Argus

Argus is an open-source flow monitor that computes a variety of connection statistics. The UNIX tool argus processes either PCAP or NetFlow data and generates binary output. The companion utility ra transforms this binary output into a textual form that VAST can parse.

Ingesting Argus data is a multi-stage process that involves the following steps:

  1. Read PCAP or NetFlow data with argus
  2. Convert the binary Argus data into CSV with ra
  3. Pipe the ra output to vast

Reading Network Data

To read a PCAP file, simply pass the file to -r:

argus -r trace

To read from standard input, use -r -. Similarly, to write to standard output, use -w -.

Conversion to CSV

Converting argus output to CSV requires the following flags:

  • -c , to enable CSV mode
  • -L0 to print a header with field names once
  • -n suppress port nubmer to service conversions

The first column contains the timestamp, but unfortunately the default format doesn't contain date numbers. Changing the timestamp format requires passing a custom configuration file via -F ra.conf with the following contents:

RA_TIME_FORMAT="%y-%m-%d+%T.%f"

Finally, the -s +a,b,c,... flag includes list of field names that should be appended after the default fields. Please consult the manpage of ra under the -s section for valid field names.

Put together, the following example generates valid CSV output for a PCAP file called trace:

argus -r trace -w - | ra -F ra.conf -L0 -c , -n -s +spkts,dpkts,load,pcr

This may generate the following output:

StartTime,Flgs,Proto,SrcAddr,Sport,Dir,DstAddr,Dport,TotPkts,TotBytes,State,SrcPkts,DstPkts,Load,PCRatio
09-11-18+09:00:03.914398, e ,udp,192.168.1.1,626, ->,224.0.0.1,626,1,75,INT,1,0,0.000000,-0.000000
09-11-18+09:00:20.093410, e ,lldp,00:22:2d:81:db:10,0, ->,01:80:c2:00:00:0e,0,1,118,INT,1,0,0.000000,-0.000000
09-11-18+09:00:21.486288, e ,arp,192.168.1.102,, who,192.168.1.1,,2,106,CON,1,1,0.000000,-0.000000
09-11-18+09:00:21.486539, e ,udp,192.168.1.102,68, <->,192.168.1.1,67,2,689,CON,1,1,0.000000,-0.000000
09-11-18+09:00:33.914396, e ,udp,192.168.1.1,626, ->,224.0.0.1,626,1,75,REQ,1,0,0.000000,-0.000000
09-11-18+09:00:50.208499, e ,lldp,00:22:2d:81:db:10,0, ->,01:80:c2:00:00:0e,0,1,118,REQ,1,0,0.000000,-0.000000
09-11-18+09:01:03.914408, e ,udp,192.168.1.1,626, ->,224.0.0.1,626,1,75,REQ,1,0,0.000000,-0.000000
09-11-18+09:01:20.323835, e ,lldp,00:22:2d:81:db:10,0, ->,01:80:c2:00:00:0e,0,1,118,REQ,1,0,0.000000,-0.000000
09-11-18+09:01:33.914414, e ,udp,192.168.1.1,626, ->,224.0.0.1,626,1,75,REQ,1,0,0.000000,-0.000000

Ingestion

Since VAST supports CSV natively, ingesting Argus CSV output only requires an apt schema. VAST already ships with an argus schema containing a type argus.record that covers all fields from the ra man page.

The following command imports a file argus.csv:

vast import -t argus.record csv < argus.csv

Alternatively, this command pipeline processes a PCAP trace without intermediate file and ships the resulting events to a VAST node:

argus -r trace -w - \
| ra -F ra.conf -L0 -c , -n -s +spkts,dpkts,load,pcr \
| vast import -t argus.record csv