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Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

  • 1.  Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 19:21
    I would agree with Jason.  It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing.  There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI. About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it.  Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg.   On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead < Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com > wrote: I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true. The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space CompanyA.com ) can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space CompanyB.com ) are actually quite low. This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph. - Jason Keirstead Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems www.ibm.com/security www.securityintelligence.com Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown <graycol.gif> Bush, Jonathan ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying From: Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > To: 'Jordan, Bret' < bret.jordan@bluecoat.com > Cc: Sean D. Barnum < sbarnum@mitre.org >, Jane Ginn < jane.ginn@gmail.com >, Wunder, John A. < jwunder@mitre.org >, cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org >, cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org < cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org > Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding Sent by: < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org > The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult. (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here) … at least that was where my head was at with it. From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM To: Bush, Jonathan Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data. Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case. Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg. On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future. From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM To: Bush, Jonathan Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/ Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg. On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: Great information here, thank you Sean. It sounds like we are talking about Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content) I could get behind that. From: Barnum, Sean D. [ mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org ] Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A. Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models. While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers. Does that make sense? Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear. Sean From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org on behalf of Bush, Jonathan Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org , cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept? Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to? From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ] On Behalf Of Jane Ginn Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM To: Wunder, John A. Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding Hi All: While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0. JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction. I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration. Jane Ginn Cyber Threat Intelligence Network DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. Attachment: signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail


  • 2.  RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 19:28
    I guess that is what needs to be debated by the group. If it will never happen, then no need to go there, but if there is a chance, and it can be done in a way that the “LD” part is optional (as it appears to be in JSON-LD), what is the harm?

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    To: Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree with Jason. It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing. There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI.

    About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it.

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead <Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com<mailto:Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com>> wrote:

    I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.

    The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyA.com<http://CompanyA.com>") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyB.com<http://CompanyB.com>") are actually quite low.

    This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph.

    -
    Jason Keirstead
    Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    www.ibm.com/security<http://www.ibm.com/security> | www.securityintelligence.com<http://www.securityintelligence.com>

    Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown


    <graycol.gif>"Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying

    From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>>
    To: "'Jordan, Bret'" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com<mailto:bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>>
    Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org<mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org>>, Jane Ginn <jane.ginn@gmail.com<mailto:jane.ginn@gmail.com>>, "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org<mailto:jwunder@mitre.org>>, "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>, "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    Sent by: <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    ________________________________



    The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult.
    (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)

    … at least that was where my head was at with it.

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.

    Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.


    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:

    I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:

    Great information here, thank you Sean.

    It sounds like we are talking about
    Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content)

    I could get behind that.

    From: Barnum, Sean D. [mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org]
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models.

    While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers.

    Does that make sense?
    Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear.

    Sean

    From: "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    Cc: "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>", "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>"
    Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept?

    Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to?

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jane Ginn
    Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    To: Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Hi All:
    While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0.
    JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction.
    I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration.
    Jane Ginn
    Cyber Threat Intelligence Network

    DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.

    DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.


    DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.

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    DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.



  • 3.  RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 19:29




    I guess that is what needs to be debated by the group.  If it will never happen, then no need to go there, but if there is a chance, and it can be done in a way
    that the “LD” part is optional (as it appears to be in JSON-LD), what is the harm?
     


    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org]
    On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    To: Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding


     
    I would agree with Jason.  It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing.  There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do
    with their CTI.

     


    About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it. 







     


    Thanks,


     


    Bret



     


     


     



    Bret Jordan CISSP

    Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO


    Blue Coat Systems



    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050


    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg." 









     



    On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead < Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com > wrote:

     


    I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.


    The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space " CompanyA.com ") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space " CompanyB.com ") are actually quite low.


    This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph.

    -
    Jason Keirstead
    Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    www.ibm.com/security
    www.securityintelligence.com

    Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown


    <graycol.gif> "Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying

    From: "Bush, Jonathan" < jbush@dtcc.com >
    To: "'Jordan, Bret'" < bret.jordan@bluecoat.com >
    Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" < sbarnum@mitre.org >, Jane Ginn < jane.ginn@gmail.com >, "Wunder, John A." < jwunder@mitre.org >,
    " cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org " < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org >, " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org " < cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org >
    Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    Sent by: < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org >






    The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere
    else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis
    to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult.
    (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)

    … at least that was where my head was at with it.

    From:
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]
    On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user
    profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.


    Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard
    well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.


    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote:

    I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of
    “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.

    From:
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]
    On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com >
    wrote:

    Great information here, thank you Sean.

    It sounds like we are talking about
    Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content)

    I could get behind that.

    From: Barnum, Sean D. [ mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org ]

    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have
    been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism
    everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction
    stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have
    evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness
    to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what
    such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community
    may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate
    the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model
    but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues
    (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to
    fully semantic models.

    While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that
    that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON”
    not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are
    what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model
    is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be
    interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding
    spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers.

    Does that make sense?
    Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear.

    Sean

    From:
    " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org "
    on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    Cc: " cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ", " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org "
    Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage
    of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question
    is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept?

    Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to?

    From:
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]
    On Behalf Of Jane Ginn
    Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    To: Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Hi All:
    While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a
    semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward
    with STIX 2.0.
    JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction.
    I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive
    modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration.
    Jane Ginn
    Cyber Threat Intelligence Network

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    DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email
    and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.

    DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email
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  • 4.  Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 19:38
    I was simply stating that if the STIX data model is RDF then there are
    already existing tools for translation to or between RDF/XML, JSON-LD, etc.
    and that because they were using the same STIX RDF data model that the
    content/meaning of the data would be the same regardless of the format it
    was delivered on the wire in.

    On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com> wrote:

    > I guess that is what needs to be debated by the group. If it will never
    > happen, then no need to go there, but if there is a chance, and it can be
    > done in a way that the “LD” part is optional (as it appears to be in
    > JSON-LD), what is the harm?
    >
    >
    >
    > *From:* cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:
    > cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] *On Behalf Of *Jordan, Bret
    > *Sent:* Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    > *To:* Jason Keirstead
    > *Cc:* Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    > cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    > *Subject:* [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    >
    >
    > I would agree with Jason. It seems like the vast majority of CTI
    > communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing. There will be
    > trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of
    > boundaries around what people do with their CTI.
    >
    >
    >
    > About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing
    > data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do
    > something with the data and then re-share it.
    >
    >
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    >
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > *Bret Jordan CISSP*
    >
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    >
    > Blue Coat Systems
    >
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    >
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that
    > can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    >
    >
    >
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead <Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com>
    > wrote:
    >
    >
    >
    > I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI
    > will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.
    >
    > The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyA.com")
    > can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space "
    > CompanyB.com") are actually quite low.
    >
    > This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to
    > build a knowledge graph.
    >
    > -
    > Jason Keirstead
    > Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    > www.ibm.com/security | www.securityintelligence.com
    >
    > Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown
    >
    >
    > <graycol.gif>"Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I
    > had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the
    > internet, copying
    >
    > From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com>
    > To: "'Jordan, Bret'" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>
    > Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org>, Jane Ginn <jane.ginn@gmail.com>,
    > "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org>, "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org" <
    > cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>, "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org" <
    > cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    > Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    > Sent by: <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > ------------------------------
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data
    > around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just
    > have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in
    > the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to
    > it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data
    > locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to
    > perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would
    > otherwise be very difficult.
    > (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)
    >
    > … at least that was where my head was at with it.
    >
    > *From:* cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [
    > mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] *On
    > Behalf Of *Jordan, Bret
    > * Sent:* Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    > * To:* Bush, Jonathan
    > * Cc:* Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    > cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    > * Subject:* Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be
    > interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and
    > forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think
    > user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am
    > mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we
    > all share the same data.
    >
    > Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do
    > not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care
    > since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a
    > standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use
    > case.
    >
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    > *Bret Jordan CISSP*
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    > Blue Coat Systems
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that
    > can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    >
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com> wrote:
    >
    > I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web
    > scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at
    > least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked”
    > data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.
    >
    > *From:* cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [
    > mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] *On
    > Behalf Of *Jordan, Bret
    > * Sent:* Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    > * To:* Bush, Jonathan
    > * Cc:* Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    > cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    > * Subject:* Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    > *Bret Jordan CISSP*
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    > Blue Coat Systems
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that
    > can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    >
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com> wrote:
    >
    > Great information here, thank you Sean.
    >
    > It sounds like we are talking about
    > Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to
    > JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content)
    >
    > I could get behind that.
    >
    > *From:* Barnum, Sean D. [mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org <sbarnum@mitre.org>]
    > * Sent:* Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    > * To:* Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A.
    > * Cc:* cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    > * Subject:* Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this
    > represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching
    > the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been
    > approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path.
    > We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we
    > as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a
    > good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively
    > define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the
    > beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would
    > eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived
    > abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model,
    > binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along
    > this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these
    > abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along
    > the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical
    > capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and
    > represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and
    > willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in
    > the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using
    > something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the
    > ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are
    > designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent
    > consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has
    > been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too
    > soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to
    > the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the
    > language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully
    > semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired
    > abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several
    > others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should
    > continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification
    > for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution
    > should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick
    > with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling
    > snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g.
    > separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely
    > include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be
    > a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial
    > basis for future evolution to fully semantic models.
    >
    > While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would
    > require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I
    > don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To
    > be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure
    > JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the
    > ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple
    > analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or
    > French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive
    > handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and
    > structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are
    > what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are
    > reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is
    > being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization
    > format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle
    > layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to
    > be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed
    > content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would
    > not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for
    > defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for
    > instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really
    > want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other
    > form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the
    > implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an
    > explicit structured way to tackle these two layers.
    >
    > Does that make sense?
    > Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out
    > where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear.
    >
    > Sean
    >
    > *From: *"cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org" on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    > * Date: *Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    > * To: *'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    > * Cc: *"cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org", "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org"
    > * Subject: *RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent
    > intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require
    > a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it.
    > The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me”
    > for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the
    > implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if
    > I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the
    > point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion
    > of the concept?
    >
    > Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to
    > represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we
    > all know what we would be buying in to?
    >
    > *From:* cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [
    > mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] *On
    > Behalf Of *Jane Ginn
    > * Sent:* Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    > * To:* Wunder, John A.
    > * Cc:* cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    > * Subject:* [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > Hi All:
    > While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD
    > suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are
    > approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our
    > focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to
    > solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool
    > to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in
    > XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0.
    > JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of
    > abstraction.
    > I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how
    > PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for
    > predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for
    > predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market
    > that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution.
    > We just need to get the front end right for the integration.
    > Jane Ginn
    > Cyber Threat Intelligence Network
    >
    > DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are
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  • 5.  Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 19:39
    It seems like most of the JSON-LD elements are already supported in STIX.. The whole IDREF field and the ability to specify that content comes from domain x.y.com <http://x.y.com/>. The thing I do like about JSON-LD is it calls these things out specifically and pulls them out of the STIX specification and makes them part of the protocol.

    The thing I would offer caution about is, when we talk about things like this, some people will make an artificial jump in their through process. Meaning,if we are supporting JSON-LD then that means we are doing something like RDF or some other thing. Some people draw natural or unnatural conclusions to technology decisions that are made based on something we have chosen. This is why we have tried so hard in TAXII land to draw tear lines.


    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 13:28, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com> wrote:
    >
    > I guess that is what needs to be debated by the group. If it will never happen, then no need to go there, but if there is a chance, and it can be done in a way that the “LD” part is optional (as it appears to be in JSON-LD), what is the harm?
    >
    > From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    > Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    > To: Jason Keirstead
    > Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I would agree with Jason. It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing. There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI.
    >
    > About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it.
    >
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    > Bret Jordan CISSP
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    > Blue Coat Systems
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    >
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead <Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com <mailto:Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com>> wrote:
    >
    > I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.
    >
    > The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyA.com <http://companya.com/>") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyB.com <http://companyb.com/>") are actually quite low.
    >
    > This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph.
    >
    > -
    > Jason Keirstead
    > Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    > www.ibm.com/security <http://www.ibm.com/security> | www.securityintelligence.com <http://www.securityintelligence.com/>
    >
    > Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown
    >
    >
    > <graycol.gif>"Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying
    >
    > From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com <mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>>
    > To: "'Jordan, Bret'" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com <mailto:bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>>
    > Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org <mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org>>, Jane Ginn <jane.ginn@gmail.com <mailto:jane.ginn@gmail.com>>, "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org <mailto:jwunder@mitre.org>>, "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>, "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    > Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    > Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    > Sent by: <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    >
    >
    >
    > The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult.
    > (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)
    >
    > … at least that was where my head was at with it.
    >
    > From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    > Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    > To: Bush, Jonathan
    > Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.
    >
    > Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.
    >
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    > Bret Jordan CISSP
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    > Blue Coat Systems
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com <mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:
    >
    > I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.
    >
    > From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    > Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    > To: Bush, Jonathan
    > Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/ <http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/>
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    > Bret Jordan CISSP
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    > Blue Coat Systems
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com <mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:
    >
    > Great information here, thank you Sean.
    >
    > It sounds like we are talking about
    > Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content)
    >
    > I could get behind that.
    >
    > From: Barnum, Sean D. [mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org <mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org>]
    > Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    > To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A.
    > Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models.
    >
    > While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers.
    >
    > Does that make sense?
    > Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear.
    >
    > Sean
    >
    > From: "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    > Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    > To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    > Cc: "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>", "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>"
    > Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept?
    >
    > Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to?
    >
    > From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] On Behalf Of Jane Ginn
    > Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    > To: Wunder, John A.
    > Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > Hi All:
    > While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0.
    > JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction.
    > I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration.
    > Jane Ginn
    > Cyber Threat Intelligence Network
    >
    > DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.
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    >
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    >
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  • 6.  Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 19:39
    It seems like most of the JSON-LD elements are already supported in STIX.. The whole IDREF field and the ability to specify that content comes from domain x.y.com .  The thing I do like about JSON-LD is it calls these things out specifically and pulls them out of the STIX specification and makes them part of the protocol.   The thing I would offer caution about is, when we talk about things like this, some people will make an artificial jump in their through process.  Meaning,if we are supporting JSON-LD then that means we are doing something like RDF or some other thing.  Some people draw natural or unnatural conclusions to technology decisions that are made based on something we have chosen.  This is why we have tried so hard in TAXII land to draw tear lines. Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg.   On Oct 5, 2015, at 13:28, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: I guess that is what needs to be debated by the group.  If it will never happen, then no need to go there, but if there is a chance, and it can be done in a way that the “LD” part is optional (as it appears to be in JSON-LD), what is the harm?   From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org   [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]   On Behalf Of   Jordan, Bret Sent:   Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM To:   Jason Keirstead Cc:   Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding   I would agree with Jason.  It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing.  There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI.   About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it.    Thanks,   Bret       Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg.     On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead < Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com > wrote:   I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.   The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space CompanyA.com ) can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space CompanyB.com ) are actually quite low.   This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph. - Jason Keirstead Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems www.ibm.com/security     www.securityintelligence.com Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown   <graycol.gif> Bush, Jonathan ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying From:   Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > To:   'Jordan, Bret' < bret.jordan@bluecoat.com > Cc:   Sean D. Barnum < sbarnum@mitre.org >, Jane Ginn < jane.ginn@gmail.com >, Wunder, John A. < jwunder@mitre.org >, cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org >, cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org < cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org > Date:   2015/10/05 02:48 PM Subject:   [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding Sent by:   < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org > The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult. (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here) … at least that was where my head was at with it. From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org   [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]   On Behalf Of   Jordan, Bret Sent:   Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM To:   Bush, Jonathan Cc:   Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.   Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.   Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg. On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.   From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org   [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]   On Behalf Of   Jordan, Bret Sent:   Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM To:   Bush, Jonathan Cc:   Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/ Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg. On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: Great information here, thank you Sean. It sounds like we are talking about Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content) I could get behind that. From:   Barnum, Sean D. [ mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org ]   Sent:   Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM To:   Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A. Cc:   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models. While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers. Does that make sense? Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear. Sean From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org on behalf of Bush, Jonathan Date:   Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM To:   'Jane Ginn', John Wunder Cc:   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org , cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept? Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to? From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org   [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]   On Behalf Of   Jane Ginn Sent:   Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM To:   Wunder, John A. Cc:   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding Hi All: While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0. JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction. I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration. Jane Ginn Cyber Threat Intelligence Network   DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.       DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses.  The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. Attachment: signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail


  • 7.  RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 21:42
    Not being an expert in these matters, please consider my 2 cents worth of concern. I am concerned about statements such as “vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing” There won’t be any CTI communications if there is no value proposition for the cybersecurity community. The value is not just sharing information, the value is how we used the shared information. If we foster many different methods/approaches to sharing information, we will never leverage how to use the information. I believe part of the value proposition is providing solutions such as direct updating of IDS/IPS rules or malware signatures based on Threat Indicator and Alert data. With all the discussions are we improving what we have or are we improving where and how we want end.

    PS I enjoy the discussions and I am learning a lot from the different perspectives.

    Thank you,
    Warren

    From: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    To: Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree with Jason. It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing. There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI.

    About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it.

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead <Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com<mailto:Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com>> wrote:

    I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.

    The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyA.com<http://CompanyA.com>") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyB.com<http://CompanyB.com>") are actually quite low.

    This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph.

    -
    Jason Keirstead
    Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    www.ibm.com/security<http://www.ibm.com/security> | www.securityintelligence.com<http://www.securityintelligence.com>

    Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown


    <graycol.gif>"Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying

    From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>>
    To: "'Jordan, Bret'" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com<mailto:bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>>
    Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org<mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org>>, Jane Ginn <jane.ginn@gmail.com<mailto:jane.ginn@gmail.com>>, "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org<mailto:jwunder@mitre.org>>, "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>, "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    Sent by: <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    ________________________________



    The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult.
    (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)

    … at least that was where my head was at with it.

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.

    Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.


    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:

    I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:

    Great information here, thank you Sean.

    It sounds like we are talking about
    Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content)

    I could get behind that.

    From: Barnum, Sean D. [mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org]
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models.

    While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers.

    Does that make sense?
    Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear.

    Sean

    From: "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    Cc: "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>", "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>"
    Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept?

    Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to?

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jane Ginn
    Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    To: Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Hi All:
    While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0.
    JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction.
    I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration.
    Jane Ginn
    Cyber Threat Intelligence Network

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  • 8.  Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 22:06
    Good point Warren, and I hope we can get there. I would love to see some open communication and sharing of threat data across trust boundaries. I just feel like initially it will be an uphill battle for end networks to get approval from their legal departments. Where I see this working is within a trust group or circles of interest (FS-ISAC community). I also see this working inside the network by enabling security tools to talk to each other and enrich the data.


    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 15:41, Camp, Warren (CTR) <warren.camp@ASSOCIATES.HQ.DHS.GOV> wrote:
    >
    > Not being an expert in these matters, please consider my 2 cents worth of concern. I am concerned about statements such as “vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing” There won’t be any CTI communications if there is no value proposition for the cybersecurity community. The value is not just sharing information, the value is how we used the shared information. If we foster many different methods/approaches to sharing information, we will never leverage how to use the information. I believe part of the value proposition is providing solutions such as direct updating of IDS/IPS rules or malware signatures based on Threat Indicator and Alert data. With all the discussions are we improving what we have or are we improving where and how we want end.
    >
    > PS I enjoy the discussions and I am learning a lot from the different perspectives.
    >
    > Thank you,
    > Warren
    >
    > From: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    > Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    > To: Jason Keirstead
    > Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I would agree with Jason. It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing. There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI.
    >
    > About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it.
    >
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    > Bret Jordan CISSP
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    > Blue Coat Systems
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    >
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead <Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com <mailto:Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com>> wrote:
    >
    > I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.
    >
    > The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyA.com <http://companya.com/>") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyB.com <http://companyb.com/>") are actually quite low.
    >
    > This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph.
    >
    > -
    > Jason Keirstead
    > Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    > www.ibm.com/security <http://www.ibm.com/security> | www.securityintelligence.com <http://www.securityintelligence.com/>
    >
    > Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown
    >
    >
    > <graycol.gif>"Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying
    >
    > From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com <mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>>
    > To: "'Jordan, Bret'" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com <mailto:bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>>
    > Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org <mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org>>, Jane Ginn <jane.ginn@gmail.com <mailto:jane.ginn@gmail.com>>, "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org <mailto:jwunder@mitre.org>>, "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>, "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    > Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    > Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    > Sent by: <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    >
    >
    >
    > The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult.
    > (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)
    >
    > … at least that was where my head was at with it.
    >
    > From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    > Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    > To: Bush, Jonathan
    > Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.
    >
    > Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.
    >
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    > Bret Jordan CISSP
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    > Blue Coat Systems
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com <mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:
    >
    > I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.
    >
    > From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    > Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    > To: Bush, Jonathan
    > Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/ <http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/>
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    > Bret
    >
    >
    >
    > Bret Jordan CISSP
    > Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    > Blue Coat Systems
    > PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    > "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    > On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com <mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:
    >
    > Great information here, thank you Sean.
    >
    > It sounds like we are talking about
    > Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content)
    >
    > I could get behind that.
    >
    > From: Barnum, Sean D. [mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org <mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org>]
    > Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    > To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A.
    > Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models.
    >
    > While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers.
    >
    > Does that make sense?
    > Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear.
    >
    > Sean
    >
    > From: "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    > Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    > To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    > Cc: "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>", "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>"
    > Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept?
    >
    > Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to?
    >
    > From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>] On Behalf Of Jane Ginn
    > Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    > To: Wunder, John A.
    > Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org <mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    > Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding
    >
    > Hi All:
    > While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0.
    > JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction.
    > I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration.
    > Jane Ginn
    > Cyber Threat Intelligence Network
    >
    > DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.
    >
    > DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.
    >
    >
    > DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.
    >
    > DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email.




  • 9.  Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 22:06
    Good point Warren, and I hope we can get there.  I would love to see some open communication and sharing of threat data across trust boundaries.  I just feel like initially it will be an uphill battle for end networks to get approval from their legal departments.  Where I see this working is within a trust group or circles of interest (FS-ISAC community).  I also see this working inside the network by enabling security tools to talk to each other and enrich the data.   Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg.   On Oct 5, 2015, at 15:41, Camp, Warren (CTR) < warren.camp@ASSOCIATES.HQ.DHS.GOV > wrote: Not being an expert in these matters, please consider my 2 cents worth of concern.  I am concerned about statements such as “ vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing”  There won’t be any CTI communications if there is no value proposition for the cybersecurity community.  The value is not just sharing information, the value is how we used the shared information.  If we foster many different methods/approaches to sharing information, we will never leverage how to use the information.  I believe part of the value proposition is providing solutions such as direct updating of IDS/IPS rules or malware signatures based on Threat Indicator and Alert data.   With all the discussions are we improving what we have or are we improving where and how we want end.   PS  I enjoy the discussions and I am learning a lot from the different perspectives.   Thank you, Warren   From:   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org   [ mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ]   On Behalf Of   Jordan, Bret Sent:   Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM To:   Jason Keirstead Cc:   Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding   I would agree with Jason.  It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing.  There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI.   About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it.    Thanks,   Bret       Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg.     On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead < Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com > wrote:   I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.   The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space CompanyA.com ) can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space CompanyB.com ) are actually quite low.   This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph. - Jason Keirstead Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems www.ibm.com/security     www.securityintelligence.com Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown   <graycol.gif> Bush, Jonathan ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying From:   Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > To:   'Jordan, Bret' < bret.jordan@bluecoat.com > Cc:   Sean D. Barnum < sbarnum@mitre.org >, Jane Ginn < jane.ginn@gmail.com >, Wunder, John A. < jwunder@mitre.org >, cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org >, cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org < cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org > Date:   2015/10/05 02:48 PM Subject:   [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding Sent by:   < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org > The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult. (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here) … at least that was where my head was at with it. From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org   [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]   On Behalf Of   Jordan, Bret Sent:   Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM To:   Bush, Jonathan Cc:   Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.   Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.   Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg. On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.   From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org   [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]   On Behalf Of   Jordan, Bret Sent:   Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM To:   Bush, Jonathan Cc:   Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/ Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg. On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: Great information here, thank you Sean. It sounds like we are talking about Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content) I could get behind that. From:   Barnum, Sean D. [ mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org ]   Sent:   Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM To:   Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A. Cc:   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models. While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers. Does that make sense? Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear. Sean From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org on behalf of Bush, Jonathan Date:   Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM To:   'Jane Ginn', John Wunder Cc:   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org , cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept? Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to? From:   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org   [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]   On Behalf Of   Jane Ginn Sent:   Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM To:   Wunder, John A. Cc:   cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;   cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject:   [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding Hi All: While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0. JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction. I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration. Jane Ginn Cyber Threat Intelligence Network   DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. Attachment: signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail


  • 10.  RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 23:16
    Agreed Warren, my assumption was that was the whole point of what we were doing here – Creating an open community for cyber intel sharing. I can certainly appreciate though this won’t happen overnight, but that is a cultural issue. When we get beyond that barrier, we need to have the systems in place already to allow it. If we start building with that in mind at that time, it will be too late. “Begin with the end in mind”.

    From: Camp, Warren (CTR) [mailto:warren.camp@associates.hq.dhs.gov]
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 5:42 PM
    To: Jordan, Bret; Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Not being an expert in these matters, please consider my 2 cents worth of concern. I am concerned about statements such as “vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing” There won’t be any CTI communications if there is no value proposition for the cybersecurity community. The value is not just sharing information, the value is how we used the shared information. If we foster many different methods/approaches to sharing information, we will never leverage how to use the information. I believe part of the value proposition is providing solutions such as direct updating of IDS/IPS rules or malware signatures based on Threat Indicator and Alert data. With all the discussions are we improving what we have or are we improving where and how we want end.

    PS I enjoy the discussions and I am learning a lot from the different perspectives.

    Thank you,
    Warren

    From: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    To: Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree with Jason. It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing. There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI.

    About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it.

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead <Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com<mailto:Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com>> wrote:

    I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.

    The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyA.com<http://CompanyA.com>") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space "CompanyB.com<http://CompanyB.com>") are actually quite low.

    This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph.

    -
    Jason Keirstead
    Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    www.ibm.com/security<http://www.ibm.com/security> | www.securityintelligence.com<http://www.securityintelligence.com>

    Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown


    <graycol.gif>"Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying

    From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>>
    To: "'Jordan, Bret'" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com<mailto:bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>>
    Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org<mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org>>, Jane Ginn <jane.ginn@gmail.com<mailto:jane.ginn@gmail.com>>, "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org<mailto:jwunder@mitre.org>>, "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>, "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    Sent by: <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>>
    ________________________________



    The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult.
    (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)

    … at least that was where my head was at with it.

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.

    Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.


    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:

    I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com<mailto:jbush@dtcc.com>> wrote:

    Great information here, thank you Sean.

    It sounds like we are talking about
    Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content)

    I could get behind that.

    From: Barnum, Sean D. [mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org]
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models.

    While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers.

    Does that make sense?
    Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear.

    Sean

    From: "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>" on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    Cc: "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>", "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>"
    Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept?

    Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to?

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> [mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jane Ginn
    Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    To: Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org<mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Hi All:
    While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0.
    JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction.
    I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration.
    Jane Ginn
    Cyber Threat Intelligence Network

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  • 11.  RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-05-2015 23:16




    Agreed Warren, my assumption was that was the whole point of what we were doing here – Creating an open community for cyber intel sharing.  I can certainly appreciate
    though this won’t happen overnight, but that is a cultural issue.  When we get beyond that barrier, we need to have the systems in place already to allow it.  If we start building with that in mind at that time, it will be too late.  “Begin with the end in
    mind”.
     


    From: Camp, Warren (CTR) [mailto:warren.camp@associates.hq.dhs.gov]

    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 5:42 PM
    To: Jordan, Bret; Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding


     
    Not being an expert in these matters, please consider my 2 cents worth of concern.  I am concerned about statements such as “vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and
    open sharing”  There won’t be any CTI communications if there is no value proposition for the cybersecurity community.  The value is not just sharing information, the value is how we used the shared information.  If we foster many different methods/approaches
    to sharing information, we will never leverage how to use the information.  I believe part of the value proposition is providing solutions such as direct updating of IDS/IPS rules or malware signatures based on Threat Indicator and Alert data.   With all the
    discussions are we improving what we have or are we improving where and how we want end.
     
    PS  I enjoy the discussions and I am learning a lot from the different perspectives.
     
    Thank you,
    Warren
     


    From:
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ]
    On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    To: Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding


     
    I would agree with Jason.  It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing.  There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do
    with their CTI.

     


    About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it. 







     


    Thanks,


     


    Bret



     


     


     



    Bret Jordan CISSP

    Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO


    Blue Coat Systems



    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447  F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050


    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg." 









     



    On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead < Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com > wrote:

     


    I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true.


    The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space " CompanyA.com ") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space " CompanyB.com ") are actually quite low.


    This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph.

    -
    Jason Keirstead
    Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    www.ibm.com/security
    www.securityintelligence.com

    Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown


    <graycol.gif> "Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying

    From: "Bush, Jonathan" < jbush@dtcc.com >
    To: "'Jordan, Bret'" < bret.jordan@bluecoat.com >
    Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" < sbarnum@mitre.org >, Jane Ginn < jane.ginn@gmail.com >, "Wunder, John A." < jwunder@mitre.org >,
    " cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org " < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org >, " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org " < cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org >
    Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    Sent by: < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org >








    The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere
    else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis
    to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult.
    (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)

    … at least that was where my head was at with it.

    From:
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]
    On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user
    profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.


    Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard
    well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case.


    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote:

    I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of
    “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.

    From:
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]
    On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."

    On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com >
    wrote:

    Great information here, thank you Sean.

    It sounds like we are talking about
    Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content)

    I could get behind that.

    From: Barnum, Sean D. [ mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org ]

    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have
    been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism
    everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction
    stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have
    evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness
    to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what
    such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community
    may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate
    the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model
    but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues
    (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to
    fully semantic models.

    While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that
    that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON”
    not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are
    what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model
    is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be
    interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding
    spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers.

    Does that make sense?
    Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear.

    Sean

    From:
    " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org "
    on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    Cc: " cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ", " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org "
    Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage
    of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question
    is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept?

    Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to?

    From:
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ]
    On Behalf Of Jane Ginn
    Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    To: Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Hi All:
    While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a
    semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward
    with STIX 2.0.
    JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction.
    I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive
    modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration.
    Jane Ginn
    Cyber Threat Intelligence Network

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  • 12.  RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-06-2015 12:14
    There is a big difference between being open with your data, and having
    that data live on a public internet-facing web server for query. The
    difference is PULL vs PUSH, and it is a big one. Organizations will be
    willing to PUSH subsets of their threat intel to trust group based sharing
    platforms - and yes that is indeed the whole reason we are all here - but
    most organizations are not going to allow outsiders, even those in their
    own trust group, to connect to their internal threat repositories to PULL
    threat intel. It would be like having your PCI servers sitting out on the
    Internet - not going to happen.

    -
    Jason Keirstead
    Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    www.ibm.com/security | www.securityintelligence.com

    Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown




    From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com>
    To: "'Camp, Warren (CTR)'" <warren.camp@associates.hq.dhs.gov>,
    "Jordan, Bret" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>, Jason
    Keirstead/CanEast/IBM@IBMCA
    Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org>, Jane Ginn
    <jane.ginn@gmail.com>, "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org>,
    "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org"
    <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>,
    "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Date: 2015/10/05 08:21 PM
    Subject: RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding



    Agreed Warren, my assumption was that was the whole point of what we were
    doing here – Creating an open community for cyber intel sharing. I can
    certainly appreciate though this won’t happen overnight, but that is a
    cultural issue. When we get beyond that barrier, we need to have the
    systems in place already to allow it. If we start building with that in
    mind at that time, it will be too late. “Begin with the end in mind”.

    From: Camp, Warren (CTR) [mailto:warren.camp@associates.hq.dhs.gov]
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 5:42 PM
    To: Jordan, Bret; Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Not being an expert in these matters, please consider my 2 cents worth of
    concern. I am concerned about statements such as “vast majority of CTI
    communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing” There won’t be any
    CTI communications if there is no value proposition for the cybersecurity
    community. The value is not just sharing information, the value is how we
    used the shared information. If we foster many different
    methods/approaches to sharing information, we will never leverage how to
    use the information. I believe part of the value proposition is providing
    solutions such as direct updating of IDS/IPS rules or malware signatures
    based on Threat Indicator and Alert data. With all the discussions are we
    improving what we have or are we improving where and how we want end.

    PS I enjoy the discussions and I am learning a lot from the different
    perspectives.

    Thank you,
    Warren

    From: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org
    ] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM
    To: Jason Keirstead
    Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I would agree with Jason. It seems like the vast majority of CTI
    communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing. There will be
    trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of
    boundaries around what people do with their CTI.

    About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing
    data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do
    something with the data and then re-share it.

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can
    not be unscrambled is an egg."

    On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead <Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com
    > wrote:

    I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to
    share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which
    isn't true.

    The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space "
    CompanyA.com") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator
    of STIX Name space "CompanyB.com") are actually quite low.

    This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at
    all to build a knowledge graph.

    -
    Jason Keirstead
    Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems
    www.ibm.com/security | www.securityintelligence.com

    Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion -
    Unknown


    <graycol.gif>"Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The
    use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data
    around the internet, copying

    From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com>
    To: "'Jordan, Bret'" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>
    Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org>, Jane Ginn <
    jane.ginn@gmail.com>, "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org>, "
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>, "
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org>
    Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM
    Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding
    Sent by: <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>




    The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting
    data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we
    could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists
    somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around
    when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that
    then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net”
    of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to
    answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult.
    (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here)

    … at least that was where my head was at with it.

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [
    mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it
    might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing
    unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the
    data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter,
    Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to
    define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data.

    Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just
    do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI
    would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is
    KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me
    understand this use case.


    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing
    that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan <jbush@dtcc.com>
    wrote:

    I would agree that some of the technologies involved with
    the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex,
    many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a
    structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data
    thinking now, we leave that door open for the future.

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [
    mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of
    Jordan, Bret
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM
    To: Bush, Jonathan
    Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.;
    cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/

    Thanks,

    Bret



    Bret Jordan CISSP
    Director of Security Architecture and Standards | Office
    of the CTO
    Blue Coat Systems
    PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE
    7415 0050
    "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the
    only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg."
    On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan <
    jbush@dtcc.com> wrote:

    Great information here, thank you Sean.

    It sounds like we are talking about
    Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD
    (context portion mapping model to JSON
    constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances
    of content)

    I could get behind that.

    From: Barnum, Sean D. [
    mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org]
    Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM
    To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John
    A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI
    Binding

    I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s
    characterization that this represents a
    "significant shift in the level at which we
    are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I
    think it fits very well into how we have been
    approaching the problem but may represent an
    acceleration along our path. We began the
    STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the
    language because we as a community did not
    yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD
    provided a good structured mechanism everyone
    could deal with to collaboratively define and
    experiment in an explicit way. It was
    recognized since the beginning that this was
    only a temporary approach and that we would
    eventually need a richer more semantic
    specification with a derived abstraction
    stack like I described in my earlier post
    (ontology/data-model, binding specs,
    implementations, instance data). We have been
    working along this path as a community
    gradually separating out and establishing
    these abstractions for quite a while now. As
    we have evolved the technology along the
    planned path we have tried to be mindful not
    only of the raw technical capabilities of
    given technologies to support targeted use
    cases and represent necessary information but
    also of the community’s ability and
    willingness to understand, accept and adopt
    them. I and several others in the community
    have long posited that a full semantic model
    (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would
    likely be the best long term form for the
    ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly
    what such technologies are designed for and
    would provide excellent flexibility but also
    excellent consistency and potential for
    automated transformation. To date this has
    been viewed as a goal to work towards but not
    something to be pushed too soon as the
    community may not be familiar enough with it
    yet. This led to the interim step of
    leveraging UML to specify the normative model
    for the language. The UML-based
    specifications we have today, while not fully
    semantic, provide us the practical ability to
    fully instantiate the desired abstraction
    stack for STIX. I continue to hold the
    opinion (as do several others in the
    community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that
    we should continue to evolve towards a full
    explicit semantic form of specification for
    the ontology/data-model but it is still
    unclear how fast that evolution should occur.
    The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0
    was to stick with the UML + text docs form
    but begin to work in some semantic modeling
    snippets as part of discussions on a few of
    the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out
    relationships) that are semantic in their
    roots and likely include a few OWL-style
    diagrams in the spec text docs. This could
    then be a good introduction to these
    approaches for the community and an initial
    basis for future evolution to fully semantic
    models.

    While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based
    implementations would require some major
    retooling to support a JSON-based
    serialization form, I don’t think that
    JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden
    that that. To be clear, instance STIX data
    using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure
    JSON”. It is just that the structure of that
    JSON would be aligned to the
    ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction
    stack. To use a simple analogy, think of
    “pure JSON” not as a human language like
    English or French but rather as something far
    lower level such as human cursive
    handwriting. It can be used to convey all
    sorts of different semantics and structure
    (English, French, etc.). The LD/context
    portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone
    reading the cursive to recognize whether they
    are reading English or French and to
    understand the actual meaning of what is
    being written. This mapping of meaning from
    the low-level serialization format to the
    higher-level ontology/data-model is what the
    two middle layers of the abstraction stack
    are all about. These layers are required to
    be there no matter which approach we take.
    Without these layers expressed content,
    regardless of whether it is JSON, XML,
    protobuf or whatever, would not be
    interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD
    provides one option for defining these layers
    for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization
    for instance data (which is what I believe
    Bret and several others really want). Another
    option would be to write the JSON binding
    spec as some other form of rules (including
    potentially human language) and then specify
    the implementation using something like JSON
    Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit
    structured way to tackle these two layers.

    Does that make sense?
    Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics
    should feel free to point out where they
    believe my characterizations are incorrect or
    unclear.

    Sean

    From: "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org" on
    behalf of "Bush, Jonathan"
    Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM
    To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder
    Cc: "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org", "
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org"
    Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI
    Binding

    I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly
    powerful way to represent intelligence data,
    but it represents a fundamental shift that
    will require a major retooling for most
    implementations to really take advantage of
    it. The good news is that tools (such as
    Soltra products to be all about “me” for a
    second) could ease into that implementation
    by thinning the implementation down to pure
    JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me
    if I’m wrong here). The real question is,
    will we as implementers get to the point
    where we really jump all in and represent
    data using the “LD” portion of the concept?

    Again, looks promising (after all, if Google
    and Facebook are using it to represent
    complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying
    attention), but do we all know what we would
    be buying in to?

    From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [
    mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org] On
    Behalf Of Jane Ginn
    Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM
    To: Wunder, John A.
    Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org;
    cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org
    Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI
    Binding

    Hi All:
    While reading through this thread it occurred
    to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents
    a significant shift in the level at which we
    are approaching the problem set. Cory has
    long been arguing for us to shift our focus
    to a semantic model that can serve as a
    language agnostic approach to solving the CTI
    sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for
    JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide
    spread adoption. We currently have bindings
    in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving
    forward with STIX 2.0.
    JSON-LD appears to address several of our
    issues at a higher level of abstraction.
    I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the
    POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be
    deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on
    attacks for predictive modelling... or at
    least deploying the myriad of tools for
    predictive modelling. I expect this is an
    area of white space in the market that will
    be picked up by a vendor and developed as an
    enterprise solution. We just need to get the
    front end right for the integration.
    Jane Ginn
    Cyber Threat Intelligence Network

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  • 13.  RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding

    Posted 10-06-2015 12:16
    There is a big difference between being open with your data, and having that data live on a public internet-facing web server for query. The difference is PULL vs PUSH, and it is a big one. Organizations will be willing to PUSH subsets of their threat intel to trust group based sharing platforms - and yes that is indeed the whole reason we are all here - but most organizations are not going to allow outsiders, even those in their own trust group, to connect to their internal threat repositories to PULL threat intel. It would be like having your PCI servers sitting out on the Internet - not going to happen. - Jason Keirstead Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems www.ibm.com/security www.securityintelligence.com Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown "Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 08:21:23 PM---Agreed Warren, my assumption was that was the whole point of what we were doing here – Creating an o From: "Bush, Jonathan" <jbush@dtcc.com> To: "'Camp, Warren (CTR)'" <warren.camp@associates.hq.dhs.gov>, "Jordan, Bret" <bret.jordan@bluecoat.com>, Jason Keirstead/CanEast/IBM@IBMCA Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" <sbarnum@mitre.org>, Jane Ginn <jane.ginn@gmail.com>, "Wunder, John A." <jwunder@mitre.org>, "cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org>, "cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org" <cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org> Date: 2015/10/05 08:21 PM Subject: RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding Agreed Warren, my assumption was that was the whole point of what we were doing here – Creating an open community for cyber intel sharing. I can certainly appreciate though this won’t happen overnight, but that is a cultural issue. When we get beyond that barrier, we need to have the systems in place already to allow it. If we start building with that in mind at that time, it will be too late. “Begin with the end in mind”. From: Camp, Warren (CTR) [ mailto:warren.camp@associates.hq.dhs.gov ] Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 5:42 PM To: Jordan, Bret; Jason Keirstead Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding Not being an expert in these matters, please consider my 2 cents worth of concern. I am concerned about statements such as “vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing” There won’t be any CTI communications if there is no value proposition for the cybersecurity community. The value is not just sharing information, the value is how we used the shared information. If we foster many different methods/approaches to sharing information, we will never leverage how to use the information. I believe part of the value proposition is providing solutions such as direct updating of IDS/IPS rules or malware signatures based on Threat Indicator and Alert data. With all the discussions are we improving what we have or are we improving where and how we want end. PS I enjoy the discussions and I am learning a lot from the different perspectives. Thank you, Warren From: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:21 PM To: Jason Keirstead Cc: Bush, Jonathan; Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [cti-users] [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding I would agree with Jason. It seems like the vast majority of CTI communication will NOT exist in broad and open sharing. There will be trust groups, subscriptions, niche eco-systems, and all manner of boundaries around what people do with their CTI. About the best we can hope for in the short term is organizations pushing data (copy) to an ISAO or ISAC or DHS and then having them correlate and do something with the data and then re-share it. Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg." On Oct 5, 2015, at 12:13, Jason Keirstead < Jason.Keirstead@ca.ibm.com > wrote: I think you're making a big assumption that most systems used to share CTI will be internet facing and/or publicly accessible, which isn't true. The odds that CTI System A (originator of STIX Name space " CompanyA.com ") can communicate directly with CTI System B (originator of STIX Name space " CompanyB.com ") are actually quite low. This is why the data has to be copied, otherwise there is no way at all to build a knowledge graph. - Jason Keirstead Product Architect, Security Intelligence, IBM Security Systems www.ibm.com/security www.securityintelligence.com Without data, all you are is just another person with an opinion - Unknown <graycol.gif> "Bush, Jonathan" ---2015/10/05 02:48:22 PM---The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying From: "Bush, Jonathan" < jbush@dtcc.com > To: "'Jordan, Bret'" < bret.jordan@bluecoat.com > Cc: "Sean D. Barnum" < sbarnum@mitre.org >, Jane Ginn < jane.ginn@gmail.com >, "Wunder, John A." < jwunder@mitre.org >, " cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org " < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org >, " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org " < cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org > Date: 2015/10/05 02:48 PM Subject: [cti-users] RE: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding Sent by: < cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org > The use-case I had in mind was that instead of tools transporting data around the internet, copying it from one place to another, we could just have the data link to other referenced data that exists somewhere else in the CTI “ecosystem”. Why move all that data around when I can just point to it? And… if that leads me to a place that then points to other data locations, before long I will have a “net” of data that I can use to perform complex analytical analysis to answer questions that would otherwise be very difficult. (I suppose I’m defining the semantic web here) … at least that was where my head was at with it. From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:42 PM To: Bush, Jonathan Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding I have been reading a lot about JSON-LD, and I get how and why it might be interesting in a website context when you are sharing unknown data back and forth. Meaning there is no standard for the data you are sharing. Think user profile between Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. But, unless I am mistaken, the purpose of STIX is to define a standard for CTI so that we all share the same data. Can someone explain why JSON-LD is needed in the CTI context. I just do not see why anyone that is building an application to use CTI would care since all of the data that will be shared between them is KNOWN and in a standard well known form, aka STIX... Please help me understand this use case. Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg." On Oct 5, 2015, at 11:20, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: I would agree that some of the technologies involved with the Semantic web scare me a little bit (very complex, many seem pretty academic), but at least if we go with a structure that sets us up for this sort of “linked” data thinking now, we leave that door open for the future. From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ] On Behalf Of Jordan, Bret Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 1:11 PM To: Bush, Jonathan Cc: Sean D. Barnum; Jane Ginn; Wunder, John A.; cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [cti-stix] [cti-users] MTI Binding http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/ Thanks, Bret Bret Jordan CISSP Director of Security Architecture and Standards Office of the CTO Blue Coat Systems PGP Fingerprint: 63B4 FC53 680A 6B7D 1447 F2C0 74F8 ACAE 7415 0050 "Without cryptography vihv vivc ce xhrnrw, however, the only thing that can not be unscrambled is an egg." On Oct 5, 2015, at 10:34, Bush, Jonathan < jbush@dtcc.com > wrote: Great information here, thank you Sean. It sounds like we are talking about Use-Cases -> UML (or OWL/RDF) -> JSON-LD (context portion mapping model to JSON constructs to use) -> JSON (actual instances of content) I could get behind that. From: Barnum, Sean D. [ mailto:sbarnum@mitre.org ] Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 10:14 AM To: Bush, Jonathan; 'Jane Ginn'; Wunder, John A. Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding I don’t think I would concur with Jane’s characterization that this represents a "significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set”. Rather, I think it fits very well into how we have been approaching the problem but may represent an acceleration along our path. We began the STIX efforts leveraging XSD to specify the language because we as a community did not yet know or agree on what CTI was and XSD provided a good structured mechanism everyone could deal with to collaboratively define and experiment in an explicit way. It was recognized since the beginning that this was only a temporary approach and that we would eventually need a richer more semantic specification with a derived abstraction stack like I described in my earlier post (ontology/data-model, binding specs, implementations, instance data). We have been working along this path as a community gradually separating out and establishing these abstractions for quite a while now. As we have evolved the technology along the planned path we have tried to be mindful not only of the raw technical capabilities of given technologies to support targeted use cases and represent necessary information but also of the community’s ability and willingness to understand, accept and adopt them. I and several others in the community have long posited that a full semantic model (likely using something like OWL/RDF) would likely be the best long term form for the ontology/data-model layer as that is exactly what such technologies are designed for and would provide excellent flexibility but also excellent consistency and potential for automated transformation. To date this has been viewed as a goal to work towards but not something to be pushed too soon as the community may not be familiar enough with it yet. This led to the interim step of leveraging UML to specify the normative model for the language. The UML-based specifications we have today, while not fully semantic, provide us the practical ability to fully instantiate the desired abstraction stack for STIX. I continue to hold the opinion (as do several others in the community like Pat, Paul, Shawn, etc.) that we should continue to evolve towards a full explicit semantic form of specification for the ontology/data-model but it is still unclear how fast that evolution should occur. The plan discussed several times for STIX 2.0 was to stick with the UML + text docs form but begin to work in some semantic modeling snippets as part of discussions on a few of the refactoring issues (e.g. separating out relationships) that are semantic in their roots and likely include a few OWL-style diagrams in the spec text docs. This could then be a good introduction to these approaches for the community and an initial basis for future evolution to fully semantic models. While Jonathan is correct that most XML-based implementations would require some major retooling to support a JSON-based serialization form, I don’t think that JSON-LD inherently brings any further burden that that. To be clear, instance STIX data using a JSON-LD approach would still be &pure JSON”. It is just that the structure of that JSON would be aligned to the ontology/data-model higher in the abstraction stack. To use a simple analogy, think of “pure JSON” not as a human language like English or French but rather as something far lower level such as human cursive handwriting. It can be used to convey all sorts of different semantics and structure (English, French, etc.). The LD/context portions of JSON-LD are what allow someone reading the cursive to recognize whether they are reading English or French and to understand the actual meaning of what is being written. This mapping of meaning from the low-level serialization format to the higher-level ontology/data-model is what the two middle layers of the abstraction stack are all about. These layers are required to be there no matter which approach we take. Without these layers expressed content, regardless of whether it is JSON, XML, protobuf or whatever, would not be interpretable of interoperable. JSON-LD provides one option for defining these layers for a targeted “pure JSON” end serialization for instance data (which is what I believe Bret and several others really want). Another option would be to write the JSON binding spec as some other form of rules (including potentially human language) and then specify the implementation using something like JSON Schema. JSON-LD simply provides an explicit structured way to tackle these two layers. Does that make sense? Again, anyone knowledgeable on these topics should feel free to point out where they believe my characterizations are incorrect or unclear. Sean From: " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org " on behalf of "Bush, Jonathan" Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 8:15 AM To: 'Jane Ginn', John Wunder Cc: " cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ", " cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org " Subject: RE: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding I would agree. JSON-LD could be an incredibly powerful way to represent intelligence data, but it represents a fundamental shift that will require a major retooling for most implementations to really take advantage of it. The good news is that tools (such as Soltra products to be all about “me” for a second) could ease into that implementation by thinning the implementation down to pure JSON at first (I believe, someone correct me if I’m wrong here). The real question is, will we as implementers get to the point where we really jump all in and represent data using the “LD” portion of the concept? Again, looks promising (after all, if Google and Facebook are using it to represent complex data, why shouldn’t we be paying attention), but do we all know what we would be buying in to? From: cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org [ mailto:cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org ] On Behalf Of Jane Ginn Sent: Friday, October 02, 2015 8:45 PM To: Wunder, John A. Cc: cti-users@lists.oasis-open.org ; cti-stix@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: [cti-stix] Re: [cti-users] MTI Binding Hi All: While reading through this thread it occurred to me that the JSON-LD suggestion represents a significant shift in the level at which we are approaching the problem set. Cory has long been arguing for us to shift our focus to a semantic model that can serve as a language agnostic approach to solving the CTI sharing problem. Bret has been pushing for JSON as a tool to help us achieve more wide spread adoption. We currently have bindings in XML and Python... but no MTI for moving forward with STIX 2.0. JSON-LD appears to address several of our issues at a higher level of abstraction. I'm also intrigued by the potential, from the POV of STIX cosumers, at how PMML can be deployed seamlessly to use wire speed data on attacks for predictive modelling... or at least deploying the myriad of tools for predictive modelling. I expect this is an area of white space in the market that will be picked up by a vendor and developed as an enterprise solution. We just need to get the front end right for the integration. Jane Ginn Cyber Threat Intelligence Network DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and any attachments from your system. The recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. DTCC DISCLAIMER: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. 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