nfstream: a flexible network data analysis framework

#machinelearning #networking #python #security

nfstream: a flexible network data analysis framework

nfstream is a Python package providing fast, flexible, and expressive data structures designed to make working with online or offline network data both easy and intuitive. It aims to be the fundamental high-level building block for
doing practical, real world network data analysis in Python. Additionally, it has
the broader goal of becoming a common network data processing framework for researchers providing data reproducibility across experiments.

Main Features

Performance: nfstream is designed to be fast (x10 faster with pypy3 support) with a small CPU and memory footprint.
Layer-7 visibility: nfstream deep packet inspection engine is based on nDPI. It allows nfstream to perform reliable encrypted applications identification and metadata extraction (e.g. TLS, SSH, DNS, HTTP).
Flexibility: add a flow feature in 2 lines as an NFPlugin.
Machine Learning oriented: add your trained model as an NFPlugin.

How to use it?

Dealing with a big pcap file and just want to aggregate it as network flows? nfstream make this path easier in few lines:

   from nfstream import NFStreamer
   my_awesome_streamer = NFStreamer(source="facebook.pcap") # or network interface (source="eth0")
   for flow in my_awesome_streamer:
       print(flow)  # print it.

    NFEntry(
        id=0,
        first_seen=1472393122365,
        last_seen=1472393123665,
        version=4,
        src_port=52066,
        dst_port=443,
        protocol=6,
        vlan_id=0,
        src_ip='192.168.43.18',
        dst_ip='66.220.156.68',
        total_packets=19,
        total_bytes=5745,
        duration=1300,
        src2dst_packets=9,
        src2dst_bytes=1345,
        dst2src_packets=10,
        dst2src_bytes=4400,
        expiration_id=0,
        master_protocol=91,
        app_protocol=119,
        application_name='TLS.Facebook',
        category_name='SocialNetwork',
        client_info='facebook.com',
        server_info='*.facebook.com',
        j3a_client='bfcc1a3891601edb4f137ab7ab25b840',
        j3a_server='2d1eb5817ece335c24904f516ad5da12'
    )

Didn't find a specific flow feature? add a plugin to nfstream in few lines:

    from nfstream import NFPlugin

    class my_awesome_plugin(NFPlugin):
        def on_update(self, obs, entry):
            if obs.length >= 666:
                entry.my_awesome_plugin += 1

   streamer_awesome = NFStreamer(source='devil.pcap', plugins=[my_awesome_plugin()])
   for flow in streamer_awesome:
      print(flow.my_awesome_plugin) # see your dynamically created metric in generated flows

More example and details are provided on the official documentation.

Prerequisites

    apt-get install libpcap-dev

Installation

Using pip

Binary installers for the latest released version are available:

    pip3 install nfstream

Build from source

If you want to build nfstream on your local machine:

    git clone https://github.com/aouinizied/nfstream.git
    cd nfstream
    python3 setup.py install

Ethics

nfstream is intended for network data research and forensics.
Researchers and network data scientists can use these framework to build reliable datasets, train and evaluate
network applied machine learning models.
As with any packet monitoring tool, nfstream could potentially be misused.
Do not run it on any network of which you are not the owner or the administrator.