acaua/README.md

<p align="center"><img src="logo.png" width="300" alt="Acauã"></p>
<h1 align="center">Acauã</h1>
<p align="center">Deterministic network threat hunting.<br>Zeek-first NDR research · local-first · authorized use.</p>

<p align="center"><a href="docs/cli.md">Terminal</a> · <a href="docs/interface.md">Interface</a> · <a href="docs/architecture.md">Architecture</a> · <a href="docs/docker.md">Docker</a> · <a href="docs/support.md">Support</a> · <a href="ROADMAP.md">Roadmap</a> · <a href="CHANGELOG.md">Changelog</a></p>

<p align="center"><b>English</b> · <a href="README.pt-BR.md">Português</a></p>

---

**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.