Recog-Ruby: A Recognition Framework

Recog is a framework for identifying products, services, operating systems, and hardware by matching fingerprints against data returned from various network probes. Recog makes it simple to extract useful information from web server banners, SNMP system description fields, and a whole lot more.

The Recog-Ruby repository contains the Ruby language implementation of the Recog recognition framework library and the Recog content, XML fingerprint files, as a git submodule. That makes it easy to develop, test, and use the contained fingerprints.

Recog-Ruby is open source, please see the LICENSE file for more information.

1. Repository split
2. Installation
3. Maturity
4. Fingerprints
5. Contributing

On March 31, 2022, the Recog content - XML fingerprint files and utilities - were split from the Recog framework library implementation. The original Recog repository now contains the Recog content and the Recog-Ruby repository contains the Ruby language implementation. The Recog content is included in Recog-Ruby as a git submodule and is nested under the recog directory. All post-split Recog gem versions equal or greater than 3.0.0 will: 1. contain the XML fingerprint directory under the recog directory, and 2. only include the recog_match tool since the other tools are focused on fingerprint management.

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In order to use the included Ruby code, a recent version of Ruby (2.31+) is required, along with Rubygems and the bundler gem. Once these dependencies are in place, use the following commands to grab the latest source code and install any additional dependencies.

$ git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:rapid7/recog-ruby.git
$ cd recog-ruby
$ bundle install

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Please note that while the XML fingerprints themselves are quite stable and well-tested, the Ruby codebase is still fairly new and subject to change quickly. Please contact us (research[at]rapid7.com) before leveraging the Recog code within any production projects.

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The fingerprints within Recog are stored in XML files, each of which is designed to match a specific protocol response string or field. For example, the file ssh_banners.xml can determine the os, vendor, and sometimes hardware product by matching the initial SSH daemon banner string.

A fingerprint file consists of an XML document like the following:

<fingerprints matches="ssh.banner">
  <fingerprint pattern="^RomSShell_([\d\.]+)$">
    <description>Allegro RomSShell SSH</description>
    <example service.version="4.62">RomSShell_4.62</example>
    <param pos="0" name="service.vendor" value="Allegro"/>
    <param pos="0" name="service.product" value="RomSShell"/>
    <param pos="1" name="service.version"/>
  </fingerprint>
</fingerprints>

The first line should always consist of the XML version declaration. The first element should always be a fingerprints block with a matches attribute indicating what data this fingerprint file is supposed to match. The matches attribute is normally in the form of protocol.field.

Inside of the fingerprints element there should be one or more fingerprint elements. Every fingerprint must contain a pattern attribute, which contains the regular expression to be used to match against the data. An optional flags attribute can be specified to control how the regular expression is to be interpreted. See the Recog documentation for FLAG_MAP for more information.

Inside of the fingerprint, a description element should contain a human-readable string describing this fingerprint.

At least one example element should be present, however multiple example elements are preferred. These elements are used as part of the test coverage present in rspec which validates that the provided data matches the specified regular expression. Additionally, if the fingerprint is using the param elements to extract field values from the data (described next), you can add these expected extractions as attributes for the example elements. In the example above, this:

<example service.version="4.62">RomSShell_4.62</example>

tests that RomSShell_4.62 matches the provided regular expression and that the value of service.version is 4.62.

The example string can be base64 encoded to permit the use of unprintable characters. To signal this to Recog an _encoding attribute with the value of base64 is added to the example element. Based64 encoded text that is longer than 80 characters may be wrapped with newlines as shown below to aid in readability.

<example _encoding="base64">
  dGllczGEAAAAlQQWMS4yLjg0MC4xMTM1NTYuMS40LjgwMAQuZGF0YS5yZW1vdmVkLjCEAAAAK
  AQdZG9tYWluQ29udHJvbGxlckZ1bmN0aW9uYWxpdHkxhAAAAAMEATc=
</example>

Additionally, examples can be placed in a directory with the same base name as the XML file, in the same directory as the XML file:

xml/services.xml
xml/services/file1
xml/services/file2
...

They can then be loaded using the _filename attribute:

<example _filename="file1"/>

This is useful for long examples.

The param elements contain a pos attribute, which indicates what capture field from the pattern should be extracted, or 0 for a static string. The name attribute is the key that will be reported in the case of a successful match and the value will either be a static string for pos values of 0 or missing and taken from the captured field.

The value attribute supports interpolation of data from other fields. This is often useful when capturing the value for hw.product via regex and re-using this value in os.product.

Here is an example fromhttp_servers.xml where hw.product is captured and reused.

  <fingerprint pattern="^Eltex (TAU-\d+[A-Z]*(?:\.IP)?)$">
    <description>Eltex TAU model VoIP gateway</description>
    <example hw.product="TAU-72">Eltex TAU-72</example>
    <example hw.product="TAU-1.IP">Eltex TAU-1.IP</example>
    <param pos="0" name="os.vendor" value="Eltex"/>
    <param pos="0" name="os.product" value="{hw.product} Firmware"/>
    <param pos="0" name="os.device" value="VoIP Gateway"/>
    <param pos="0" name="hw.vendor" value="Eltex"/>
    <param pos="1" name="hw.product"/>
    <param pos="0" name="hw.device" value="VoIP Gateway"/>
  </fingerprint>

There is special handling for temporary attributes that have a name starting with _tmp.. These attributes can be used for interpolation but are not emitted in the output. This is useful when a particular product name is inconsistent in various banners, vendor marketing, or with NIST values when trying to generate CPEs. In these cases the useful parts of the banner can be extracted and a new value crafted without cluttering the data emitted by a match.

<fingerprint pattern="^foo baz switchThing-(\d{4})$">
  <description>NetCorp NX series switches</description>
  <example hw.product="NX8200">foo baz switchThing-8200</example>
  <param pos="0" name="hw.vendor" value="NetCorp"/>
  <param pos="0" name="hw.product" value="NX{_tmp.001}"/>
  <param pos="2" name="_tmp.001"/>
</fingerprint>

These temporary attributes are not tracked in the identifiers/fields.txt.

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The users and maintainers of Recog-Ruby would greatly appreciate any contributions you can make to the project. For guidelines and instructions please see CONTRIBUTING.MD

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