Spydertop Tool

Spydertop is a tool that provides htop-like functionality for any point in time, on any of your Spyderbat-enabled machines. Utilizing Spyderbat’s kernel-level system monitoring and public APIs, Spydertop allows analysts to look into system anomalies days or even months after they occur.

Quick Start

If you would like to try spydertop without installing it first, you can run the docker image. Example data from the examples directory is included in the docker image.

# to run without arguments
docker run -it spyderbat/spydertop

# to run on an example
docker run -it spyderbat/spydertop -i examples/minikube-sock-shop.json.gz

# to persist settings, or to use a pre-configured Spyderbat API
docker run -it -v $HOME/.spyderbat-api:/root/.spyderbat-api spyderbat/spydertop [ARGS]

# to run docker with the host's timezone settings
docker run -it -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime spyderbat/spydertop [ARGS]

Installation

pip install .

On your first run of spydertop, it will guide you through setting up a configuration if you do not have one already. If you prefer to set it up yourself, your organization id can be found in the url for the dashboard, and many other pages:

https://api.spyderbat.com/app/org/{ORG_ID_HERE}/dashboard

Similarly, the source id can be located in the url of an investigation, or by enabling the id column in the sources list.

Usage

Spydertop is called with options specifying the source to pull from and how that data is collected, and a timestamp. Records will be loaded from the specified source around the time, and an htop-like view will start at the exact requested time. The relative time selection bar at the bottom can be used to move forward and backward in time, and arrow keys, tab key, or mouse used to navigate the interface. More usage information is available on the help page (h or <F1>).

As this tool emulates much of HTOP's functionality, more information is also available on the HTOP man page.

Examples

spydertop --help # print usage information

# starts spydertop with the specified source
# at a point in time 5 days ago
spydertop -g ORGUID -m MACHINEUID -- -5d

# full example
spydertop \
        --organization ORGUID \
        --machine MACHINEUID \
        --duration 3m \
        --input cached_input_records.json.gz \
        --output file_to_save_to.json.gz \
        --log-level WARN \
        --no-confirm \
        -- 1654303663.600901

Configuration

Spydertop uses the Spyderbat APIs, so it must have access to a valid API key, usually stored in a configuration file, as shown below. This configuration file is automatically created the first time you run spydertop, but can be edited manually at any time. API keys can be obtained from the API keys page under your Spyderbat account.

# File: ~/.spyderbat-api/config.yaml
default:
    api_key: API_KEY
    org:     DEFAULT_ORG_ID    # optional
    source:  DEFAULT_SOURCE_ID # optional
    api_url: apr.prod.spyderbat.com # optional

Development

For development, Spydertop can be installed with the --editable flag in pip. Spydertop works well inside of a Python virtual environment, so using one is recommended.

# in the spydertop repository:

# setup development environment
python -m venv .env
source .env/bin/activate

# install spydertop for development
pip install --editable .

In the virtual environment, after editing and saving a file, the spydertop command will automatically be updated.

See the Project Structure for a walk through of Spydertop's code base.

Debugging

If you are using VSCode, launch.json is configured to run Spydertop with the python extension's debugger. This runs the module as a python file instead of through the command line, so command line arguments can be added in __init__.py.