Collecting Threat Intelligence With Misp

# Collecting Threat Intelligence with MISP

## Overview

MISP (Malware Information Sharing Platform) is an open-source threat intelligence platform for gathering, sharing, storing, and correlating Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) of targeted attacks, threat intelligence, financial fraud information, vulnerability information, or counter-terrorism information. This skill covers deploying MISP, configuring threat feeds, using the PyMISP API for programmatic access, and building automated collection pipelines that aggregate IOCs from multiple community and commercial sources.


## When to Use

- When managing security operations that require collecting threat intelligence with misp
- When improving security program maturity and operational processes
- When establishing standardized procedures for security team workflows
- When integrating threat intelligence or vulnerability data into operations

## Prerequisites

- Python 3.9+ with `pymisp` library installed
- Docker and Docker Compose for MISP deployment
- Understanding of STIX 2.1 and TAXII 2.1 protocols
- Familiarity with IOC types: hashes, IP addresses, domains, URLs, email addresses
- Network access to MISP community feeds (circl.lu, botvrij.eu)

## Key Concepts

### MISP Architecture

MISP operates on an event-based model where threat intelligence is organized into events containing attributes (IOCs), objects (structured groupings of attributes), galaxies (threat actor/malware clusters linked to MITRE ATT&CK), and tags for classification. Synchronization between MISP instances uses a pull/push model over HTTPS with API key authentication.

### Feed Types

- **MISP Feeds**: Native JSON/CSV feeds from MISP community (CIRCL OSINT, botvrij.eu)
- **Freetext Feeds**: Unstructured text feeds parsed for IOCs (abuse.ch, Feodo Tracker)
- **TAXII Feeds**: STIX/TAXII 2.1 compatible feeds from commercial and government sources
- **CSV Feeds**: Structured CSV feeds with configurable column mapping

### PyMISP API

PyMISP is the official Python library to access MISP platforms via their REST API. It supports fetching events, adding/updating events and attributes, uploading samples, and searching across the entire MISP dataset. Authentication uses an API key passed in the `Authorization` header.

## Workflow

### Step 1: Deploy MISP with Docker

```bash
git clone https://github.com/MISP/misp-docker.git
cd misp-docker
cp template.env .env
# Edit .env to set MISP_BASEURL, MISP_ADMIN_EMAIL, MISP_ADMIN_PASSPHRASE
docker compose up -d
```