GenDFIR: Advancing Cyber Incident Timeline Analysis Through Retrieval Augmented Generation and Large Language Models

Abstract: Cyber timeline analysis, or forensic timeline analysis, is crucial in Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR). It examines artefacts and events particularly timestamps and metadata to detect anomalies, establish correlations, and reconstruct incident timelines. Traditional methods rely on structured artefacts, such as logs and filesystem metadata, using specialised tools for evidence identification and feature extraction. This paper introduces GenDFIR, a framework leveraging LLMs, specifically Llama 3.1 8B in zero shot mode, integrated with a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) agent. Incident data is preprocessed into a structured knowledge base, enabling the RAG agent to retrieve relevant events based on user prompts. The LLM interprets this context, offering semantic enrichment. Tested on synthetic data in a controlled environment, results demonstrate GenDFIR's reliability and robustness, showcasing LLMs potential to automate timeline analysis and advance threat detection.