A collection of awesome resources, tools, and other shiny things for
cybersecurity blue teams.
Cybersecurity blue teams
are groups of individuals who identify security flaws in information
technology systems, verify the effectiveness of security measures, and
monitor the systems to ensure that implemented defensive measures remain
effective in the future. While not exclusive, this list is heavily biased
towards
Free Software
projects and against proprietary products or corporate services. For
offensive TTPs, please see
awesome-pentest.
Many cybersecurity professionals enable racist state violence, wittingly
or unwittingly, by providing services to local, state, and federal
policing agencies or otherwise cooperating with similar institutions who
do so. This evil most often happens through the coercive mechanism of
employment under threat of lack of access to food, shelter, or healthcare.
Despite this list’s public availability, it is the maintainer’s intention
and hope that this list supports the people and organizations who work to
counter such massive albeit banal evil.
Ansible Lockdown - Curated
collection of information security themed Ansible roles that are both
vetted and actively maintained.
Clevis - Plugable
framework for automated decryption, often used as a Tang client.
DShell -
Extensible network forensic analysis framework written in Python that
enables rapid development of plugins to support the dissection of
network packet captures.
Dev-Sec.io - Server hardening
framework providing Ansible, Chef, and Puppet implementations of various
baseline security configurations.
PyREBox -
Python-scriptable reverse engineering sandbox, based on QEMU.
Watchtower -
Container-based solution for automating Docker container base image
updates, providing an unattended upgrade experience.
Code libraries and bindings
MultiScanner - File
analysis framework written in Python that assists in evaluating a set of
files by automatically running a suite of tools against them and
aggregating the output.
Posh-VirusTotal
- PowerShell interface to VirusTotal.com APIs.
censys-python -
Python wrapper to the Censys REST API.
libcrafter - High
level C++ network packet sniffing and crafting library.
python-dshield -
Pythonic interface to the Internet Storm Center/DShield API.
python-sandboxapi
- Minimal, consistent Python API for building integrations with malware
sandboxes.
python-stix2
- Python APIs for serializing and de-serializing Structured Threat
Information eXpression (STIX) JSON content, plus higher-level APIs for
common tasks.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)
Checkov - Static analysis for
Terraform (infrastructure as code) to help detect CIS policy violations
and prevent cloud security misconfiguration.
Falco - Behavioral activity monitor
designed to detect anomalous activity in containerized applications,
hosts, and network packet flows by auditing the Linux kernel and
enriched by runtime data such as Kubernetes metrics.
Kata Containers - Secure
container runtime with lightweight virtual machines that feel and
perform like containers, but provide stronger workload isolation using
hardware virtualization technology as a second layer of defense.
Prowler - Tool based
on AWS-CLI commands for Amazon Web Services account security assessment
and hardening.
Scout Suite - Open
source multi-cloud security-auditing tool, which enables security
posture assessment of cloud environments.
gVisor - Application
kernel, written in Go, that implements a substantial portion of the
Linux system surface to provide an isolation boundary between the
application and the host kernel.
Cortex - Provides horizontally
scalable, highly available, multi-tenant, long term storage for
Prometheus.
Jaeger - Distributed tracing
platform backend used for monitoring and troubleshooting
microservices-based distributed systems.
OpenTelemetry - Observability
framework for cloud-native software, comprising a collection of tools,
APIs, and SDKs for exporting application performance metrics to a
tracing backend (formerly maintained by the OpenTracing and OpenCensus
projects).
Prometheus - Open-source systems
monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built at SoundCloud.
Zipkin - Distributed tracing system
backend that helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency
problems in service architectures.
Linkerd - Ultra light
Kubernetes-specific service mesh that adds observability, reliability,
and security to Kubernetes applications without requiring any
modification of the application itself.
Managed Kubernetes Inspection Tool (MKIT)
- Query and validate several common security-related configuration
settings of managed Kubernetes cluster objects and the
workloads/resources running inside the cluster.
Polaris - Validates
Kubernetes best practices by running tests against code commits, a
Kubernetes admission request, or live resources already running in a
cluster.
k-rail -
Workload policy enforcement tool for Kubernetes.
kube-forensics
- Allows a cluster administrator to dump the current state of a running
pod and all its containers so that security professionals can perform
off-line forensic analysis.
kube-hunter - Open-source
tool that runs a set of tests (“hunters”) for security issues in
Kubernetes clusters from either outside (“attacker’s view”) or inside a
cluster.
kubernetes-event-exporter
- Allows exporting the often missed Kubernetes events to various outputs
so that they can be used for observability or alerting purposes.
Consul - Solution to connect and
configure applications across dynamic, distributed infrastructure and,
with Consul Connect, enabling secure service-to-service communication
with automatic TLS encryption and identity-based authorization.
Istio - Open platform for providing a
uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across
microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data.
GPG Sync -
Centralize and automate OpenPGP public key distribution, revocation, and
updates amongst all members of an organization or team.
Geneva (Genetic Evasion) - Novel
experimental genetic algorithm that evolves packet-manipulation-based
censorship evasion strategies against nation-state level censors to
increase availability of otherwise blocked content.
GlobaLeaks - Free, open source
software enabling anyone to easily set up and maintain a secure
whistleblowing platform.
SecureDrop - Open source
whistleblower submission system that media organizations and NGOs can
install to securely accept documents from anonymous sources.
Teleport - Allows engineers and
security professionals to unify access for SSH servers, Kubernetes
clusters, web applications, and databases across all environments.
Bane - Custom and
better AppArmor profile generator for Docker containers.
BlackBox -
Safely store secrets in Git/Mercurial/Subversion by encrypting them “at
rest” using GnuPG.
Cilium - Open source software for
transparently securing the network connectivity between application
services deployed using Linux container management platforms like Docker
and Kubernetes.
Clair - Static analysis
tool to probe for vulnerabilities introduced via application container
(e.g., Docker) images.
CodeQL -
Discover vulnerabilities across a codebase by performing queries against
code as though it were data.
DefectDojo - Application
vulnerability management tool built for DevOps and continuous security
integration.
Gauntlt - Pentest applications during
routine continuous integration build pipelines.
Git Secrets -
Prevents you from committing passwords and other sensitive information
to a git repository.
SOPS - Editor of encrypted
files that supports YAML, JSON, ENV, INI and binary formats and encrypts
with AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, and PGP.
Snyk - Finds and fixes vulnerabilities
and license violations in open source dependencies and container images.
SonarQube - Continuous inspection
tool that provides detailed reports during automated testing and alerts
on newly introduced security vulnerabilities.
Trivy - Simple and
comprehensive vulnerability scanner for containers and other artifacts,
suitable for use in continuous integration pipelines.
Vault - Tool for securely
accessing secrets such as API keys, passwords, or certificates through a
unified interface.
git-crypt -
Transparent file encryption in git; files which you choose to protect
are encrypted when committed, and decrypted when checked out.
helm-secrets -
Helm plugin that helps manage secrets with Git workflow and stores them
anywhere, backed by SOPS.
Application or Binary Hardening
DynInst - Tools for binary
instrumentation, analysis, and modification, useful for binary patching.
DynamoRIO - Runtime code
manipulation system that supports code transformations on any part of a
program, while it executes, implemented as a process-level virtual
machine.
Egalito - Binary recompiler and
instrumentation framework that can fully disassemble, transform, and
regenerate ordinary Linux binaries designed for binary hardening and
security research.
Valgrind - Instrumentation
framework for building dynamic analysis tools.
Compliance testing and reporting
Chef InSpec -
Language for describing security and compliance rules, which become
automated tests that can be run against IT infrastructures to discover
and report on non-compliance.
OpenSCAP Base
- Both a library and a command line tool (oscap) used to
evaluate a system against SCAP baseline profiles to report on the
security posture of the scanned system(s).
Atheris -
Coverage-guided Python fuzzing engine based off of libFuzzer that
supports fuzzing of Python code but also native extensions written for
CPython.
FuzzBench - Free
service that evaluates fuzzers on a wide variety of real-world
benchmarks, at Google scale.
CanaryTokens -
Self-hostable honeytoken generator and reporting dashboard; demo version
available at CanaryTokens.org.
Kushtaka - Sustainable all-in-one
honeypot and honeytoken orchestrator for under-resourced blue teams.
Tarpits
Endlessh - SSH tarpit
that slowly sends an endless banner.
LaBrea -
Program that answers ARP requests for unused IP space, creating the
appearance of fake machines that answer further requests very slowly in
order to slow down scanners, worms, etcetera.
Host-based tools
Artillery -
Combination honeypot, filesystem monitor, and alerting system designed
to protect Linux and Windows operating systems.
chkrootkit - Locally checks for
signs of a rootkit on GNU/Linux systems.
Crowd Inspect
- Free tool for Windows systems aimed to alert you to the presence of
malware that may be communicating over the network.
Fail2ban - Intrusion prevention
software framework that protects computer servers from brute-force
attacks.
Rootkit Hunter (rkhunter)
- POSIX-compliant Bash script that scans a host for various signs of
malware.
Sandboxes
Bubblewrap -
Sandboxing tool for use by unprivileged Linux users capable of
restricting access to parts of the operating system or user data.
Dangerzone - Take potentially
dangerous PDFs, office documents, or images and convert them to a safe
PDF.
Firejail - SUID program
that reduces the risk of security breaches by restricting the running
environment of untrusted applications using Linux namespaces and
seccomp-bpf.
CIRTKit -
Scriptable Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) toolkit built
on Viper.
Fast Incident Response (FIR)
- Cybersecurity incident management platform allowing for easy creation,
tracking, and reporting of cybersecurity incidents.
Rekall - Advanced forensic
and incident response framework.
TheHive - Scalable, free
Security Incident Response Platform designed to make life easier for
SOCs, CSIRTs, and CERTs, featuring tight integration with MISP.
threat_note - Web
application built by Defense Point Security to allow security
researchers the ability to add and retrieve indicators related to their
research.
Evidence collection
AutoMacTC -
Modular, automated forensic triage collection framework designed to
access various forensic artifacts on macOS, parse them, and present them
in formats viable for analysis.
Security Onion - Free and open
source GNU/Linux distribution for intrusion detection, enterprise
security monitoring, and log management.
Qubes OS - Desktop environment built
atop the Xen hypervisor project that runs each end-user program in its
own virtual machine intended to provide strict security controls to
constrain the reach of any successful malware exploit.
Swordphish
- Platform allowing to create and manage (fake) phishing campaigns
intended to train people in identifying suspicious mails.
mailspoof - Scans SPF
and DMARC records for issues that could allow email spoofing.
phishing_catcher
- Configurable script to watch for issuances of suspicious TLS
certificates by domain name in the Certificate Transparency Log (CTL)
using the
CertStream service.
Preparedness training and wargaming
(Also known as adversary emulation, threat simulation,
or similar.)
APTSimulator
- Toolset to make a system look as if it was the victim of an APT
attack.
Atomic Red Team - Library of
simple, automatable tests to execute for testing security controls.
BadBlood - Fills a test
(non-production) Windows Domain with data that enables security analysts
and engineers to practice using tools to gain an understanding and
prescribe to securing Active Directory.
Drool - Replay DNS
traffic from packet capture files and send it to a specified server,
such as for simulating DDoS attacks on the DNS and measuring normal DNS
querying.
DumpsterFire -
Modular, menu-driven, cross-platform tool for building repeatable,
time-delayed, distributed security events for Blue Team drills and
sensor/alert mapping.
Metta - Automated
information security preparedness tool to do adversarial simulation.
Network Flight Simulator (flightsim)
- Utility to generate malicious network traffic and help security teams
evaluate security controls and audit their network visibility.
RedHunt OS -
Ubuntu-based Open Virtual Appliance (.ova) preconfigured
with several threat emulation tools as well as a defender’s toolkit.
Security configurations
(Also known as secure-by-default baselines and
implemented best practices.)
Bunkerized-nginx
- Docker image of an NginX configuration and scripts implementing many
defensive techniques for Web sites.
Security monitoring
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
Wazuh - Open source, multiplatform
agent-based security monitoring based on a fork of OSSEC HIDS.
Moloch - Augments your
current security infrastructure to store and index network traffic in
standard PCAP format, providing fast, indexed access.
OwlH - Helps manage network IDS at
scale by visualizing Suricata, Zeek, and Moloch life cycles.
Real Intelligence Threat Analysis (RITA)
- Open source framework for network traffic analysis that ingests Zeek
logs and detects beaconing, DNS tunneling, and more.
Respounder -
Detects the presence of the Responder LLMNR/NBT-NS/MDNS poisoner on a
network.
Snort - Widely-deployed, Free Software
IPS capable of real-time packet analysis, traffic logging, and custom
rule-based triggers.
SpoofSpotter -
Catch spoofed NetBIOS Name Service (NBNS) responses and alert to an
email or log file.
Stenographer -
Full-packet-capture utility for buffering packets to disk for intrusion
detection and incident response purposes.
Suricata - Free, cross-platform,
IDS/IPS with on- and off-line analysis modes and deep packet inspection
capabilities that is also scriptable with Lua.
Tsunami
- General purpose network security scanner with an extensible plugin
system for detecting high severity vulnerabilities with high confidence.
VAST - Free and open-source
network telemetry engine for data-driven security investigations.
Wireshark - Free and open-source
packet analyzer useful for network troubleshooting or forensic netflow
analysis.
Zeek - Powerful network analysis
framework focused on security monitoring, formerly known as Bro.
netsniff-ng - Free and fast
GNU/Linux networking toolkit with numerous utilities such as a
connection tracking tool (flowtop), traffic generator
(trafgen), and autonomous system (AS) trace route utility
(astraceroute).
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
AlienVault OSSIM
- Single-server open source SIEM platform featuring asset discovery,
asset inventorying, behavioral monitoring, and event correlation, driven
by AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX).
Prelude SIEM OSS - Open
source, agentless SIEM with a long history and several commercial
variants featuring security event collection, normalization, and
alerting from arbitrary log input and numerous popular monitoring tools.
Icinga - Modular redesign of Nagios
with pluggable user interfaces and an expanded set of data connectors,
collectors, and reporting tools.
Locust - Open source load testing tool
in which you can define user behaviour with Python code and swarm your
system with millions of simultaneous users.
Nagios - Popular network and service
monitoring solution and reporting platform.
OpenNMS - Free and feature-rich
networking monitoring system supporting multiple configurations, a
variety of alerting mechanisms (email, XMPP, SMS), and numerous data
collection methods (SNMP, HTTP, JDBC, etc).
osquery - Operating
system instrumentation framework for macOS, Windows, and Linux, exposing
the OS as a high-performance relational database that can be queried
with a SQL-like syntax.
Zabbix - Mature, enterprise-level
platform to monitor large-scale IT environments.
Threat hunting
(Also known as hunt teaming and threat detection.)
CimSweep -
Suite of CIM/WMI-based tools enabling remote incident response and
hunting operations across all versions of Windows.
DeepBlueCLI
- PowerShell module for hunt teaming via Windows Event logs.
GRR Rapid Response -
Incident response framework focused on remote live forensics consisting
of a Python agent installed on assets and Python-based server
infrastructure enabling analysts to quickly triage attacks and perform
analysis remotely.
Hunting ELK (HELK) -
All-in-one Free Software threat hunting stack based on Elasticsearch,
Logstash, Kafka, and Kibana with various built-in integrations for
analytics including Jupyter Notebook.
MozDef - Automate the
security incident handling process and facilitate the real-time
activities of incident handlers.
PSHunt - PowerShell
module designed to scan remote endpoints for indicators of compromise or
survey them for more comprehensive information related to state of those
systems.
PSRecon - PSHunt-like
tool for analyzing remote Windows systems that also produces a
self-contained HTML report of its findings.
PowerForensics
- All in one PowerShell-based platform to perform live hard disk
forensic analysis.
rastrea2r -
Multi-platform tool for triaging suspected IOCs on many endpoints
simultaneously and that integrates with antivirus consoles.
Redline
- Freeware endpoint auditing and analysis tool that provides host-based
investigative capabilities, offered by FireEye, Inc.
Active Directory Control Paths
- Visualize and graph Active Directory permission configs (“control
relations”) to audit questions such as “Who can read the CEO’s email?”
and similar.
AttackerKB - Free and public
crowdsourced vulnerability assessment platform to help prioritize
high-risk patch application and combat vulnerability fatigue.
DATA - Credential phish
analysis and automation tool that can accept suspected phishing URLs
directly or trigger on observed network traffic containing such a URL.
Forager -
Multi-threaded threat intelligence gathering built with Python3
featuring simple text-based configuration and data storage for ease of
use and data portability.
GRASSMARLIN -
Provides IP network situational awareness of industrial control systems
(ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) by passively
mapping, accounting for, and reporting on your ICS/SCADA network
topology and endpoints.
MLSec Combine -
Gather and combine multiple threat intelligence feed sources into one
customizable, standardized CSV-based format.
Open Source Vulnerabilities (OSV) -
Vulnerability database and triage infrastructure for open source
projects aimed at helping both open source maintainers and consumers of
open source.
Sigma - Generic signature
format for SIEM systems, offering an open signature format that allows
you to describe relevant log events in a straightforward manner.
Threat Bus - Threat
intelligence dissemination layer to connect security tools through a
distributed publish/subscribe message broker.
ThreatIngestor -
Extendable tool to extract and aggregate IOCs from threat feeds
including Twitter, RSS feeds, or other sources.
Unfetter - Identifies
defensive gaps in security posture by leveraging Mitre’s ATT&CK
framework.
Viper - Binary
analysis and management framework enabling easy organization of malware
and exploit samples.
YARA - Tool aimed at
(but not limited to) helping malware researchers to identify and
classify malware samples, described as “the pattern matching swiss army
knife” for file patterns and signatures.
Threat signature packages and collections
ESET’s Malware IoCs -
Indicators of Compromises (IOCs) derived from ESET’s various
investigations.
FireEye’s Red Team Tool Countermeasures
- Collection of Snort and YARA rules to detect attacks carried out with
FireEye’s own Red Team tools, first released after FireEye disclosed a
breach in December 2020.
FireEye’s Sunburst Countermeasures
- Collection of IoC in various languages for detecting backdoored
SolarWinds Orion NMS activities and related vulnerabilities.
YARA Rules - Project
covering the need for IT security researchers to have a single
repository where different Yara signatures are compiled, classified and
kept as up to date as possible.
OnionBalance -
Provides load-balancing while also making Onion services more resilient
and reliable by eliminating single points-of-failure.
Vanguards -
Version 3 Onion service guard discovery attack mitigation script
(intended for eventual inclusion in Tor core).
Transport-layer defenses
Certbot - Free tool to automate
the issuance and renewal of TLS certificates from the
LetsEncrypt Root CA with plugins
that configure various Web and e-mail server software.
Innernet - Private
network system that uses WireGuard under the hood.
MITMEngine -
Golang library for server-side detection of TLS interception events.
Nebula - Scalable
overlay networking tool with a focus on performance, simplicity and
security.
OpenVPN - Open source, SSL/TLS-based
virtual private network (VPN).
Tor - Censorship circumvention and
anonymizing overlay network providing distributed, cryptographically
verified name services (.onion domains) to enhance
publisher privacy and service availability.
WireGuard - Extremely simple
yet fast and modern VPN that utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography.
BlockBlock
- Monitors common persistence locations and alerts whenever a persistent
component is added, which helps to detect and prevent malware
installation.
Santa - Keep track of
binaries that are naughty or nice in an allow/deny-listing system for
macOS.
Stronghold -
Easily configure macOS security settings from the terminal.
macOS Fortress
- Automated configuration of kernel-level, OS-level, and client-level
security features including privatizing proxying and anti-virus scanning
for macOS.
HardenTools
- Utility that disables a number of risky Windows features.
NotRuler - Detect
both client-side rules and VBScript enabled forms used by the
Ruler attack tool when
attempting to compromise a Microsoft Exchange server.
PlumHound - More
effectively use BloodHoundAD in continual security life-cycles by
utilizing its pathfinding engine to identify Active Directory security
vulnerabilities.
Sandboxie - Free and open
source general purpose Windows application sandboxing utility.
Sticky Keys Slayer
- Establishes a Windows RDP session from a list of hostnames and scans
for accessibility tools backdoors, alerting if one is discovered.
Windows Secure Host Baseline
- Group Policy objects, compliance checks, and configuration tools that
provide an automated and flexible approach for securely deploying and
maintaining the latest releases of Windows 10.
WMI Monitor -
Log newly created WMI consumers and processes to the Windows Application
event log.