“Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?” In this iconic Star Wars moment, Princess Leia lazily responds to Luke Skywalker, disguised as one of her Stormtrooper captors and using authentication information to open her cell. In other words, Star Wars acts as an analogy for a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attack. In a CSRF attack, malicious actors use social engineering so that end-users will give them a way to “hide” in their authenticated session.

Cross-site scripting attacks are the digital version of the mystery trope where people inject IV lines with hazardous material. In the murder mystery genre, these crimes often focus on someone who looks legitimate, sneaking malicious material into someone’s medicine to harm the patient. Similarly, a cross-site scripting attack is when a threat actor sneaks malicious code into someone’s application to harm end users.

It’s no coincidence that Graylog 6.1 is making its debut right before Halloween. This release is a true behemoth, designed to tackle some of the longest-standing and most challenging issues in Security Event and Information Management (SIEM). Packed with innovations, Graylog 6.1 is here to change the game.

There are lots of hurdles to jump when trying to set up and maintain a SIEM. Preparing infrastructure and installing the software components, getting logs ingested into the system, parsing and normalizing those log messages properly, configuring alerts for detection, etc. These are all large tasks that require thoughtful planning and a lot of work to get right. But let’s say you’ve managed to clear all those hurdles…in that case, great job!!