric Burger
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 3:18 PM
To: cti@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [cti] CTI TC Adoption and Interoperability SCs

When I was Chair of the SPEECHSC IETF Work Group (speech server control), we
setup a self-reported interoperability matrix:
http://standardstrack.com/ietf/speechsc/MRCPv2-Plans.html

Same for LEMONADE (mobile messaging):
http://standardstrack.com/ietf/lemonade/Lemonade-Plans.html

The idea is OASIS will *not* become the protocol police. That is too
expensive and carries unlimited liability. What a self-reporting resource
does do is (1) advertise who is running with the standards and (2) who has
tested against whom. That is not a guarantee of interoperability, but it is
lightyears ahead of publishing and praying.


On Jul 6, 2015, at 2:31 PM, Tony Rutkowski <tony@yaanatech.com> wrote:

It would be useful if CTI maintained the equivalent of
the MILE Implementation Report ID just announced below.

Additionally, in a world of dramatic scaling of cloud data
center virtualization, especially NFV, instantiating a CTI
dedicated focus on the subject is important.

--tony

---------------

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-mile-implementreport-05

MILE C. Inacio
Internet-Draft CMU
Intended status: Informational D. Miyamoto
Expires: January 6, 2016 UTokyo
July 5, 2015


MILE Implementation Report
draft-ietf-mile-implementreport-05


Abstract

This document is a collection of implementation reports from vendors,
consortiums, and researchers who have implemented one or more of the
standards published from the IETF INCident Handling (INCH) and
Management Incident Lightweight Exchange (MILE) working groups.



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