The Black Hat Community Operations Heart (NOC) supplies a high-security, high-availability community in one of the vital demanding environments on the planet: the Black Hat occasion.
The NOC companions are chosen by Black Hat, with Arista, Cisco, Corelight, Lumen, NetWitness and Palo Alto Networks delivering from Las Vegas this 12 months. Cisco is the official Area Identify Service, Malware Evaluation and Cellular Machine Administration supplier. The Meraki workforce is writing a weblog in regards to the experiences in defending and managing the Black Hat cell units.
The companions additionally present built-in safety, visibility and automation: a Safety Operations Heart (SOC) contained in the NOC, with Grifter ‘Niel Wyler’ and Bart Stump because the leaders.
Integration is vital to success within the SOC of the NOC. At every convention, we now have a hack-a-thon to create, show, check, enhance and at last put into manufacturing new or improved integrations. To be a NOC accomplice, you should be keen to collaborate, share Automated Programming Interface (API) keys and documentation, and are available collectively (at the same time as market rivals) to safe the convention for the great of the attendees.
XDR integrations
Cisco joined the Black Hat NOC in 2016, when requested to offer automated malware evaluation with Menace Grid. The Cisco contributions to the community and safety operations developed, with the wants of the shopper, to incorporate extra elements of the Cisco Safety Cloud:
The NOC leaders allowed Cisco (and the opposite NOC companions) to herald extra software program to make our inside work extra environment friendly and have larger visibility. Nevertheless, Cisco is just not the official supplier for Prolonged Detection & Response (XDR), Community Detection & Response or Collaboration.
- Cisco XDR: Community Site visitors Visibility and Menace Detection/Menace Searching/Menace Intelligence Enrichment/Government Dashboards/Automation
- Cisco Webex: Incident notification and workforce collaboration
The Cisco XDR command heart dashboard tiles made it simple to see the standing of every of the linked Cisco Safety applied sciences, the general risk panorama and the standing of community availability as monitored by ThousandEyes brokers.
Under are the Cisco XDR integrations for Black Hat USA, empowering analysts to analyze Indicators of Compromise (IOC) in a short time, with one search. We admire alphaMountain.ai, Pulsedive and Recorded Future donating full licenses to the Black Hat USA 2024 NOC. Additionally, take a look at the weblog on XDR turning one 12 months previous and the affect of Black Hat occasions.
One of many new integrations this 12 months was with a utility written by one in every of our SOC workforce members. Each safety skilled — particularly SOC analysts and responders — have a sequence of “fast lookup” type instruments that they use to reply numerous questions on artifacts in an investigation. Shodan is a good instance; “given an IP deal with, what providers is that IP offering, and what software program are they utilizing to offer it?”. Paste the IP into Shodan, and you’ll seemingly get your reply. With the Shodan integration in XDR, you don’t even have to repeat and paste — simply click on the IP after which within the drop down menu, click on the Shodan hyperlink. However there are a whole bunch of such instruments…
Ben took one of many integration server templates that Cisco Safety revealed on Github and modified it to our wants. He then hosted it on his cloud supplier of alternative, added it to our XDR configuration and will add these easy pivots to XDR on the fly. A easy edit of a textual content file on the server and we may soar from any observable to any new related reference website that anybody had urged.
Cisco XDR is constructed on the beliefs of an open integration framework, with revealed knowledge fashions, API specs and pattern code out there to be modified or used as examples/tutorials (together with precise tutorials at DevNet). This dedication to extensibility permits for modifications such because the above with out requiring any motion from the XDR growth or product groups, permitting prospects to tailor XDR to their distinctive wants.
For instance, an IP tried
Investigation of the IP confirmed: It was recognized malicious.
Additionally, the geo location is in RU and recognized affiliated domains. With this info, the NOC management accepted the shunning of the IP.
XDR: Asset visibility
By: Ben Greenbaum
Because the Black Hat community evolves, completely different distributors are given alternatives to carry their merchandise into the toolbox. On account of this ongoing biking, we didn’t have entry to the depth of intelligence beforehand offered by deployment of a Meraki wi-fi infrastructure. Nevertheless, as a result of functionality constructed into XDR Asset Insights to add a customized CSV file of belongings, we have been in a position to simply operationalize recognized community topography into investigative and response operations.
One of many distinctive challenges of the Black Hat setting is how completely different it’s from a “regular” buyer’s manufacturing community. We’ve just a few hundred units whose safety is our main objective, however tens of hundreds of unmanaged (and infrequently hostile) units within the native community which we need to defend from one another and defend the skin world from. This distinctive association very a lot drives house the worth that an EDR brings to an XDR answer. With out good endpoint visibility, the problem is way larger. The good thing about an open XDR strategy that’s not an evolution of an current EDR providing is that it may be one in every of a number of EDRs, however “one” is preferable to none.
Malware Analytics
By: Ben Greenbaum
Cisco Malware Analytics (previously Menace Grid) was once more used because the backend file evaluation and malware detection engine. We supported our companions from CoreLight and Netwitness, with evaluation of recordsdata pulled from clear textual content (convention attendee) and choose encrypted periods (vital infrastructure).
As common, the recordsdata present in clear textual content communications have been an excellent indicator of what varieties of data might be anticipated to be leaked by a crowd of safety professionals, and this 12 months the end result rated a strong “much less terrible.” Probably spicy content material included numerous PII (names, employers, positions, e mail addresses, and so on.) from Black Hat receipts and some company e mail attachments.
And whereas Umbrella did alert us to some wandering infections phoning house, we will say that not less than no malware was transferred…within the clear.
By: Aditya Sankar
Cisco XDR features a built-in automation functionality known as XDR automation. If in case you have heard of Safety Orchestration Automation Response (SOAR), Cisco XDR has the complete suite of SOAR options. That features the flexibility to drag-and-drop prebuilt code blocks in a selected sequence to create a customized workflow, executing arbitrary API calls to function one-click response actions and creating guidelines to set off workflows based mostly off a schedule or another standards.
We’ve been utilizing XDR Automate at Black Hat for 3 years to enhance the Cisco providers to our joint buyer, Black Hat, and have carried out quite a lot of use instances. Nevertheless, this has usually required fairly a little bit of time to be taught APIs and create a very customized workflow. With the most recent XDR Automation Change, the Change web page is used to seek out, view, set up and uninstall pre-written workflows which have been launched or accepted by Cisco engineers and content material suppliers. Workflows authored by the neighborhood have handed a fundamental high quality examine and are supported by the Cisco DevNet Group on a best-effort foundation. The Exchanges helps allow collaboration between workflow creators and moreover reduces the time it takes for a person to expertise worth from XDR automation.
Shout out to Ivan Berlinson, who wrote a workflow to tug risk logs from the Palo Alto Networks API and create Incidents in Cisco XDR. Since Ivan was variety sufficient to publish the workflow to the Change, it was extraordinarily simple to import the workflow and get it operational. Putting in a workflow from the alternate is basically like strolling via a configuration wizard. It features a description of what the workflow does, the required targets and variables, in addition to a contact particular person for help. Here’s what the workflow seems to be like within the Change simply earlier than set up.
This workflow requires Automation distant, on-premises digital machine deployed over ESXi to make sure correct connectivity to the Palo Alto Panorama equipment. Shoutout to Matt Vander Horst who helped with the vCenter required to deploy the Automation distant equipment. The Change prompts the person to offer values for the required variables and choose the suitable on-premises goal.
Then the workflow is put in and scheduled to run each quarter-hour through an automation rule.
This workflow makes use of the PAN-OS XML API to question for risk logs at this path . This kicks off a search job. As soon as the search job is finished, the workflow retrieves the outcomes and begins parsing the risk logs. A Cisco Menace Intelligence Mannequin (CTIM) sighting is created for every particular person risk log and grouped collectively by inside host IP. Subsequent, a CTIM indicator with the outline of the risk log and a relationship to the corresponding sighting are each created. Lastly, an incident bundle is created with the sighting, relationship and indicator entities and posted to the XDR API. The workflow has logic in-built to examine for duplicate incidents and current indicators.
Here’s what one of many incidents that was created from this automation workflow seems to be like in Cisco XDR. This gave us as analysts within the SOC an incredible place to begin for an investigation.
These Palo Alto Community risk logs point out a listing traversal assault that goals to entry recordsdata and directories which can be saved exterior the net root folder. PAN Firewall alerts on listing traversal and accessing /passwd> from supply IP 192.168.130.86 on common attendee Wi-Fi to vacation spot IP , which resolves to . This area is marked as suspicious by a number of risk intelligence sources and has a medium danger rating of 72 in Cisco Umbrella. The host then proceeded to obtain recordsdata from
The vacation spot IP reveals unknown with XDR risk intelligence, however the area it resolves to appears to be suspicious and it’s hosted within the Russian Federation, as seen within the Umbrella console. Listed below are extra particulars offered by the Corelight workforce in our energetic Menace Searching Slack chanel: HTTP POST exercise to the vacation spot in query reveals a fundamental authentication token that decodes to
We did discover the host making comparable queries like
Ivan Berlison additionally offered one other workflow to provide an XDR Incident when a file is convicted in Cisco Safe Malware analytics. Corelight, in addition to NetWitness, carve recordsdata off the community and submit them to be detonated in Safe Malware Analytics. Here’s what the XDR incident seems to be like when a file with a risk rating above 90 is seen:
We had an exquisite time innovating and investigating at Black Hat USA 2024! The XDR automation alternate was an enormous help in including extra automation capabilities with very minimal customized work. Try AJ Shipley’s weblog on how utilizing Cisco XDR at Black Hat has accelerated our open ecosystem. We’ll be again once more subsequent 12 months, so lengthy Black Hat!
Splunk Assault Analyzer (SAA)
By: Ryan MacLennan
Splunk Assault Analyzer (SAA) is a brand new addition to our deployment. As chances are you’ll know, Cisco acquired Splunk this 12 months. Due to this new acquisition we labored with our counterparts in Splunk to get their SAA product provisioned for our use at Black Hat. SAA is a file and URL evaluation platform much like Safe Malware Analytics. SAA makes use of a complicated set of standards to find out which engine can be finest suited to evaluation — like internet analyzer, static file evaluation, e mail analyzer, signature engines and/or the sandbox. Whereas the product is able to dynamic and static evaluation, we selected to do solely static evaluation for our use at Black Hat.
What is actually highly effective in regards to the evaluation of SAA is its assault chain following functionality: The power to intelligently decide how a human would click on on objects in a webpage. It’ll comply with hyperlinks, obtain recordsdata and analyze extra indicators from community connections, recognized malicious recordsdata, an unknown malicious file that’s analyzed on the fly, phishing domains and extra. It’ll comply with a logical circulation like a human to find out the trail to compromise. This was fascinating to see in the environment because it confirmed the trail from a file, the hyperlinks present in it, to completely different web sites, and every step of the trail had a screenshot for us to comply with alongside.
For instance, we now have a PDF that was submitted to SAA. It discovered hyperlinks within the file and adopted them to see if they’d result in one thing malicious. I’ve blocked out many of the URLs, however we will see the way it went via the PDF knowledge and clicked on the hyperlinks to seek out out the place it will go.
After SAA did its factor, we may take a look at the file in query and the screenshots that it took. We discovered that this file was the information utilized in a coaching room and every hyperlink was a reference to an article, a coaching useful resource (self-hosted and official), or different informational sources a scholar might have.
We have been in a position so as to add this integration with the assistance of our accomplice Corelight. We talked to them on day one they usually have been excited to get a brand new integration developed with SAA. Just a few hours later, we had an integration with them. This was a tremendous instance of how all of us come collectively to make the NOC higher at Black Hat yearly.
Umbrella DNS
By: Christian Clasen and Justin Murphy
If in case you have learn the earlier Black Hat NOC/SOC reviews, you realize that in 2023, we made a change to the DNS design. In prior conferences, we assigned inside forwarders to purchasers through DHCP, however didn’t pressure their use. Primarily, attendees may use any DNS resolvers they selected, and we didn’t intrude. The change we carried out was to start forcibly redirecting DNS visitors to the on-premises DNS forwarders. You’ll be able to see within the statistics above that this variation prompted a big soar in queries processed by Cisco Umbrella — from 54.4 million to 79.3 million.
The steep enhance in question rely was not sudden. What was sudden, nonetheless, was a lower in question rely between 2023 and 2024. Whereas we don’t know the exact reason for this drop, we do have some theories and methods we will check them going ahead.
One potential clarification is the prevalence of encrypted DNS protocols. Lately, the trade has turned its consideration to the privateness, integrity and authenticity issues inherent within the plain-text DNS protocol. To unravel a few of these points, “last-mile” encryption has turn into a favourite of OS and browser distributors. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and DNS-over-TLS (DoT) are solely a few the most well-liked methods to encrypt DNS between the shopper and the recursive resolver.
Detecting all encrypted DNS might be troublesome and counting the queries unimaginable. It is because TCP is the chosen transport for DoH and DoT, and this enables the shopper to pipeline a number of queries over one long-lived TCP and TLS session. However what we will usually discover are the “bootstrap” plain-text DNS queries that allow to shopper to seek out the encrypted DNS server. By operating a report in Umbrella for the class “DoH and DoT”, we will get a deal with on the most well-liked of those providers:
The entry for
On this report, we additionally see “canary” domains equivalent to
Going ahead, we are going to observe the statistics of those protocols on the convention networks and see what different info we will collect utilizing the complete packet seize capabilities of our companions and the risk searching capabilities of Cisco XDR. You’ll be able to anticipate this matter to be expanded on within the subsequent convention report.
One of many main causes to not less than monitor DNS is to know traits and the way the community at Black Hat is getting used from a excessive degree. There are lots of insights that may be gained from forcing DNS via a centralized service with intelligence. DNS queries exist for locations that host every thing from Malware, Crypto Mining and Phishing to content material classes like Social Media, Finance and Unlawful Actions. Moreover, these domains might be categorized into particular functions as effectively. With the App Discovery report in Umbrella, these domains are grouped by software, figuring out the potential use of hundreds of functions. This might be internet apps or different desktop/cell apps.
As all the time, we proceed to see an increase in app utilization at Black Hat:
- BHUSA 2019: ~3,600
- BHUSA 2021: ~2,600
- BHUSA 2022: ~6,300
- BHUSA 2023: ~7,500
- BHUSA 2024: ~9,300
This 12 months there was one stand out Utility Class that has been rising in reputation: Generative AI. It’ll seemingly be no shock that there are extra attendees and their instruments utilizing Generative AI. We’ve gone from seeing it as a footnote in logs to reporting it at RSAC 2024, as we noticed 80 completely different Generative AI instruments getting used.
Evaluate this to Black Hat 2024, only a few months later, the place the overall quantity has jumped to 194.
This doesn’t look like only a distinction in conferences, however slightly a rising pattern and acceptance of those instruments.
Community Assurance
By: Adam Kilgore, Shimei Cridlig, Shannon Wellington and Justin Murphy
The ThousandEyes deployment launched at Black Hat USA 2023 one 12 months in the past. At that convention, we spent many lengthy shifts creating the configurations, design, and procedures that shaped the idea for our convention protection. The deployment was additional improved and streamlined at Black Hat London and Black Hat Asia. At this 12 months’s Black Hat USA 2024, we have been able to broaden our protection considerably whereas persevering with to refine our procedures.
New {hardware}
We added 20 Orange Pi units at Black Hat 2024, along with the 8 Raspberry Pi units we deployed in 2023. We’re nonetheless effectively in need of the proverbial thousand eyes, however 28 is much more than 8. We deployed our new fleet of Orange Pi units to watch the wi-fi community, whereas the previous Raspberry Pi units have been used for wired monitoring of Registration, the NOC and core community units.
Orange Pi configuration
Mike Spicer put in a number of time to develop new configuration and deployment procedures for the Orange Pi units earlier than the convention. We have been in a position to make use of a script and a small native community to configure every Orange Pi with a selected SSID and PSK. As soon as the Pi units have been configured and the goal entry factors have been deployed, every Pi was walked to its goal coaching room the place it will routinely connect with the entry level (AP) on bootup and start operating its scheduled monitoring assessments.
Even with the scripting and automation, the configuration stage nonetheless resulted in a mass of wires (pictured above). Deploying the Pi units resulted in additional strolling than the typical attendee would expertise in a convention (not pictured).
Expanded wi-fi protection
With the extra brokers, we have been in a position to deploy to extra Black Hat coaching rooms. The expanded visibility allowed us to catch extra issues earlier than the coaching rooms went dwell, together with a misconfigured PSK, an SSID that wasn’t broadcasting and an SSID that broadcast however didn’t have web connectivity. We’d like to have an agent for every coaching room for full visibility and validation heading into the convention, however we’re pleased with what we caught and the extra confidence the brokers offered heading into the coaching days.
Because the convention shifted from trainings to the briefing days, we shifted our protection from the most important coaching periods to massive briefing rooms and heavy-traffic areas like the doorway and Enterprise Corridor. Whereas we nonetheless needed to make robust strategic selections about what to cowl and what to not cowl, we have been nonetheless in a position to unfold brokers throughout every flooring for common visibility.
Troubleshooting
Our experiences over the previous three conferences had produced well-established troubleshooting procedures and paperwork for the Raspberry Pi units, however the Orange Pi devicess introduced contemporary challenges. We had round 25% of our deployed Orange Pi units require troubleshooting throughout the first 24 hours after deployment, a regarding price. Log evaluation revealed the wi-fi NIC changing into disconnected and the USB getting into a disconnect loop (the wi-fi NIC is linked through USB on the Orange Pi units). The issues with the wi-fi NIC and USB result in a recurring ThousandEyes agent core recordsdata — a troublesome set of issues.
Nevertheless, these points turned out to be remoted slightly than widespread, and by the top of the convention we had a full wi-fi deployment that was staying up all day and in a single day as effectively. For what turned out to be remoted wi-fi issues, we developed troubleshooting procedures and documentation.
Automated ticketing
A brand new ticketing system was rolled out at this convention that might create tickets in Slack based mostly on ThousandEyes knowledge or reported points. Under is a ticket created based mostly on TE alerts for a selected convention room throughout the first morning of briefings.
The dashboards in ThousandEyes allowed us to offer fast visible info that confirmed which convention rooms have been experiencing the worst latency, alongside a comparability of latency throughout reporting rooms.
The automated reviews behind every dashboard entry offered extra granular info, together with visitors path and the latency alongside every leg within the visitors path.
The brand new ticketing system allowed screenshots like those above to be aggregated within the ticket for workforce communication and document protecting.
Troubleshooting WorkflowOn 08/06/2024 at 15:00, we noticed excessive latency to our Inside Umbrella DNS check from the South Seas D Hallway and Enterprise Corridor Brokers. Observe that the hyperlinks to the investigation views are offered as hyperlinks.
To slim down the view, we used a dashboard filter to concentrate on the 2 Brokers.
This confirmed the excessive latency noticed by the 2 Brokers prolonged throughout a number of assessments.
From right here, we drilled down on every check to examine the person check outcomes.
Inside this view, we chosen a number of assessments operating on each Brokers and in contrast the outcomes.
We noticed that there was a latency spike reported by each Brokers.
To grasp the reason for the excessive latency, we drilled all the way down to Path Visualization.
We seen the excessive hyperlink delay between the Agent to its gateway. This means a difficulty both between the shopper and AP or between the AP and the server room with the router.
To verify the reason for the latency, we visited South Seas D. We ran extra assessments to substantiate that the connection expertise match with the outcomes reported by the Agent. Reviewing the room and topology diagrams additional, we discovered that the AP overlaying South Seas D was positioned in an adjoining room, and was broadcasting two SSIDs — one for the room it was positioned in, and the opposite for South Seas D. The mix of the AP placement, the AP servicing two rooms, and the attendee quantity in South Seas D mixed to provide the latency noticed by the Agent. These findings have been shared with the wi-fi workforce.
Cellular machine administration at Black Hat: The function of Meraki Methods Supervisor
By: Dalton Ross
The Black Hat cybersecurity occasion in Las Vegas is famend for its cutting-edge know-how and seamless attendee expertise. A vital element of this success lies in efficient cell machine administration (MDM). Since Black Hat USA 2021, we leveraged Cisco Meraki Methods Supervisor (SM) to deal with quite a lot of duties essential to the occasion’s operations. Under is an in depth take a look at how the Meraki SM was deployed and the challenges confronted alongside the best way.
Important roles of cell units at Black Hat
Cellular units have been pivotal in a number of key areas:
- Registration Kiosk iPad Units (~50 Units): Used at registration kiosks to streamline the attendee check-in course of, the place attendees scan a QR code for fast badge printing
- Session Scanning iPad Units (~75 Units): Deployed throughout Black Hat periods to scan registered attendees into every session
- Lead Retrieval Units (~800 Units): A considerable variety of units have been utilized on the present flooring cubicles to swiftly gather sales space customer contact knowledge
Deliberate deployment for Meraki Methods Supervisor
To make sure a easy deployment, our technique included a number of key steps:
- Pre-State with Apple Automated Machine Enrollment (ADE): Earlier than cargo to the occasion location, all units have been pre-staged utilizing ADE. This allowed units to be configured with a recognized SSID for quicker deployment on website.
- Segregated Delivery: Units have been to be shipped in three distinct groupings, every similar to one of many roles. This aimed to facilitate swift deployment upon arrival.
- Dashboard Script for Function Affiliation: A customized dashboard script was ready to leverage the Meraki Dashboard API and simply affiliate enrolled units with their respective roles.
- Automated Configuration Obtain: As soon as powered up, units have been anticipated to routinely obtain any vital configurations or apps associated to their function, making them prepared for quick deployment.
- Well being Monitoring with Cisco ThousandEyes: ThousandEyes brokers have been to be deployed all through the venue to log SM well being at completely different occasion areas.
- Publish-Occasion Manufacturing facility Reset: After the occasion, all units have been to be manufacturing unit erased earlier than being returned.
Challenges and workarounds
As in life, challenges arose that required fast considering and adaptation:
- Utility Record Modifications: A final-minute change to the applying checklist for session scanning units was required. Though we initially deliberate to have all configurations prepared beforehand, this sudden change was effectively managed utilizing the Methods Supervisor with only a few clicks.
- ThousandEyes Agent Limitations: Since ThousandEyes brokers have been beta SM purchasers, they couldn’t precisely collect connectivity knowledge. This was an anticipated conduct, however it posed a problem for efficient monitoring. To beat this, NOC members from Cisco ThousandEyes and Cisco Meraki collaborated to hack collectively a proof of idea. By way of arduous work and a number of other iterations, we configured the ThousandEyes brokers to simulate machine check-in visitors, mimicking legitimate SM purchasers.
Deploying Meraki Methods Supervisor at Black Hat was an intricate however rewarding endeavor. Regardless of dealing with challenges, our workforce demonstrated agility and innovation, making certain the occasion’s operations ran easily. The expertise underscored the significance of flexibility and fast drawback fixing in managing large-scale occasions.
By leveraging superior MDM options like Meraki Methods Supervisor, we have been in a position to present a seamless expertise for attendees and exhibitors alike, showcasing the facility of know-how in occasion administration.
We’re pleased with the collaboration of the Cisco workforce and the NOC companions. Black Hat Europe shall be December 9-12, 2024 on the London eXcel Centre.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the Cisco NOC workforce:
- Cisco Safe: Christian Clasen, Matt Vander Horst, Aditya Sankar, Ben Greenbaum, Ryan Maclennan, Adam Kilgore, Shimei Cridlig, Shannon Wellington and Justin Murphy, with distant help by Jessica (Bair) Oppenheimer
- Meraki Methods Supervisor: Dalton Ross, with distant help by Paul Fidler and Connor Laughlin. Search for their report on The Meraki Weblog.
Additionally, to our NOC companions:
- NetWitness (particularly Alessandro Zatti)
- Palo Alto Networks (particularly Jason Reverri and James Holland)
- Corelight (particularly Dustin Lee)
- Arista (particularly Jonathan Smith)
- Lumen and the complete Black Hat/Informa Tech workers (particularly Grifter ‘Neil Wyler,’ Bart Stump, Steve Fink, James Pope, Mike Spicer, Sandy Wenzel, Heather Williams, Jess Stafford and Steve Oldenbourg)
About Black Hat
Black Hat is the cybersecurity trade’s most established and in-depth safety occasion sequence. Based in 1997, these annual, multi-day occasions present attendees with the most recent in cybersecurity analysis, growth, and traits. Pushed by the wants of the neighborhood, Black Hat occasions showcase content material instantly from the neighborhood via Briefings shows, Trainings programs, Summits, and extra. Because the occasion sequence the place all profession ranges and educational disciplines convene to collaborate, community, and talk about the cybersecurity subjects that matter most to them, attendees can discover Black Hat occasions in the US, Canada, Europe, Center East and Africa and Asia.
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