core

Core

The core of the system is a server that listens for connections from the libraries and tracks the requests.

Configuration file

You configure the core using a JSON configuration file. By default, core looks for a file in the working directory named "config.json", but you can specify the path to the configuration file with the -c command line option. There is an example configuration file included in this repository. The following configuration options are available.

• "listen type" expects a string of either "unix" or "tcp". This specifies which type of socket to create. Unix sockets generally perform better but are not available on Windows systems.
• "listen address" expects a string that is the address on which the server will listen. In the case of a Unix listen type, this is the path of the socket (e.g. "/tmp/bfp.sock"). In the case of a TCP listen type, you specify the (optional) address and port (e.g. ":4567").
• "directions" expects an array of objects that represent the different directions to track. Each direction should have all of the following fields
  • "name" is the string of the name of the direction (e.g. "password").
  • "type" is the string that describes the type of data. The available options for type are "string" and "int32".
  • "window size" is the positive number of the time (in seconds) that we're tracking values.
  • "max hits" is the positive number that limits how many hits we allow within the observation window.

Additionally, the following are optional fields for directions

• "clean up time" is the positive number that sets how many seconds should pass between clean up runs. Default is 5 seconds.
• "max tracked" is the positive number that sets the threshold for the maximum number of values that should be tracked. For performance, an approximation is used. Once the number of tracked values exceeds this value, all subsequent requests will be considered invalid until the the clean up process reduces the number of tracked values below the threshold. Default is no maximum.