IPFIX-RITA is a system for processing IPFix/Netflow v9/Netflow v5 records for use with RITA.
❗ NOTICE ❗ IPFIX-RITA is not currently under active development. If you wish to use it for research purposes, be aware that it will only work with version 2 of RITA.
First, ensure you have a working installation of RITA and MongoDB. For the best performance, it is suggested that IPFIX-RITA is installed on a machine separate from RITA and MongoDB. However, if performance is not a great concern, it is often practical to install everything in one place.
You must ensure the RITA database can be contacted on an IP address other
than localhost. This can be done by editing the bindIP setting in
/etc/mongod.conf. The installer will prompt you to ensure this change is made
before continuing on. If you intend to install IPFIX-RITA on the same machine
as RITA and MongoDB, please add the IP address suggested by the installer.
NOTE: if you want multiple bind IP addresses in your MongoDB config file you
must place each of them on the same line separated by commas. For example if
you want both 10.0.0.5 and 172.20.0.1 as bind IP's (one for RITA and one
for IPFIX-RITA to access) your bind IP line should look like the following.
bindIP: 10.0.0.5,172.20.0.1
Also if your RITA config file (/etc/rita/config.yaml) connects to MongoDB on
localhost you will need to change that to the same value as MongoDB is listening
on. For example if you change the bindIP in your MongoDB config file to 10.0.0.5
and you check your RITA config file and the connection string is
mongodb://localhost:27017 you'll need to change it to mongodb://10.0.0.5:27017.
How to Install RITA
The IPFIX-RITA installer should run on most Linux distributions provided
Docker (min v17.06+) and docker-compose (min v1.17) are installed.
How to Install Docker
How to Install docker-compose.
Download the latest archive from the releases page, unpack it, and run the installation script with administrator privileges.
$ wget $(curl --silent "https://api.github.com/repos/activecm/ipfix-rita/releases/latest" \
| grep '"browser_download_url":' | cut -d \" -f 4 ) -O ipfix-rita.tgz
$ tar -zxf ipfix-rita.tgz
$ sudo $(ls -d */ | grep "ipfix-rita" | head -1)install-ipfix-rita.sh
You will be prompted for configuration details regarding the RITA database
connection and the names of the resulting datasets. Further configuration
options can be set in /etc/ipfix-rita/converter/converter.yaml.
By default, IPFIX-RITA will run at start up unless it is stopped. For more information see Additional Info. Full documentation for IPFIX-RITA can be found in the docs folder.
This is an incomplete list of devices which produce compatible IPFix/Netflow v9/Netflow v5 records. More devices will be added as they are tested.
Please select the most basic version of IPFix/Netflow v9/Netflow v5 when setting up your router for use with IPFIX-RITA.
| IPFix | Netflow v9 | Netflow v5 | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cisco ASA | ✔ | |||
| Cisco ASR 9k | ✔ | |||
| SonicWall | ✔ | |||
| MikroTik | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| YAF | ✔ | Use --uniflow |
We need your help to expand the list of supported routers. Please help us by running the software, logging the errors and traffic, and sending us the results. If you are not comfortable emailing log files please contact us at [email protected]
Please see Adding Support For Additional Routers for more information on gathering the data needed to get your device supported.
To test that IPFix/Netflow records are arriving at your IPFIX-RITA system, run the following on the IPFIX-RITA system:
$ tcpdump -qtnp 'udp port 2055'
Though the actual IP addresses and length will be different, you should see lines like:
IP 10.0.0.5:2055 > 10.0.0.43:2055: UDP, length 212
arriving somewhat regularly. Press Ctrl-C to exit. If you don't get any of these lines after a minute or so, your router may not be configured correctly to send these records to the IPFIX-RITA system. Double check your router configuration; make sure it's sending records to the IPFIX-RITA system's IP address and to UDP port 2055.
To make sure that all the docker containers are running correctly on the IPFIX-RITA system, run the following on that system:
sudo ipfix-rita ps
You should get a header line starting with "CONTAINER ID" and then at least three lines of running containers with a status on "Up (some amount of time)". The names of these containers should start with "ipfix_rita_logstash", "ipfix_rita_converter", and "ipfix_rita_mongodb". If you do not get these three lines, something may be wrong with the docker instances, please contact technical support.
To see if IPFIX-RITA is creating mongo databases, first find the container ID for the IPFIX-RITA-mongodb contianter. It's the 12 character hex string at the left of the ipfix_rita_mongodb... from the above docker command. Now run:
sudo docker exec -it **12_char_hex_id** mongo
You'll find yourself in a command prompt that accepts mongo commands. Type:
show dbs
Which will list the available databases. If you see:
IPFIX 0.000GB
admin 0.000GB
config 0.000GB
local 0.000GB
it might mean that you are logging to a different database, use the ConnectionString value under RITA-MongoDB in /etc/ipfix-rita/converter/converter.yaml . For example, if your file looks like this:
Output:
RITA-MongoDB:
MongoDB-Connection:
# See https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/connection-string/
ConnectionString: mongodb://10.0.0.5:27017
# Accepted Values: null, "SCRAM-SHA-1", "MONGODB-CR"
AuthenticationMechanism: null
TLS:
Enable: false
VerifyCertificate: false
CAFile: null
...
try connecting to mongo using
mongo [ipaddress]:[port]
mongo 10.0.0.5:27017
and running the command again. If you still see:
admin 0.000GB
config 0.000GB
local 0.000GB
That means you're not yet saving data; skip to the next section to see why. If your output also includes "Metadatabase" and "IPFIX-YYMMDD" databases, that's a good sign. To get out of this terminal type "exit".
To see if there are any errors reported by IPFIX-RITA, run
sudo ipfix-rita logs | grep -i 'erro'
If there are too many errors, simply run
sudo ipfix-rita logs --tail 20 -f | grep -i 'erro' [> error_report.txt]
Any errors that show up here (or the error_report.txt file) should be sent to technical support at [email protected]. Please include a brief description of the router or firewall that's sending the IPFix records, as well as what type of records these are (Netflow v5, Netflow v9, or IPFix).
The following bugs have been documented by Active Countermeasures and solutions are in development
If IPFix-RITA is configured to write to a MongoDB database running on the Docker host (as in the default configuration), IPFix-RITA may encounter an error after a system reboot. The following error may arise:
converter_1_eeb48d380f26 | ERRO[0038] could not connect to RITA MongoDB: could not connect to MongoDB (no TLS): could not connect to MongoDB: no reachable servers stacktrace="[rita_dates.go:60 convert.go:194 convert.go:40 app.go:490 command.go:210 app.go:255 boot.go:18 proc.go:198 asm_amd64.s:2361]"
This is due to an error in which the MongoDB server starts before the Docker engine. Until a fix is implemented, Active Countermeasures recommends running the following command to resolve the issue
sudo systemctl restart mongod.service
It has been discovered that some flow logs will report flow start and end times in UTC+00:00. This means if you don't live in the UTC+00:00 timezone you may see logs in MongoDB from a future date or not rotating when you expect them to. Until a fix is implemented, Active Countermeasures asks you to be aware of the issue.