Tutorial: Basic Get Certificate Reputation Example

Basic Get Certificate Reputation Example

This sample demonstrates invoking the McAfee Threat Intelligence Exchange (TIE) DXL service to retrieve the reputation of a certificate (as identified by its hashes).

Prerequisites

  • The samples configuration step has been completed (see Samples).
  • A McAfee Threat Intelligence Exchange (TIE) Service is available on the DXL fabric.

Setup

The example includes preconfigured hash constants for a certificate to look up. Modify these for a certificate which is known to have run within the enterprise for better results:

// Hashes for the certificate to look up
// These can be replaced by a certificate which is known to have run within the
// enterprise for better results
var CERTIFICATE_BODY_SHA1 = '6eae26db8c13182a7947982991b4321732cc3de2'
var CERTIFICATE_PUBLIC_KEY_SHA1 = '3b87a2d6f39770160364b79a152fcc73bae27adf'

Running

To run this sample execute the sample/basic/basic-get-cert-reputation-example.js script as follows:

$ node sample/basic/basic-get-cert-reputation-example.js

The output should appear similar to the following:

Certificate reputations:                  
{                                         
    "2": {                                
        "attributes": {                   
            "2108821": "94",              
            "2109077": "1454912619",      
            "2117524": "0",               
            "2120596": "0"                
        },                                
        "createDate": 1476318514,         
        "providerId": 2,                  
        "trustLevel": 99                  
    },                                    
    "4": {                                
        "attributes": {                   
            "2109333": "12",              
            "2109589": "1476318514",      
            "2139285": "73183493944770750"
        },                                
        "createDate": 1476318514,         
        "providerId": 4,                  
        "trustLevel": 0                   
    }                                     
}

The sample outputs the reputation for a certificate.

The key for each property in the object corresponds to a particular provider of the associated reputation. The list of certificate reputation providers can be found in the CertProvider constants module.

The McAfee Global Threat Intelligence (GTI) service is identified in the results as "providerId" : 2. The trust level associated with the GTI response ("trustLevel": 99) indicates that the certificate is known good.

See the TrustLevel constants module for the list of standard trust levels.

Details

The majority of the sample code is shown below:

// Create the client
var client = new dxl.Client(config)

// Hashes for the certificate to look up
// These can be replaced by a certificate which is known to have run within the
// enterprise for better results
var CERTIFICATE_BODY_SHA1 = '6eae26db8c13182a7947982991b4321732cc3de2'
var CERTIFICATE_PUBLIC_KEY_SHA1 = '3b87a2d6f39770160364b79a152fcc73bae27adf'

// Connect to the fabric, supplying a callback function which is invoked
// when the connection has been established
client.connect(function () {
  // Create the McAfee Threat Intelligence Exchange (TIE) client
  var tieClient = new TieClient(client)

  // Request reputation for the certificate
  tieClient.getCertificateReputation(
    function (error, reputations) {
      // Destroy the client - frees up resources so that the application
      // stops running
      client.destroy()
      if (error) {
        console.log('Error getting certificate reputations: ' + error.message)
      } else {
        // Display reputation for the certificate
        console.log('Certificate reputations:')
        console.log(MessageUtils.objectToJson(reputations, true))
      }
    },
    CERTIFICATE_BODY_SHA1,
    CERTIFICATE_PUBLIC_KEY_SHA1
  )
})

Once a connection is established to the DXL fabric, the callback function supplied to the DXL client instance's connect() method will be invoked. From within the callback function, a TieClient instance is created. The TieClient instance will be used to communicate with the TIE DXL services.

Next, a call is made to the TieClient instance's getCertificateReputation() method, along with the hash values that are used to identify the certificate.

On successful execution of the reputation lookup, the second parameter provided to the callback, reputations, contains the reputations. The reputations are printed by converting the response object to JSON with a call to the MessageUtils.objectToJson() method.