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What is Moloch?

Moloch is an open source, large scale IPv4 packet capturing (PCAP), indexing and database system. A simple web interface is provided for PCAP browsing, searching, and exporting. APIs are exposed that allow PCAP data and JSON-formatted session data to be downloaded directly. Simple security is implemented by using HTTPS and HTTP digest password support or by using apache in front. Moloch is not meant to replace IDS engines but instead work along side them to store and index all the network traffic in standard PCAP format, providing fast access. Moloch is built to be deployed across many systems and can scale to handle multiple gigabits/sec of traffic.

Sessions Tab

Sample sessions screen shot

SPI View Tab

Sample spiview screen shot

Quick Start

IMPATIENT? Run ./easybutton-singlehost.sh in the Moloch source distribution to build a complete single-machine Moloch system. This is good for a demo and can also be used as a starting point for a real production deployment.

Components

The Moloch system is comprised of 3 components

  1. capture - A single-threaded C application that runs per network interface. It is possible to run multiple capture processes per machine if there are multiple interfaces to monitor.
  2. viewer - A node.js application that runs per capture machine and handles the web interface and transfer of PCAP files.
  3. elasticsearch - The search database technology powering Moloch.

Building and Installing

Moloch is a complex system to build and install. The following are rough guidelines. (Improvements to these instructions are always welcome!)

Installing Elasticsearch

Tested with 0.90.12 and 1.1.1, requires at least 0.90.12 or 1.1.1, does not support 1.0.x

  1. Prep the elasticsearch machines by increasing max file descriptors add allowing memory locking. On CentOS and others this is done by adding the following to bottom of /etc/security/limits.conf:

    *                -      nofile          128000
*                -      memlock         unlimited

  2. If this is a dedicated machine, disable swap by commenting out the swap lines in /etc/fstab and either reboot or use the swapoff command.

  3. Download elasticsearch. Important: At this time all development is done with elasticsearch 0.90.10.

  4. Uncompress the archive you downloaded.

  5. Install bigdesk and elasticsearch-head BEFORE pushing to all machines:

    cd elasticsearch-*
bin/plugin -install mobz/elasticsearch-head
bin/plugin -install lukas-vlcek/bigdesk

  6. Create or modify elasticsearch.yml and push it to all machines. (See db/elasticsearch.yml.sample in the Moloch source distribution for an example.)

    • set cluster.name to something unique
    • set node.name to ${ES_HOSTNAME}
    • set node.max_local_storage_nodes to number of nodes per machine
    • set index.fielddata.cache: node
    • set indices.fielddata.cache.size: 40%
    • set path.data and path.logs
    • set gateway.type: local
    • set gateway.recover_after_nodes should match the number of nodes you will run
    • set gateway.expected_nodes to the number of nodes you will run
    • disable zen.ping.multicast
    • enable zen.ping.unicast and set the list of hosts

  7. Create an elasticsearch launch script or use one of the ones out there. (See db/runes.sh.sample in the Moloch source distribution for a simple one.)

    • Make sure you call ulimit -a first
    • set ES_HEAP_SIZE=20G (or whatever number you are using, less then 32G)
    • set JAVA_OPTS="-XX:+UseCompressedOops" if using real Java
    • set ES_HOSTNAME to `hostname -s`

  8. Start the cluster, waiting ~5s between starting each node to give them time to properly mesh.

  9. Use elasticsearch-head to look at your cluster and make sure it is GREEN.

  10. Inside the installed $MOLOCH_PREFIX/db directory run the db.pl A_ES_HOSTNAME init script.

  11. Check elasticsearch-head again and make sure it is still GREEN and now you should see some of the indexes.

Building Capture

  1. Install prerequisite standard packages.

    • CentOS:

      yum install wget curl pcre pcre-devel pkgconfig flex bison gcc-c++ zlib-devel e2fsprogs-devel openssl-devel file-devel make gettext libuuid-devel perl-JSON bzip2-libs bzip2-devel perl-libwww-perl libpng-devel xz libffi-devel

    • Ubuntu:

      apt-get install wget curl libpcre3-dev uuid-dev libmagic-dev pkg-config g++ flex bison zlib1g-dev libffi-dev gettext libgeoip-dev make libjson-perl libbz2-dev libwww-perl libpng-dev xz-utils libffi-dev

    • OS X:

      port install yara libpcap libnids openssl pcre flex bison zlib file gettext p5-JSON p5-libwww-perl libffi xz ossp-uuid libgeoip glib2
./configure --with-libpcap=/opt/local --with-libnids=/opt/local --with-yara=/opt/local --with-GeoIP=/opt/local LDFLAGS=-L/opt/local/lib --with-glib2=no GLIB2_CFLAGS="-I/opt/local/include/glib-2.0 -I/opt/local/lib/glib-2.0/include" GLIB2_LIBS="-L/opt/local/lib -lglib-2.0 -lgmodule-2.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lgio-2.0"

  2. Building capture can be a pain because of OS versions.

    • Try ./easybutton-build.sh which will download all the following, compile them statically, and run the local configure script.

    • Or if you want build yourself, or use some already installed packages then here are the pieces you need:

      • glib-2 version 2.30 or higher (2.34 is recommended for static builds):

        wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/glib/2.34/glib-2.34.3.tar.xz
./configure --disable-xattr --disable-shared --enable-static --disable-libelf --disable-selinux

      • yara version 1.6 or higher:

        wget http://yara-project.googlecode.com/files/yara-1.7.tar.gz
./configure --enable-static

      • MaxMind GeoIP - The OS version may be recent enough:

        wget http://www.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/c/GeoIP-1.4.8.tar.gz
libtoolize -f # Only some platforms need this
./configure --enable-static

      • libpcap - version 1.3 or higher (most OS versions are older):

        wget http://www.tcpdump.org/release/libpcap-1.5.1.tar.gz
./configure --disable-dbus

      • libnids - version 1.24 or higher:

        wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/libnids/libnids/1.24/libnids-1.24.tar.gz
./configure --disable-libnet --disable-glib2

  3. Run configure. Optionally use the --with-<foo> directives to use static libraries from build directories.

  4. Run make.

Building Viewer

  1. You'll need Python 2.6 or higher. If you're using CentOS 5.x (which provides Python 2.4), install a parallel version of Python from the EPEL repository. Make sure python2.6 is in your path before proceeding!
  2. Install Node.js version 0.10.21 or higher.
  3. In the viewer directory run npm update.

Configuration

  1. Make sure you download the latest freely available GeoIP files.

  2. Edit the config.ini file.

  3. In the viewer directory, run addUser.js to add users. Pass the -admin flag if you want admin users that can edit users from the web site. This is a good test if elasticsearch and config.ini are setup correctly:

    node addUser.js <userid> "<Friendly Name>" <password>

  4. Edit the db/daily.sh script, and set it up in the crontab on one machine.

Get it Running

If you've made it this far, you are awesome!

On each capture machine you need to run at least one moloch-capture and one moloch-viewer. You may use the good old inittab. Add this to /etc/inittab (where /home/moloch is in fact the prefix where Moloch is installed):

m1:2345:respawn:/home/moloch/capture/run.sh
v1:2345:respawn:/home/moloch/viewer/run.sh

Sample versions can be found in capture/run.sh.sample and viewer/run.sh.sample in the Moloch source distribution.

Test it Out

Point your browser to any Moloch instance at https://<hostname>:<port> and start tinkering!

Advanced Configuration

Hardware Requirements

Moloch is built to run across many machines for large deployments. What follows are rough guidelines for folks capturing large amounts of data with high bit rates, obviously tailor for the situation. It is not recommended to run the capture and elasticsearch processes on the same machines for highly utilized GigE networks. For demo, small network, or home installations everything on a single machine is fine.

  1. Moloch capture/viewer systems
    • One dedicated management network interface and CPU for OS
    • For each network interface being monitored recommend ~10G of memory and another dedicated CPU
    • If running suricata or another IDS add an additional two (2) CPUs per interface, and an additional 5G memory (or more depending on IDS requirements)
    • Disk space to store the PCAP files: We recommend at least 10TB, xfs (with inode64 option set in fstab), RAID 5, at least 5 spindles)
    • Disable swap by removing it from fstab
    • If networks are highly utilized and running IDS then CPU affinity is required
  2. Moloch elasticsearch systems (some black magic here!)
    • 1/4 * Number_Highly_Utilized_Interfaces * Number_of_Days_of_History is a ROUGH guideline for number of elasticsearch instances (nodes) required. (Example: 1/4 * 8 interfaces * 7 days = 14 nodes)
    • Each elasticsearch node should have ~30G-40G memory (20G-30G [no more!] for the java process, at least 10G for the OS disk cache)
    • You can have multiple nodes per machine (Example 64G machine can have 2 ES nodes, 22G for the java process 10G saved for the disk cache)
    • Disable swap by removing it from fstab
    • Obviously the more nodes, the faster responses will be
    • You can always add more nodes, but it's hard to remove nodes (more on this later)

Example Configuration

Here is an example system setup for monitoring 8x GigE highly-utilized networks, with an average of ~5 Gigabit/sec, with ~7 days of pcap storage.

  • capture/viewer machines
    • 8x PenguinComputing Relion 4724
    • 48GB of memory
    • 40TB of disk-
    • Running Moloch and Suricata
  • elasticsearch machines
    • 10x HP DL380-G7
    • 64GB of memory
    • 2TB of disk
    • Each system running 2 nodes

Security Information

Ports Used

  • tcp 8005 - Moloch web interface
  • tcp 9200-920x (configurable upper limit) - Elasticsearch service ports
  • tcp 9300-930x (configurable upper limit) - Elasticsearch mesh connections

Important Considerations

  • Elasticsearch provides NO security, so iptables MUST be used allowing only Moloch machines to talk to the elasticsearch machines (ports 9200-920x) and for them to mesh connect (ports 9300-930x). An example with 3 ES machines 2 nodes each and a viewer only machine:

    for ip in moloches1 moloches2 moloches3 molochvieweronly1; do
  iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 9300 -s $ip -j ACCEPT
  iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 9200 -s $ip -j ACCEPT
  iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 9301 -s $ip -j ACCEPT
  iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 9201 -s $ip -j ACCEPT
done
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 9300 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 9200 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 9301 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 9201 -j DROP

  • Moloch machines should be locked down, however they need to talk to each other (port 8005), to the elasticsearch machines (ports 9200-920x), and the web interface needs to be open (port 8005).

  • Moloch viewer should be configured to use SSL.

    • It's easiest to use a single certificate with multiple DNs.
    • Make sure you protect the cert on the filesystem with proper file permissions.

  • It is possible to set up a Moloch viewer on a machine that doesn't capture any data that gateways all requests.

    • It is also possible to place apache in front of moloch, so it can handle the authentication and pass the username on to moloch
    • This is how we deploy it

  • A shared password stored in the Moloch configuration file is used to encrypt password hashes AND for inter-Moloch communication.

    • Make sure you protect the config file on the filesystem with proper file permissions.
    • Encrypted password hashes are used so a new password hash can not be inserted into elasticsearch directly in case it hasn't been secured.

Documentation

For now this README is the bulk of the documentation. This will improve over time.

FAQ

For answers to frequently asked questions, please see the FAQ.

Wiki

We use GitHub’s built-in wiki located at https://github.com/aol/moloch/wiki.

Upgrading

Currently upgrading from previous versions of Moloch is a manual process, however recorded sessions and pcap files should be retained

  • Update the moloch repository from github
  • Build the moloch system using "easybutton-build.sh"
  • Shut down currently running old capture and viewer processes
  • Optionally use "make install" to copy the new binaries and other items and/or push the new items to the capture hosts
  • Run "npm update" in the viewer directory if not using "make install"
  • Make sure ES is running and update the database using the "db/db.pl host:port upgrade" script
  • Start the new capture and viewer processes