We are very excited to announce the publication of our first paper in the new Know Your Tools paper series: “KYT: use Picviz to find attacks” authored by Sebastien Tricaud from the French Chapter and Victor Amaducci from the University of Campinas.

The paper can be downloaded at Know Your Tools: use Picviz to find attacks.

_Paper Abstract

Picviz is a parallel coordinates plotter which enables easy scripting from various input (tcpdump, syslog, iptables logs, apache logs, etc..) to visualize data and discover interesting aspects of that data quickly. Picviz uncovers previously hidden data that is difficult to identify with traditional analysis methods.

The new release 0.5 of Picviz is out. This version comes with real-time mode enabled (and adds the libevent dependency) among other things, such as new properties and variables.

Get it from the usual place.

What is Picviz?

When considering log files for security, usual applications available today
either look for patterns using signature databases or use a behavioral
approach. In both cases, information can be missed. The problem becomes
bigger with systems receiving a massive amount of logs.