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How to calculate delta between two time fields and then placed into buckets?

jwalzerpitt
Influencer

I'm trying to create a report that shows unpatched vulnerabilities broken down into buckets of time by days.

For example, I'd like to see the number of unpatched vulnerabilities based on their first seen date that are placed into the following buckets: <10d, 10-30d, >30d

Nessus has two fields: 1) firstSeen and 2) lastSeen that are in epoch time. I convert the fields via eval commands:

| eval firstSeen=strftime(firstSeen, "%m/%d/%Y") | eval lastSeen=strftime(lastSeen, "%m/%d/%Y")

How would I calculate the delta between those two fields and then assign them to a duration (<10d, 10-30d, >30d) bucket?

Thx

elliotproebstel
Champion

Calculating the delta is very easy with the epoch timestamps, so you won't need the evals you posted.
| eval vuln_age=lastSeen-firstSeen will give you the difference between firstSeen and lastSeen.

Then you can compare the value of vuln_age to:

- 10 days * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute = 864000
- 30 days * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute = 2592000

You can use a case statement to find the bucket:

| eval 10d=864000, 30d=2592000
| eval duration_bucket=case(vuln_age<10d, "<10d", vuln_age<=30d, "10-30d", vuln_age>30d, ">30d")

So in total, the code will be this:

[ your base search ]
| eval vuln_age=lastSeen-firstSeen
| eval 10d=864000, 30d=2592000
| eval duration_bucket=case(vuln_age<10d, "<10d", vuln_age<=30d, "10-30d", vuln_age>30d, ">30d")

jwalzerpitt
Influencer

Thx for the reply - greatly appreciated

After digging around a bit, I came up with the following:

index=nessus severity!=informational exploitAvailable=Yes
| lookup ip_cidr.csv cidr_range as ip
| eval firewall=coalesce(firewall,"null")
| eval context=coalesce(context,"null")
| eval zone=coalesce(zone,"null")
| eval StartTime=strptime(firstSeen, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") 
| eval EndTime=strptime(lastSeen, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") 
| eval duration=strftime(lastSeen-firstSeen,"%d")
| eval duration_group = case(duration < 10, "<10d", duration = 10 AND duration <30, "10-30d", duration < 30, ">30d")
| chart count by duration_group

Two ways to skin a cat as they say?

0 Karma

petaa
Engager

I found that:

| eval duration=strftime(lastSeen-firstSeen,"%d")

Would always return the day of the month (1 through 31) and not the duration. I ended up using:

| eval duration_in_days=(lastSeen-firstSeen)/86400

instead which I believe will return the amount of days past.

0 Karma

MuS
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

and if you want to catch as well events outside of your defined sets of durations, just add a catch-all clause at the end of the case() like this:

 case(duration < 10, "<10d", duration = 10 AND duration <30, "10-30d", duration < 30, ">30d", 1=1, "older")

cheers, MuS

jwalzerpitt
Influencer

MuS,

Thx million for the additional info. Plugged the syntax in and caught a bunch of stuff. Greatly appreciated!

0 Karma

elliotproebstel
Champion

Wait, that actually shouldn't be catching anything, if you fix another typo. Right now, your second case statement should be duration>=10 AND duration<30, and your third case statement should be duration>30. Your original code has the third case as duration<30, which doesn't match your needs.

0 Karma

jwalzerpitt
Influencer

Thx again for catching another typo! I know have the following eval statement:

| eval duration_group = case(duration < 10, "<10d", duration >= 10 AND duration <30, "10-30d", duration > 30, ">30d")
0 Karma

elliotproebstel
Champion

Great! And I think your case now is actually missing one more thing (sorry for not catching it earlier!) - it won't give any message when the duration is exactly 30. So probably the case statement for "10-30d" should be duration >= 10 AND duration <=30.

0 Karma

jwalzerpitt
Influencer

Thx again

3rd time is the charm and I should be typo free (I hope).

Another two questions if you don't mind:

1) How could I create a list for each bucket group by host? For example, I'd like the list to look like as follows:

duration group                              Host
10-30d                                             system 1
                                                         system 5
                                                         system 11

<10d                                                system 2
                                                         system 4

>30d                                                system 3
                                                         system 6

2) How could I show the average amount of days it takes before a vulnerability is mitigated/patched by host?

Thx

0 Karma

elliotproebstel
Champion

1) Assuming each relevant event has the field Host, it's very straightforward:
...| stats values(Host) AS Host BY duration_group

2) Calculating the average is also very easy:
...| stats avg(duration) AS average_duration BY Host

Note that you can't stack those two stats commands one after the other, because stats will discard the original duration field. It wouldn't make a very nice looking table (in my opinion), but you could combine them like this if you wanted:
...| stats avg(duration) AS average_duration BY Host duration_group

But really, I think you'd be better served by two separate tables, so hopefully that's what you plan to do. 🙂

jwalzerpitt
Influencer

TYVM - very helpful and illuminating.

Thinking more about the when I calculate the avg, the ...| stats avg(duration) AS average_duration BY Host is calculating the avg time to mitigate of all vulnerabilities for a host, correct? For example, say Host A has 10 vulnerabilities and vuln 1 is mitigated in two days, then vuln 2 is mitigated on 5 days, etc., the calculation is looking at the duration off all 10 vulnerabilities combined.

And I agree, I'm better served by two separate tables.

Thx again

0 Karma

elliotproebstel
Champion

Glad to help. And yes, that's the average that will be calculated by that command. So if each host has its own administrator, you could draw conclusions like, "The owner of Host A is reacting more quickly and addressing vulnerabilities in a more timely manner than the owner of Host B."

If there are other averages you are looking to calculate, the structure will remain the same, you'd just sub in different field names instead of duration or Host. For example, if each event also has a field called severity, you could calculate the average time to mitigating vulnerabilities by severity: ...| stats avg(duration) AS average_duration BY severity

0 Karma

elliotproebstel
Champion

Absolutely. However, if that's a direct cut & paste of your search, I'll note that you have a typo/logic error in your case statement. The second option duration = 10 AND duration <30 will only evaluate to True when duration is exactly 10. I think you're looking for duration >= 10 AND duration <30. Cheers!

jwalzerpitt
Influencer

TYVM for catching the typo!

0 Karma

elliotproebstel
Champion

Glad to help!

0 Karma
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