Using MineMeld to create a Managed Services offering

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Overview

In this article we introduce the classes available in the base MineMeld distribution and how to use them to create a managed services offering for your customer base. Either to differentiate yourself from these pure resellers that do not add any value or to build a new income source.

 

Installing your MineMeld instance

If this is your first time with MineMeld then you better read the Getting Started article and deploy your first MineMeld instance following the article from the following list that better suits your needs.

Base offering

In this case example we will start with a basic offering consisting on a high-risk IPv4 feed that any customer should block at the Internet Gateway. That feed will consist on the aggregation of the following three standard miners:

  • dshield.block
  • spamhaus.DROP
  • spamhaus.EDROP

In other words, we will create the following graph.

 

Picture1.png

 

To reach to this configuration point you just have to import the following configuration snippet in the configuration section of the WebUI.

 

nodes:
    dshield_blocklist:
        output: true
        prototype: dshield.block
    myBaseOffering:
        inputs:
            - spamhaus_EDROP
            - spamhaus_DROP
            - dshield_blocklist
        output: true
        prototype: stdlib.aggregatorIPv4Generic
    spamhaus_DROP:
        output: true
        prototype: spamhaus.DROP
    spamhaus_EDROP:
        output: true
        prototype: spamhaus.EDROP
    freeBaseOffering:
        inputs:
            - myBaseOffering
        output: false
        prototype: stdlib.feedHCGreen

 

Picture2_1.png

 

 

Picture3_º.png

 

All MineMeld feeds are exposed using a basic authentication mechanism. By default only the MineMeld admistrator user and password can be used to grab the feeds contents. Note, please, that if you check the feed URLs from a WebBrowser that is already connected to the MineMeld WebUI then you won't experience the authentication request because your browser has already been authenticated and do have a session cookie.

 

To implementa a granular control of feed content by customer or customer type you must create a "feed user" and give it a password in the Admin section of the WebUI.

 Picture6_1.png

 

 

  

 Once the feed user has been created you must assign it an authentication tag and attach that tag to the output node.

 

Picture7_1.png

 

Picture8_1.png

 Picture9_1.png

 

Now it is time to commit the configuration changes.

 

Picture10_º.png

 

To check that everything is fine so far just validate the feed is working by attempting to access its data with the corresponding user and password (basic authentication).

 Picture11_1.png

 

user$ curl https://yourBrand:xxxx@minemeld/feeds/freeBaseOffering
185.35.62.0-185.35.62.255
80.82.77.0-80.82.77.255
1.10.16.0-1.10.31.255
1.32.128.0-1.32.191.255
101.192.0.0-101.195.255.255
101.202.0.0-101.202.255.255
101.203.128.0-101.203.159.255
101.248.0.0-101.249.255.255
101.252.0.0-101.253.255.255
102.176.0.0-102.177.255.255
102.181.0.0-102.181.255.255
103.16.76.0-103.16.76.255
...

 

Now it is time to configure the Internet Gateway to block any packet coming from or going to any IP address belonging to these ranges. In the following example I will configure an IP External Dynamic List object linked to the feed we have just created and a couple of Policy Based Forwarding rules to discard traffic when these IP's are involved.

 

Picture21_1.png

 

 Picture22_1.png

 

If your customer wants to be able to monitor the activity of traffic matching the EDL then you can use Security Policies with drop action instead of Policy Based Forwarding rules.

 

Picture23_º.png

 

 

Adding intelligence to a premium customer

What about suggesting a specific SMB customer to subscribe to a premium service where other intelligence data is combined into his reputation fee?

 

We will continue with our example adding a new miner (the TOR exit nodes) to our instance and modifying the graph in such a way that only a given specific premium customer is allowed to consume this extended feed.

 

Picture13.png

 

 

Try to clone nodes from the standard library to create the graph or, if you want to go straight to the point, just import the following configuration snippet into you configuration (use the “Append” button)

 

nodes:
    torExitNodes:
        inputs: []
        output: true
        prototype: blutmagie.tor_exit_nodes
    premiumOffering:
        inputs:
            - myBaseOffering
            - torExitNodes
        output: true
        prototype: stdlib.aggregatorIPv4Generic
    premiumCustomerA:
        inputs:
            - premiumOffering
        output: false
        prototype: stdlib.feedHCGreen

 Picture14_1.png

 

And remember to create a new feed user for this premium customer and attach its corresponding authentication tag to the output feed.

 

Picture15.png

 

 Picture16_1.png

 

Reputation Managed Service

The next step in your offering could be to provide a managed service to customize the reputation feed with any arbitrary source data. To do that we’ll add a “local list” (prototype: stdlib.listIPv4Generic) miner for one specific premium customer so the field engineers have a bucket in which any indicator requested by the customer could be placed.

 

Picture17.png

 

 

Just append the following configuration snippet to append the two remaining nodes to complete the graph.

 

nodes:
    bucketCustomerA:
        inputs: []
        output: true
        prototype: stdlib.listIPv4Generic
    customerA:
        inputs:
            - premiumOffering
            - bucketCustomerA
        output: true
        prototype: stdlib.aggregatorIPv4Inbound

 

Note that, at this moment, the premiumCustomerA input will still be attached to the premiumOffering aggregator node. So we must change it to the recently created aggregator node called customerA.

 

Picture17_1.png

 
Picture17_2.png

 

This new bucketCustomerA node provides a way to add new indicators to the managed customer feed. The easiest way is to use the node’s WebUI feature.

 Picture18_1.png

 

 Picture20_1.png

 

 

 

MineMeld's API provides you with a way to upload indicators into a list to deal with bulk operation. A nice implementation is available in minemeld-sync tool available in GitHub.

 

Other Managed Services ideas

I hope this article gave you interest in exploring ways to leverage MineMeld to add value to your NGFW deals and, eventualy, use it as a revenue stream.

 

The following is a list of ideas you could evaluate to extend your value proposition:

  • Automatic provisioning of IOC's to customer's Internet Gateways when a major malware campaign is published (URL's, Domains and IP's).
  • Offering yourself as a bridge between the local security /vertical market CSIRT and the interested customers.
  • Managed service to limit YouTube video exposure by channel or playlist ( more info in Filtering YouTube videos to only approved playlists )
  • Automatic enforcement of SOC alerts
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Last Updated:
‎12-04-2017 04:20 AM
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