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Shannon entropy (shannonentropy)

Description

Adds a new column that returns the Shannon entropy of a given string.

How does it work in the search window?

Select Create field in the search window toolbar, then select the Shannon entropy operation. You need to specify one argument:

Argument

Data type

Argument

Data type

String mandatory

string

The data type of the values in the new field is float.

Example

In the siem.logtrust.web.activity table, we want to create a new field that calculates the Shannon entropy of the strings in our userid field. To do this, we will create a new field using the Shannon entropy operation.

The arguments needed to create the new column are:

  • String - userid field

Click Create field and you will see the following result:

How does it work in LINQ?

Use the operator select... as...  and add the operation syntax to create the new column. This is the syntax for the Shannon entropy operation:

  • shannonentropy(string)

Example

You can copy the following LINQ script and try the above example on the siem.logtrust.web.activity table. 

from siem.logtrust.web.activity select shannonentropy(userid) as shannonentropy_userid