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Version: 1.0.4

CyberML - Anomalous Access Detection

Here we demonstrate a novel CyberML model which can learn user access patterns and then automatically detect anomalous user access based on learned behavior. The model internally uses Collaborative Filtering for Implicit Feedback as published here: http://yifanhu.net/PUB/cf.pdf and is based on Apache Spark's implementation of this: https://spark.apache.org/docs/2.2.0/ml-collaborative-filtering.html.

This notebook demonstrates a usage example of Anomalous Resource Access model. All the model requires is a dataset in which there are 'users' which access 'resources'. The model is based on Collaborative Filtering and it uses Machine Learning to learn access patterns of users and resources. When a user accesses a resource which is outside of the user's learned profile then this access receives a high anomaly score.

In this notebook we provide a usage example and a synthetic dataset in which there are 3 departments: (1) Finance, (2) HR and (3) Engineering. In the training data users access only a subset of resources from their own departments. To evaluate the model we use two datasets. The first contains access patterns unseen during training in which users access resources within their departments (again, resources they didn't access during training but within their department). The latter contains users accessing resources from outside their department. We then use the model to assign anomaly scores expecting that the first get low anomaly scores and the latter receive high anomaly scores. This is what this example demonstrates.

Note: the data does NOT contain information about departments, this information is implicitly learned by the model by analyzing the access patterns.

Create an Azure Databricks cluster and install the following libs

  1. In Cluster Libraries install from library source Maven: Coordinates: com.microsoft.azure:synapseml_2.12:1.0.4 Repository: https://mmlspark.azureedge.net/maven

  2. In Cluster Libraries install from PyPI the library called plotly

Setup & Initialization

%pip install plotly
# this is used to produce the synthetic dataset for this test
from synapse.ml.cyber.dataset import DataFactory
from synapse.ml.cyber.anomaly.collaborative_filtering import AccessAnomaly
from pyspark.sql import functions as f

Load up datasets

from synapse.ml.core.platform import running_on_databricks, running_on_synapse

if running_on_databricks():
    spark.sparkContext.setCheckpointDir("dbfs:/checkpoint_path/")
else:
    spark.sparkContext.setCheckpointDir("./tmp/checkpoint_path/")

factory = DataFactory(
    num_hr_users=25,
    num_hr_resources=50,
    num_fin_users=35,
    num_fin_resources=75,
    num_eng_users=15,
    num_eng_resources=25,
    single_component=True,
)

training_pdf = factory.create_clustered_training_data(ratio=0.4)

# a tenant id is used when independent datasets originate from different tenants, in this example we set all tenants-ids to the same value
training_df = spark.createDataFrame(training_pdf).withColumn("tenant_id", f.lit(0))
ingroup_df = spark.createDataFrame(
    factory.create_clustered_intra_test_data(training_pdf)
).withColumn("tenant_id", f.lit(0))
outgroup_df = spark.createDataFrame(
    factory.create_clustered_inter_test_data()
).withColumn("tenant_id", f.lit(0))
training_df.show()
print(training_df.count())
print(ingroup_df.count())
print(outgroup_df.count())

Model setup & training

access_anomaly = AccessAnomaly(
    tenantCol="tenant_id",
    userCol="user",
    resCol="res",
    likelihoodCol="likelihood",
    maxIter=1000,
)
model = access_anomaly.fit(training_df)

Apply model & show result stats

ingroup_scored_df = model.transform(ingroup_df)
ingroup_scored_df.agg(
    f.min("anomaly_score").alias("min_anomaly_score"),
    f.max("anomaly_score").alias("max_anomaly_score"),
    f.mean("anomaly_score").alias("mean_anomaly_score"),
    f.stddev("anomaly_score").alias("stddev_anomaly_score"),
).show()
outgroup_scored_df = model.transform(outgroup_df)
outgroup_scored_df.agg(
    f.min("anomaly_score").alias("min_anomaly_score"),
    f.max("anomaly_score").alias("max_anomaly_score"),
    f.mean("anomaly_score").alias("mean_anomaly_score"),
    f.stddev("anomaly_score").alias("stddev_anomaly_score"),
).show()

Examine results

#
# Select a subset of results to send to Log Analytics
#

full_res_df = outgroup_scored_df.orderBy(f.desc("anomaly_score")).cache()

from pyspark.sql.window import Window

w = Window.partitionBy("tenant_id", "user", "res").orderBy(f.desc("anomaly_score"))

# select values above threshold
results_above_threshold = full_res_df.filter(full_res_df.anomaly_score > 1.0)

# get distinct resource/user and corresponding timestamp and highest score
results_to_la = (
    results_above_threshold.withColumn("index", f.row_number().over(w))
    .orderBy(f.desc("anomaly_score"))
    .select("tenant_id", f.col("user"), f.col("res"), "anomaly_score")
    .where("index == 1")
    .limit(100)
    .cache()
)

# add a fake timestamp to the results
results_to_la = results_to_la.withColumn("timestamp", f.current_timestamp())

display(results_to_la)

Display all resource accesses by users with highest anomalous score

from plotly import __version__
from plotly.offline import download_plotlyjs, init_notebook_mode, plot, iplot, offline

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

print(__version__)  # requires version >= 1.9.0

# run plotly in offline mode
offline.init_notebook_mode()
# Find all server accesses of users with high predicted scores
# For display, limit to top 25 results
results_to_display = results_to_la.orderBy(f.desc("anomaly_score")).limit(25).cache()
interesting_records = full_res_df.join(results_to_display, ["user"], "left_semi")
non_anomalous_records = interesting_records.join(
    results_to_display, ["user", "res"], "left_anti"
)

top_non_anomalous_records = (
    non_anomalous_records.groupBy("tenant_id", "user", "res")
    .agg(
        f.count("*").alias("count"),
    )
    .select(f.col("tenant_id"), f.col("user"), f.col("res"), "count")
)

# pick only a subset of non-anomalous record for UI
w = Window.partitionBy(
    "tenant_id",
    "user",
).orderBy(f.desc("count"))

# pick top non-anomalous set
top_non_anomalous_accesses = (
    top_non_anomalous_records.withColumn("index", f.row_number().over(w))
    .orderBy(f.desc("count"))
    .select("tenant_id", f.col("user"), f.col("res"), f.col("count"))
    .where("index in (1,2,3,4,5)")
    .limit(25)
)

# add back anomalous record
fileShare_accesses = (
    top_non_anomalous_accesses.select("user", "res", "count")
    .union(results_to_display.select("user", "res", f.lit(1).alias("count")))
    .cache()
)
# get unique users and file shares
high_scores_df = fileShare_accesses.toPandas()
unique_arr = np.append(high_scores_df.user.unique(), high_scores_df.res.unique())

unique_df = pd.DataFrame(data=unique_arr, columns=["name"])
unique_df["index"] = range(0, len(unique_df.index))

# create index for source & target and color for the normal accesses
normal_line_color = "rgba(211, 211, 211, 0.8)"
anomolous_color = "red"
x = (
    pd.merge(high_scores_df, unique_df, how="left", left_on="user", right_on="name")
    .drop(["name"], axis=1)
    .rename(columns={"index": "userIndex"})
)
all_access_index_df = (
    pd.merge(x, unique_df, how="left", left_on="res", right_on="name")
    .drop(["name"], axis=1)
    .rename(columns={"index": "resIndex"})
)
all_access_index_df["color"] = normal_line_color

# results_to_display index, color and
y = results_to_display.toPandas().drop(
    ["tenant_id", "timestamp", "anomaly_score"], axis=1
)
y = (
    pd.merge(y, unique_df, how="left", left_on="user", right_on="name")
    .drop(["name"], axis=1)
    .rename(columns={"index": "userIndex"})
)
high_scores_index_df = (
    pd.merge(y, unique_df, how="left", left_on="res", right_on="name")
    .drop(["name"], axis=1)
    .rename(columns={"index": "resIndex"})
)
high_scores_index_df["count"] = 1
high_scores_index_df["color"] = anomolous_color

# subtract 1 for the red entries in all_access df
hsi_df = high_scores_index_df[["user", "res", "count"]].rename(
    columns={"count": "hsiCount"}
)
all_access_updated_count_df = pd.merge(
    all_access_index_df,
    hsi_df,
    how="left",
    left_on=["user", "res"],
    right_on=["user", "res"],
)
all_access_updated_count_df["count"] = np.where(
    all_access_updated_count_df["hsiCount"] == 1,
    all_access_updated_count_df["count"] - 1,
    all_access_updated_count_df["count"],
)
all_access_updated_count_df = all_access_updated_count_df.loc[
    all_access_updated_count_df["count"] > 0
]
all_access_updated_count_df = all_access_updated_count_df[
    ["user", "res", "count", "userIndex", "resIndex", "color"]
]

# combine the two tables
frames = [all_access_updated_count_df, high_scores_index_df]
display_df = pd.concat(frames, sort=True)
# display_df.head()
data_trace = dict(
    type="sankey",
    domain=dict(x=[0, 1], y=[0, 1]),
    orientation="h",
    valueformat=".0f",
    node=dict(
        pad=10,
        thickness=30,
        line=dict(color="black", width=0),
        label=unique_df["name"].dropna(axis=0, how="any"),
    ),
    link=dict(
        source=display_df["userIndex"].dropna(axis=0, how="any"),
        target=display_df["resIndex"].dropna(axis=0, how="any"),
        value=display_df["count"].dropna(axis=0, how="any"),
        color=display_df["color"].dropna(axis=0, how="any"),
    ),
)

layout = dict(
    title="All resources accessed by users with highest anomalous scores",
    height=772,
    font=dict(size=10),
)

fig = dict(data=[data_trace], layout=layout)

p = plot(fig, output_type="div")

if running_on_databricks():
    displayHTML(p)
else:
    import IPython

    IPython.display.HTML(p)