Snare Agent for the Firefox Browser InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 1 of 11
Intersect Alliance International Pty Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide. Intersect Alliance Pty Ltd shall not be liable for errors contained herein or for direct, or indirect damages in connection with the use of this material. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means except as expressly permitted by Intersect Alliance International Pty Ltd. This does not include those documents and software developed under the terms of the open source General Public Licence, which covers the Snare agents and some other software. The Intersect Alliance logo and Snare logo are registered trademarks of Intersect Alliance International Pty Ltd. Other trademarks and trade names are marks and names of their owners as may or may not be indicated. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used here in an editorial context without intent of infringement. Specifications and content are subject to change without notice. InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 2 of 11
About this guide This document introduces you to the functionality of the Snare Agent for the Firefox browser, and highlights a few example browser log investigation strategies. Other resources that may be useful to read include: Snare Server Installation Guide Snare Server Users Guide The Snare Toolset A White Paper. Table of Contents: 1. Snare Agent for Firefox 1.1 Web Requests 1.2 Cookie Changes 1.3 Snare internal messages 2. Installation & Configuration 3. Troubleshooting 4. Analysis Appendix A: Testing without a collection server InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 3 of 11
1. Snare Agent for Firefox Snare for Firefox is a browser add on that monitors web requests made by your browser and cookie activity by remote web sites, and sends the results to a central server for collection and analysis. 1.1 Web Requests When you access a web site, your browser connects to the main destination page, downloads the HTML data, and then attempts to access any additional files referenced by the page in question; these may be images, cascading style sheet files, or a range of other alternatives. Snare will log each of these access requests, and report the details of the transaction. Note that Snare makes no distinction between normal mode, and incognito mode in your browser. Browsing in incognito mode will NOT be recorded in your browsing history, but will still be picked up by Snare. Snare also makes no distinction between http and https mode; it will report on both. Date / Time 2013 04 1816:31:15 Source System INFERNO Log Type Browser Browser and Version Firefox 20.0 UserName user Access Type GET URL http://www.google.com.au/imghp?hl=en&tab=ii Referrer http://www.google.com.au/ Bytes downloaded 23 HTTP Result Code 200 1.2 Cookie Changes Cookie additions, deletions and modifications will be reported by Snare. Although the content of the cookies in question will not be available, the cookie name, and scope will be reported. Date / Time 2013 04 1816:32:27 Source System INFERNO Log Type Browser Browser and Version Firefox 20.0 UserName user EventID COOKIE ADDED Cookie Name recently_watched_video_id_list Cookie Scope.youtube.com 1.3 Snare internal messages Modifications to the add on settings, and attempts to restart the agent, will be sent back to the collection server prior to the application of the changes. Although by no means is this a guaranteed/fool proof way of detecting that the agent settings have been modified by the user, it will allow security administrators to detect casual or accidental modifications. InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 4 of 11
Date / Time 2013 04 1816:32:27 Source System INFERNO Log Type Browser Browser and Version Firefox 20.0 UserName user EventID SNARE Details Snare Preference change by user value for destaddress has been changed to AnotherServer.local InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 5 of 11
2. Installation & Configuration What You Need.. The Snare for Firefox XPI installation package, from the InterSect Alliance web site. A log collection server such as: The Snare Server by InterSect Alliance International. A TCP capable syslog server. Snare for Firefox is available from the InterSect Alliance web site. If you are running Firefox as your current browser, the following window will appear: If you do not wish to install Snare for Firefox on your current browser session, it is recommended that you RIGHT CLICK on the download link, and choose the Save link as.. option, in order to download the installation package to your local workstation. If you wish to install the package on your current browser, choose the Install button once it becomes active. InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 6 of 11
To configure the agent / add on, select the Add ons menu item from your Firefox Tools menu. A new tab will open, displaying the Add ons manager. Select the Preferences button, to make changes to the Snare for Firefox settings. You may also choose to Disable the add on, or Remove the add on. Note that, due to the security strategy employed by most browsers, including Firefox, the user has permission to add, remove, or modify the settings of, any installed add on. Snare will do its best to send out a log event to the original server whenever settings are changed, or when the user has requested that the add on be disabled, but there is fundamentally no way for Snare to block manual modifications to configuration settings, or complete removal of the add on.
Snare for Firefox provides the following preference settings: Destination Address The IP address or domain name, for the server that should receive Snare for Firefox log data. Destination Port Choose from either Snare (TCP port 6161) or Syslog (TCP port 514). If either of the settings need to be changed, please tell the add on to attempt to close, and re open it s TCP connection to the target server/port by clicking the Apply Changes button. InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 8 of 11
3. Troubleshooting Snare operates as a background task, and there are no interactive indications that Snare is unable to forward log data to the correct destination. However, if log data cannot be sent to the remote server, Snare adds the log to an internal cache. The cache is able to hold approximately 3,000 messages. Every 60 seconds, Snare will attempt to flush the cache by reconnecting to the remote server, and pushing the data out. If, at the end of this attempt, Snare is still unable to send events, it will write a message to the Firefox console. You can access the Firefox console from your Tools menu. Select the Web Developer submenu, and the Error Console item. A new window will appear. Choose the Messages button to filter out extraneous information. If Snare cannot send log data to the remote server, the following messages will be displayed: You may also wish to use a network analysis tool (such as Wireshark ) to inspect packets as they traverse your network. InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 9 of 11
4. Analysis Version 6.1 of the Snare Server, incorporates new objective templates relating specifically to Browser logs. The templates currently include: Inappropriate material (pornographic links) Cookie changes Social media access Snare agent related messages Ad hoc queries of arbitrary scope. Output components for Browser related content include, but are not limited to: A pattern map, divided into 15 minute segments. Tabular output Pie, Line and Horizontal graphs of various types. Bandwidth analysis graphs. CSV/TXT output Random image samples InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 10 of 11
Appendix A: Testing without a collection server If you wish to test the Snare for Firefox agent, but do not have a Snare or Syslog server available, the free tool socat is available on both Unix and Windows operating systems, and can function as a simple display system for incoming events from the Snare for Firefox agent. A sample invocation is available below: user@myhost ~ $ socat tcp4-listen:6161 - inferno Browser 2013-04-19 16:08:14 Firefox 20.0 user GET https://sb-ssl.google.com/safebrowsing/newkey?client=navclient-auto-ffox 154 200 inferno Browser 2013-04-19 16:08:14 Firefox 20.0 user COOKIE ADDED PREF.google.com 0 inferno Browser 2013-04-19 16:08:17 Firefox 20.0 user GET http://www.google.com.au/ -1 200 inferno Browser 2013-04-19 16:08:17 Firefox 20.0 user COOKIE ADDED PREF.google.com.au 0 inferno Browser 2013-04-19 16:08:17 Firefox 20.0 user COOKIE ADDED NID.google.com.au 0 inferno Browser 2013-04-19 16:08:18 Firefox 20.0 user GET http://www.google.com.au/images/icons/product/chrome-48.png http://www.google.com.au/ 1834 200 InterSect Alliance International Pty Ltd Page 11 of 11