The Workflow

Understanding the basic workflow of Ghostwriter

The Mission Statement

Ghostwriter's primary goal is bringing all of your operational data together in one place and create relationships. A starting point is needed to accomplish this goal. For Ghostwriter that starting point is a client.

Basic Workflow

The basic workflow looks like this:

1. Create a new client, or open an existing client

2. Review points of contact for the client and add/edit as needed

3. Create a project under the client

4. Checkout servers and domain names for the new project

5. Create the links between domain names, subdomains, and servers

6. Create an oplog for the project and configure automatic syncing (if C2 is used)

At this stage your project proceeds until it's time to begin noting observations:

1. Create one or more reports for the new project

2. Browse the database of findings/observations and applicable entries to the report

3. Add affected hosts/users, add evidence files, and customize the finding as needed

4. Return to step 2

5. Perform peer review/QA of all findings and project details prior to report generation

6. Upload a report template (optional)

7. Generate a reporting document (docx, pptx, xlsx, json, etc)

That's all there is to the basic procedures and their required order of precedence.

End of Project Workflow

At the end of a project a project manager or assessment lead should mark a project as complete. This is done by clicking the In Progress toggle below the project's name on the project's detail page.

Marking a project as complete begins a 90-day countdown to archiving. If the archive task has been configured (see Background Tasks), Ghostwriter will perform a daily check to see if any complete projects are 90 days old (or older) and archive them.

The default is 90 days, but this can be adjusted in the tasks.py file.

Archiving involves the following actions:

• Mark all reports under the project to Complete (if they were not marked as such already)

• Mark all reports under the project as Archived

• Generate all report types

• Bundle all reports and evidence files into a zip file

• Add a record to the Archive model for the client and project with the report archive file

• Mark the project as archived

• Delete all report data

The archive file are available for download under /reporting/reports/archive. You can leave them or perform any actions required by your company's data retention policies (e.g. download the archive and then delete it from Ghostwriter).

Once archived, the project and reports can no longer be edited, so they now exist only as a historical record.