A project which is named by inspiration from the movie ---The Matrix

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The AgentSmith-HIDS is not strictly a "Host-based Intrusion Detection System" due to absence of the rule engine and related detection functions in open sourced part, but it can be used as a high-performance "host intelligence collection tool" in building your own HIDS.

For security engineers who have a certain understanding of Linux and need a functional HIDS, yet are not satisfied with the performance, collaboration capacity or secondary development difficulty of existing HIDS, the AgentSmith-HIDS may be your choice. The AgentSmith-HIDS is developed for collaboration with Dianrong’s AgentSmith-NIDS, focusing on lower performance loss and higher collaboration capacity.

• Hook the system_call of execve, connect, init_module, finit_module by loading LKM;

• Being compatible with Linux namespace so that information of Docker container can be collected;

• Implemented two ways of transferring Hook Info from kernel mode to user mode: netlink and shared memory. The transmission loss under shared memory mode is 30% less compared to netlink with a time-consuming median of 8478ns on test server. Please refer to https://github.com/DianrongSecurity/AgentSmith-HIDS/tree/master/doc for detailed AgentSmith-HIDS BencherMark.

• AgentSmith-HIDS has only been fully tested on Centos version 7.2/7.3/7.4/7.5/7.6 and Kernel version 3.10-327/3.10-514/3.10-693/3.10-862/3.10-957. Although theoretically the AgentSmith-HIDS should be compatible with more versions, due to lack of comprehensive tests, it is forced to check the Kernel version (>3.10) when loading LKM. Anyone who have tested the compatibility on other versions, Feel is always welcome and please do feel free to contact us (a stability test report will be required)

• We will keep the development of the AgentSmith-HIDS and following the latest release of stable version of Centos7.

Installing the AgentSmith-HIDS on the host enables you to monitor the behavior of the container on corresponding host. The nodename varies depends on the source of the behavior, which should be:

• The AgentSmith-HIDS provides a simple user-mode demo which is responsible for receiving information transmitted from LKM, converting the information received to JSON format and forwarding it to the server. We utilized the Rust in developing the AgentSmith-HIDS and the openssl lib will be required to provide necessary support. Also, the transmission method is Kafka.
• The positioning of the AgentSmith-HIDS is a lightweight, high-performance information collecting tool, which can further detect some blind spots in the detection capability of the AgentSmith-NIDS such as shell reversion, command execution, malicious programs downloading, some rootkits etc... Meanwhile, it collaborates with the AgentSmith-NIDS and CMDB to provide a comprehensive view including:
  • PID;
  • PPID;
  • Nodename;
  • Cmdline;
  • Cwd;
  • User;
  • Exe;
  • TCP/UDP quintuple;
  • Raw data of some supported protocals;
  • Related business information;
  • FW_RULE;
  • NIDS/HIDS rules;
  • threat intelligence information.
  

AgentSmith-HIDS has passed stress testing/stability testing in Dianrong, and is currently conducting more comprehensive testing in the internal online test environment. The Linux baseline check/Linux integrity check function will be updated in the future.

1. Compile LKM or download the compiled LKM file (please pay attention to the kernel version): https://github.com/DianrongSecurity/AgentSmith-HIDS/tree/master/syshook/release, To compile LKM yourself, you need to install Linux Kernel Source. The directory will be: /syshook/LKM and get the LKM file syshook.ko by make.

2. Publish the compiled LKM file to your test server. Please pay attention that the Kernel version needs to be consistent with the server used for compiling.

3. Install the LKM file in the test environment by using insmod syshook.ko

4. Deploy the Kafka Server in your test environment for receiving information and create topic manually.

5. (Optional) Deploy a Heartbeat Server in your test environment, please refer to: https://github.com/DianrongSecurity/AgentSmith-HIDS/tree/master/smith_console

6. In order to compile the agent module, you need to install the rust environment in advance. In the directory: /root/smithhids/agent/src/conf, modify the related Kafka information and heartbeat configuration in configuration file of the agent: /root/smithhids/agent/src/conf/settings.rs, then run cargo build --release, on /agent/target/release/ can get agent.（maybe need yum install openssl && yum install openssl-devel)

7. Install the agent: deploy the agent to your test environment and execute it directly.

8. If the Heartbeat Server is configured and deployed, you will be able to review the status of the test server through the HIDS Console. For details, please refer to: https://github.com/DianrongSecurity/AgentSmith-HIDS/tree/master/smith_console.

9. Enforcing configured to SELinux will not affect the agent.

Note: Since the Agent obtains the local IP through the command: hostname -i, please ensure that the hostname and hosts are configured correctly during the test to prevent the HIDS Console from getting a wrong one.

Before uninstalling the AgentSmith-HIDS, you need to close the user-mode agent process. The default Log path of the agent is located in: /var/log/smith.log, and also the default pid file in: /run/smith.pid. By default: cat /run/ Smith.pid |xargs kill -9 then uninstall it by rmmod syshook.

About SAFE_EXIT: in the case of Hook connect, if there is a connection not returned when executing rmmod, then connect will return to a wrong memory address after rmmod, which will lead to kernel crashed. Enable the SAFE_EXIT will prevent this from happening by adding references, and as consequences, the rmmod LKM may not be execute immediately. If the SAFE_EXIT is disabled, it is necessary to note that if you want to uninstall Smith LKM, a restart to the host is needed. Otherwise, it may cause an incident to your host or running programs.

In fact, Smith LKM will automatically turn off almost all of its functions without data access from user-mode, thus the impact to performance of the host can be ignored.

• Although we have collected all the information we want through Hook syscall, there is still possibility of bypassing Hook which you may want to pay attention to, even it is pretty difficult and not likely to happen a lot. We recommend that you should deploy HIDS as soon as possible after the server is initialized to achieve a better protection.

• Please perform comprehensive testing work before deploy the HIDS.

Credits to @yuzunzhi and @hapood and thank you for all the support provided during our development.

AgentSmith-HIDS kernel module are distributed under the GNU GPLv2 license.