Awesome

Leitmotiv

The goal behind this project is to bring relevant events to achieve various monitoring tasks ranging from security monitoring to Threat Hunting on Linux based systems. If you are familiar with Sysmon on Windows, you can think of Kunai as being a Sysmon equivalent for Linux.

What makes Kunai special ?

events arrive sorted in chronological order
benefits from on-host correlation and events enrichment
works well with Linux namespaces and container technologies (you can trace all the activity happening inside your containers)

How it works

All the kernel components of this project are running as eBPF programs (also called probes). Kunai embeds numbers of probes to monitor relevant information for security monitoring. When the job is done on eBPF side, information is passed on to a userland program which is responsible for various things, such as re-ordering, enriching and correlating events.

On the implementation side, Kunai is written for its majority in Rust, leveraging the awesome Aya library so everything you'll need to run is a standalone binary embedding both all the eBPF probes and the userland program.

FAQ

Is it compatible with my OS/Kernel ? : Check out the compatibility page
What kind of events can I get ? : Please take a read to events documentation
Which version should I use ?: If it is just to test the tool, use the latest build as it is always the best in terms of features and bug fix. However keep in mind that events in non stable releases are subject to change.

How to build the project ?

Before going further, I have to remind you that there is a distribution agnostic (built with musl) pre-compiled version of kunai available in release page. So if you just want to give a try to kunai, you probably don't need to build the project yourself.

Requirements

Before being able to build everything, you need to install a couple of tools.

to build many Rust projects (this one included), you need rustup
to build kunai you need: clang, libbpf-dev and bpf-linker

Example of commands to install requirements on Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y clang libbpf-dev

# assuming you have rustup and cargo installed
cargo install bpf-linker

Building Kunai

Once you have the requirements installed, you are good to go. You can now build the project with xtask, a cargo command (specific to this project) to make your life easier.

Building debug version

cargo xtask build
# find your executable in: ./target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/debug/kunai

Building release version (harder, better, faster, stronger)

cargo xtask build --release
# find your executable in: ./target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/kunai

Cross-compiling

aarch64

Install the proper target using rustup rustup install target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu
You need to install appropriate compiler and linker to cross-compile

# example on ubuntu
sudo apt install gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu

Cross-compile the project

# compile the project for with release profile
CC=aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc  cargo xbuild --release --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu --linker aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc

You should find your cross-compiled binary at ./target/aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/kunai

NB: specifying --linker option is just a shortcut for setting appropriate RUSTFLAGS env variable when building userland application.

Memory Profiling

If one believes Kunai has an issue with memory, here is a way to profile it.

# compile kunai with debug information for all packages
RUSTFLAGS="-g" cargo xbuild

# use heaptrack
sudo heaptrack kunai

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all the people behind Aya, this stuff is just awesome
Special thanks to @alessandrod and @vadorovsky
Thanks to all the usual guys always supporting my crazy ideas

Funding

The NGSOTI project is dedicated to training the next generation of Security Operation Center (SOC) operators, focusing on the human aspect of cybersecurity. It underscores the significance of providing SOC operators with the necessary skills and open-source tools to address challenges such as detection engineering, incident response, and threat intelligence analysis. Involving key partners such as CIRCL, Restena, Tenzir, and the University of Luxembourg, the project aims to establish a real operational infrastructure for practical training. This initiative integrates academic curricula with industry insights, offering hands-on experience in cyber ranges.

NGSOTI is co-funded under Digital Europe Programme (DEP) via the ECCC (European cybersecurity competence network and competence centre).