Mercury: network metadata capture and analysis

This package contains two programs for fingerprinting network traffic and capturing and analyzing packet metadata: mercury, a Linux application that leverages the modern Linux kernel's high-performance networking capabilities (AF_PACKET and TPACKETv3), which is described below, and pmercury, a portable python application, which is described here. There is also a User's Guide.

Overview

Mercury reads network packets, identifies metadata of interest, and writes out the metadata in JSON format. Alternatively, mercury can write out the packets that contain the metadata in the PCAP file format. Mercury can scale up to high data rates (40Gbps on server-class hardware); it uses zero-copy ring buffers to acquire packets, and packets are processed by independent worker threads. The amount of memory consumed by the ring buffers, and the number of worker threads, are configurable; this makes it easy to scale up (but be wary of using too much memory).

Mercury produces fingerprint strings for TLS, DTLS, SSH, HTTP, TCP, and other protocols; these fingerprints are formed by carefully selecting and normaling metadata extracted from packets. Fingerprint strings are reported in the "fingerprint" object in the JSON output. Optionally, mercury can perform process identification based on those fingerprints and the destination context; these results are reported in the "analysis" object.

Version 2.3.4

• Multiple PCAP files can be piped in to the standard input, like cat *.pcap | ./mercury, which can simplify workflow and improve performance, especially when working with HDFS and NFS, by minimizing or eliminating the need to write intermediary files to disk.
• Added defensive coding (no changes in functionality).

Version 2.3.3

• Improved QUIC processing.
• Added recognition of CONNECT, PUT, and HEAD methods for HTTP fingerprinting.
• Fixed a bug in the --analysis module caused when the fingerprint database contains a count field greater than 2^31.

Version 2.3.2

• QUIC client fingerprints are now reported.
• PCAP files can be piped in to the standard input, like cat dhcp.pcap | ./mercury --metadata. This feature makes it easier to work with some environments like HDFS.
• Added documentation for the JSON schema output by mercury.
• New --nonselected-tcp-data option writes out the TCP Data field for non-selected traffic, as a hex string in the JSON output. This option provides a view into the TCP data that the --select option does not recognize. The --select filter affects the data written by this option; if you want to see the TCP Data field for all traffic, then '--select=none' on the command line.
• New --nonselected-udp-data option, similar to the one above, but for UDP traffic.
• There was a significant refactoring that eliminated much dead code, and flattened the packet-processing code (which is now in pkt_proc.cc, which is where you would probably expect to find it).
• Experimental suport for on-demand TCP reassembly.
• Improvements to DNS and DHCP processing and JSON output.
• Added documentation for the safe parsing strategy that mercury uses for parsing packets and certificates.

Version 2.3.0

• New --resources command line option causes resource files (used in analysis) to be read from a directory other than the default. This makes it easier to use a fingerprint prevalence database other than the system default one.
• New metadata output: SSH KEX INIT message and TCP initial sequence number (that is, the SEQ of the TCP SYN packet).
• The packet processing logic has been refactored to use a more systematic approach to packet parsing, which is documented in doc/safe-parsing. The new code is considerably easier to read and extend; it is utilized by the JSON output path, though some functions from the old lower-level approach to packet parsing is still in place in the PCAP output path.

Version 2.2.0

• New --metadata command line option causes JSON output to include a lot more metadata in its output: tls.client.version, tls.client.random, tls.client.session_id, tls.client.cipher_suites, tls.client.compression_methods, tls.client.server_name, tls.server.random, tls.server.certs, http.request.method, http.request.uri, http.request.protocol, http.request.host, and http.request.user_agent.
• Accomodating the richer metadata required changes to the previous JSON schema. The current schema is documented in json-test.py.

Version 2.1.0

• TLS certificates can optionally be output in detail as a JSON object, with the --certs-json command.
• Experimental: DNS responses can optionally be output in detail as a JSON object, with the --dns-json command. The JSON schema used with this feature is likely to change.
• The --select (or -s) command now accepts an optional argument that specifies one or more protocols to select. The argument --select=tls,dns causes mercury to process only TLS and DNS packets, for instance.
• Added support for VXLAN and MPLS
• Per-packet output is no longer supported

Contents

• Building and installing mercury
  • Installation
  • Compile-time options
• Running mercury
  • Details
  • System
  • Examples
• Ethics
• Credits
• Acknowledgements

Building and installing mercury

In the root directory, run

./configure 
make

to build the package (and check for the programs and python modules required to test it). TPACKETv3 is present in Linux kernels newer than 3.2.

Installation

In the root directory, edit mercury.cfg with the network interface you want to capture from, then run

./configure
make
sudo make install

to install mercury and create and start a systemd service. If you don't want the mercury systemd service to be installed, then instead run

sudo make install-nosystemd

The default file and directory locations are

• /usr/local/bin/mercury for the executable
• /usr/local/share/mercury for the resource files
• /usr/local/var/mercury for the output files
• /etc/mercury/mercury.cfg for the configuration file
• /etc/systemd/system/mercury.service for the systemd unit file

The output file directory is owned by the user mercury; this user is created by the 'make install' target, which must be run as root. The installation prefix /usr/local/ can be changed by running ./configure with the --prefix argument, for instance `--prefix=$HOME'. If you want to install the program somewhere in your home directory, you probably don't want to create the user mercury; you should use the 'make install-nonroot' target, which does not create a user, does not install anything into /etc, and does not install a systemd unit.

The easiest way to run mercury in capture mode is using systemd; the OS automatically starts the mercury systemd unit after each boot, and halts it when the OS is shut down. To check its status, run

systemctl status mercury

and the output should contain 'active (running)'. To view the log (stderr) output from the mercury unit, run

sudo journalctl -u mercury

Compile-time options

There are compile-time options that can tune mercury for your hardware, or generate debugging output. Each of these options is set via a C/C++ preprocessor directive, which should be passed as an argument to "make". For instance, to turn on debugging, first run make clean to remove the previous build, then run make "OPTFLAGS=-DDEBUG". This runs make, telling it to pass the string "-DDEBUG" to the C/C++ compiler. The available compile time options are:

• -DDEBUG, which turns on debugging, and
• -FBUFSIZE=16384, which sets the fwrite/fread buffer to 16,384 bytes (for instance). If multiple compile time options are used, then they must be passed to make together in the OPTFLAGS string, e.g. "OPTFLAGS=-DDEBUG -DFBUFSIZE=16384".

Running mercury

mercury INPUT [OUTPUT] [OPTIONS]:
INPUT
   [-c or --capture] capture_interface   # capture packets from interface
   [-r or --read] read_file              # read packets from file
OUTPUT
   [-f or --fingerprint] json_file_name  # write JSON fingerprints to file
   [-w or --write] pcap_file_name        # write packets to PCAP/MCAP file
   no output option                      # write JSON fingerprints to stdout
--capture OPTIONS
   [-b or --buffer] b                    # set RX_RING size to (b * PHYS_MEM)
   [-t or --threads] [num_threads | cpu] # set number of threads
   [-u or --user] u                      # set UID and GID to those of user u
   [-d or --directory] d                 # set working directory to d
GENERAL OPTIONS
   --config c                            # read configuration from file c
   [-a or --analysis]                    # analyze fingerprints
   --resources d                         # use resource directory d
   [-s or --select] filter               # select only metadata (see --help)
   [-l or --limit] l                     # rotate output file after l records
   --dns-json                            # output DNS as JSON, not base64
   --certs-json                          # output certs as JSON, not base64
   [-v or --verbose]                     # additional information sent to stderr
   --license                             # write license information to stdout
   --version                             # write version information to stdout
   [-h or --help]                        # extended help, with examples

DETAILS

[-c or --capture] c captures packets from interface c with Linux AF_PACKET using a separate ring buffer for each worker thread. [-t or --thread] t sets the number of worker threads to t, if t is a positive integer; if t is "cpu", then the number of threads will be set to the number of available processors. [-b or --buffer] b sets the total size of all ring buffers to (b * PHYS_MEM) where b is a decimal number between 0.0 and 1.0 and PHYS_MEM is the available memory; USE b < 0.1 EXCEPT WHEN THERE ARE GIGABYTES OF SPARE RAM to avoid OS failure due to memory starvation.

[-f or --fingerprint] f writes a JSON record for each fingerprint observed, which incorporates the flow key and the time of observation, into the file f. With [-a or --analysis], fingerprints and destinations are analyzed and the results are included in the JSON output.

[-w or --write] w writes packets to the file w, in PCAP format. With the option [-s or --select], packets are filtered so that only ones with fingerprint metadata are written.

[r or --read] r reads packets from the file r, in PCAP format.

[-s or --select] f selects packets according to the metadata filter f, which is a comma-separated list of the following strings: dhcp DHCP discover message dns DNS response tls DTLS clientHello, serverHello, and certificates http HTTP request and response ssh SSH handshake and KEX tcp TCP headers tcp.message TCP initial message tls TLS clientHello, serverHello, and certificates wireguard WG handshake initiation message all all of the above all of the above

[-u or --user] u sets the UID and GID to those of user u, so that output file(s) are owned by this user. If this option is not set, then the UID is set to SUDO_UID, so that privileges are dropped to those of the user that invoked sudo. A system account with username mercury is created for use with a mercury daemon.

[-d or --directory] d sets the working directory to d, so that all output files are written into that location. When capturing at a high data rate, a high performance filesystem and disk should be used, and NFS partitions should be avoided.

--config c reads configuration information from the file c.

[-a or --analysis] performs analysis and reports results in the "analysis" object in the JSON records. This option only works with the option [-f or --fingerprint].

[-l or --limit] l rotates output files so that each file has at most l records or packets; filenames include a sequence number, date and time.

--dns-json writes out DNS responses as a JSON object; otherwise, that data is output in base64 format, as a string with the key "base64".

--certs-json writes out certificates as JSON objects; otherwise, that data is output in base64 format, as a string with the key "base64".

[-v or --verbose] writes additional information to the standard error, including the packet count, byte count, elapsed time and processing rate, as well as information about threads and files.

--license and --version write their information to stdout, then halt.

[-h or --help] writes this extended help message to stdout.

SYSTEM

The directories used by the default install are as follows. Run mercury --help to see if the directories on your system differ.

   Resource files used in analysis: /usr/local/share/mercury
   Systemd service output:          /usr/local/var/mercury
   Systemd service configuration    /etc/mercury/mercury.cfg

EXAMPLES

   mercury -c eth0 -w foo.pcap           # capture from eth0, write to foo.pcap
   mercury -c eth0 -w foo.pcap -t cpu    # as above, with one thread per CPU
   mercury -c eth0 -w foo.mcap -t cpu -s # as above, selecting packet metadata
   mercury -r foo.mcap -f foo.json       # read foo.mcap, write fingerprints
   mercury -r foo.mcap -f foo.json -a    # as above, with fingerprint analysis
   mercury -c eth0 -t cpu -f foo.json -a # capture and analyze fingerprints

Ethics

Mercury is intended for defensive network monitoring, security research and forensics. Researchers, administrators, penetration testers, and security operations teams can use these tools to protect networks, detect vulnerabilities, and benefit the broader community through improved awareness and defensive posture. As with any packet monitoring tool, Mercury could potentially be misused. Do not run it on any network of which you are not the owner or the administrator.

Credits

Mercury was developed by David McGrew, Brandon Enright, Blake Anderson, Lucas Messenger, Adam Weller and Shekhar Acharya with input from Brian Long, Bill Hudson, and others. Pmercury was developed by Blake Anderson, with input from the others.

Acknowledgments

This package includes GeoLite2 data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com.

We make use of Mozilla's Public Suffix List which is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0.

This package directly incorporates some software made by other developers, to make the package easier to build, deploy, and run. We are grateful to the copyright holders for making their excellent software available under licensing terms that allow its redistribution.

• RapidJSON https://github.com/cisco/mercury/src/rapidjson/license.txt; this package is Copyright 2015 THL A29 Limited, a Tencent company, and Milo Yip.
• lctrie https://github.com/cisco/mercury/src/lctrie; this package is copyright 2016-2017 Charles Stewart <chuckination_at_gmail_dot_com>