Timeline Ghostwriter

Timeline Ghostwriter Parser

Trigger on Ghostwriter CSV oplog exports for timeline ingestion.

Input Contract

• Directory input/gw_oplog/ with .csv files exported from Ghostwriter operation logs.

Output

• Write output/gw_entries.json with entries (timestamp, source, operator, action, details, command, output, source_ip, dest_ip, tool, user_context, raw_entry).
• Include metadata with source_type = "ghostwriter", processing stats, and errors.

Workflow

1. Discover CSV files and use csv.Sniffer to detect delimiters.
2. Validate required columns (timestamp, operator, description) before parsing.
3. Normalize Ghostwriter timestamps (support ISO 8601, US/EU formats) to YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS UTC.
4. Map CSV columns to the standard schema, dedupe entries by oplog_id, and record the versioned source_file.
5. Capture context such as tool, command, source/dest IPs, and comments.
6. Write metadata including counts, files processed, and any CSV parsing issues.

Notes

• Skip empty rows and rows missing both timestamp and description.
• Provide example timestamp formats and CSV validation warnings.