Cysky Log Analysis
layout: post title: ‘CySky: Log Analysis’ date: 2025-05-08 09:54 -0700 description: CySky Notes Log Analysis image: path: ../assets/img/site_images/cysky/cs_0r2.png alt: CySky Log Analysis category: [CySky] tags: [notes, cysky, cybersecurity, log analysis, bash, cyberchef, epoch convertor ]
Log Analysis
Challenges
- SSH (easy) n/i
- Nginx (Medium)
- History (Medium)
- Squid (Hard)
- Payments (Hard)
- VSFTPD (Easy)
- Login (Easy)
- Custom File Format (Hard)
Main Tools
The main tools used in these challenges:
- bash (Squid)
- CyberChef (Custom File Format)
Squid
Analysis of Squid proxy log
Tools used
- bash
Process
Download the file named squid_access.log
. We can use bash commands to analyze the file, starting with cat squid_access.log
.

In what year was this log saved?
From the above
cat
, the log timestamps are given in Epoch time. Using EpochConverter www.epochconverter.com with an input of “1286536308”, we can find the start year:
2010
Using various bash
commands, we can extract data from the logs. For example:
- Extracts the second column (time elapsed) and sorts it:
cat squid_access.log | awk '{print$2}' | sort -n
awk '{print$2}' squid_access.log | sort -n
- Extract the third column (URLs) and return count of uniques:
cat squid_access.log | awk '{print$3}' | sort | uniq | wc -l
awk '{print$3}' squid_access.log | sort -u | wc -l
- How many GET requests were made?
awk '{print$6}' squid_access.log | grep 'GET' | wc -l
How many milliseconds did the fastest request take?
Using this command extracts the second column and sorts it:
cat squid_access.log | awk '{print$2}' | sort -n | head -n 1
OR//awk '{print$2}' squid_access.log | sort -n | head -n 1
5
milliseconds
How many milliseconds did the longest request take?
Similar to previous, except reverse
cat squid_access.log | awk '{print$2}' | sort -rn | head -n 1
OR//awk '{print$2}' squid_access.log | sort -rn | head -n 1
41762
milliseconds
How many different IP addresses did the proxy service use?
awk '{print$3}' squid_access.log | sort -u | wc -l
4
How many GET requests were made?
awk '{print$6}' squid_access.log | grep 'GET' | wc -l
35
How many POST requests were made?
awk '{print$6}' squid_access.log | grep 'POST' | wc -l
78
What company created the antivirus used on the host at 192.168.0.224?
cat squid_access.log | grep '192.168.0.224'
Norton / Symantec
What URL is used to download the virus definitions?
cat squid_access.log | grep '192.168.0.224'
hxxp://liveupdate[.]symantecliveupdate[.]com/streaming/norton$202009$20streaming$20virus$20definitions_1.0_symalllanguages_livetri.zip
Custom File Format
Analysis of logs from a custom file format
Tools used
- CyberChef
Process
We are given a custom log in the SKY log file format. Per CySky:


Download the file named Custom File Format.sky
.

In what year was this log saved?
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