Deterministic network threat hunting.
Zeek-first NDR research · local-first · authorized use.
Terminal · Interface · Architecture · Docker · Support · Roadmap · Changelog
English · Português
--- **Status: pre-alpha skeleton.** The project structure, documentation, CI and compiling stubs exist. The four mathematical detection pillars, the real Zeek parser, DuckDB storage and the alert engine are **under development** and are not shipped yet. Nothing on this page should be read as a claim that detection already works. Acauã is a network threat hunting engine built around deterministic evidence, not an opaque model. The goal is to answer not only "this looks suspicious" but "these exact inputs, with these intermediate values, produced this score". - **Deterministic by design:** fixed-order reductions, documented sentinels and a JSON evidence record for every future alert. - **Local-first:** the analytical store is embedded in the process; no external database and no telemetry by default. - **Zeek-first:** `dns.log`, `ssl.log`, `conn.log` and the protocol logs needed for identity and lateral-movement analysis. NetFlow/IPFIX is a documented degraded mode, never presented as equivalent. Suricata EVE JSON is an optional secondary input. - **Daemon and desktop:** `acaua serve` runs continuous ingestion, scheduling, the API and the embedded UI; the Tauri app opens a local dataset or talks to a remote `serve`. - **Research stays outside the product:** `research/` is an isolated Python workspace for scientific validation and fixtures. It is never compiled, packaged or released. ## What exists today | Area | State | |---|---| | Rust workspace and CLI stubs | ✅ compiles | | Axum API with health, status, alerts and analyze routes | ✅ stub | | Desktop shell and vanilla UI | ✅ shell, no real screenshots | | Documentation and CI/release workflows | ✅ | | Four detection pillars | 🚧 under development | | Zeek log parser | 🚧 stub | | DuckDB/Parquet storage and 7-day TTL | 🚧 reserved, feature disabled by default | | Alert evidence and scoring | 🚧 stub | | Published releases | ❌ none yet | ## The four pillars All four are **under development**. The roadmap keeps them as future work, not as implemented features. 1. **Beaconing:** periodicity on event timestamps with a Rayleigh/Schuster periodogram, and generalized Lomb–Scargle only where a real `y` exists. 2. **Persistent sessions:** long connections that never produce a short `Δt` and would otherwise stay invisible to a beaconing detector. 3. **Protocol anomalies:** deterministic features over Zeek protocol logs, including identity and lateral-movement signals. 4. **Evidence fusion:** bounded, symmetric combination of pillar scores with a reproducible evidence record per alert. The design decisions behind these pillars, including the six corrections to the original blueprint, are in **[docs/architecture.md](docs/architecture.md)**. ## Authorized use Acauã is defensive software for networks you own or are explicitly authorized to monitor. Capturing or analyzing third-party traffic without permission may be illegal. The operator is responsible for scope, privacy and retention. The daemon binds to `127.0.0.1` by default. The optional Docker deployment is documented for lab and research use. ## Install There are no published releases yet. Build from source: ```bash cargo build --release -p acaua-cli ./target/release/acaua --help ``` Rust 1.80+ is required. The desktop app needs the Tauri system dependencies for your platform. ## Getting started ```bash acaua doctor acaua serve --bind 127.0.0.1:8787 --data-dir .acaua acaua analyze /var/log/zeek/current --json acaua update ``` `analyze` currently validates the directory and returns a skeleton report; it does not parse Zeek logs yet. `serve` exposes the stub API and the embedded UI. `update` uses the same Gitea Releases + SHA-256 model as Guará and Sabiá. ## Desktop app The Tauri app is a shell for the same UI used by `serve`. It has a dashboard for the four pillars, a dataset path field, an alerts panel and settings for language and theme. It does **not** render detection results yet. See **[docs/interface.md](docs/interface.md)**. ## Development ```bash cargo test --workspace cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets node scripts/check-ui-i18n.mjs scripts/check.sh ``` The optional DuckDB backend is compiled with `--features duckdb`; it is disabled by default so the skeleton stays fast to check. See **[CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md)** and **[docs/architecture.md](docs/architecture.md)**. ## Known limits - The detection engine, Zeek parser and storage layer are stubs. - There is no published binary, installer or release asset. - The GUI has no real screenshots because there is nothing to render yet. - NetFlow/IPFIX is a degraded input mode by design; it cannot replace the Zeek protocol logs for every pillar. - The project targets Linux for the daemon and the CI release pipeline. The desktop app follows the same Tauri platform matrix as the sibling projects. ## Where it's going Summary of the [ROADMAP](ROADMAP.md): | | | |---|---| | **Done** | Workspace, CLI/API stubs, GUI shell, documentation, CI/release workflows | | **Next** | Pillar 1 and 2 implementations with deterministic fixtures; real Zeek parser | | **Later** | DuckDB/Parquet storage, TTL, pillar 3 and 4, evidence fusion, desktop dataset view | | **Not planned** | Opaque AI scoring, a required cloud service, Python in the shipped runtime | ## License [MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or [Apache-2.0](LICENSE-APACHE), your choice.