“The new version of SOF-ELK is here. Download, turn on, and get going on forensics analysis.”

 

We are excited to announce the release of an all-new version of the free SOF-ELK®, or Security Operation and Forensics ELK virtual machine. Now based on the new version of the Elastic Stack, SOF-ELK is a complete rebuild that is faster and more effortless than its predecessors, making forensic and security data analysis easier than ever.

 

Since its introduction about five years ago, there have been more than 10,000 downloads of SOF-ELK around the world by computer forensic investigators and information security operations personnel in the government, law enforcement and commercial sectors. The SOF-ELK platform is a customized build of the open source ELK stack, consisting of the Elasticsearch storage and search engine, Logstash ingestion and enrichment component, and the Kibana dashboard frontend.

 

SOF-ELK was always designed to help minimize the typically long and involved setup process the ELK stack requires by delivering a pre-built virtual appliance that can be downloaded in a ready-to-use state. It can consume various source data types (numerous log types as well as NetFlow), parses out the most critical data fields, and presents it on several stock dashboards. Users can also build custom data visualizations that suit their own investigative or operational requirements (and because of the fully open source nature of the project, can choose to contribute those custom builds back to the primary code repository). Learn more about the SOF-ELK distribution.

 

The new version of SOF-ELK has been rebuilt from the ground up to take advantage of the new version of the Elastic Stack software and uses all of the Elastic Stack’s components. This required a total rebuild of all dashboards and supporting scripts. Simply download this distribution, turn it on, feed it some data and begin analysis. It’s that easy.

 

The SANS team has performed extensive testing of this distribution of the SOF-ELK platform. The new version’s most immediate benefits are its speed and refreshed browser interface. This is faster and easier to use and can visualize massive amounts of data through the dashboards. We also expect faster development cycles. Here are some more changes in the new SOF-ELK:

 

• Supports the latest updates on the kernel and all CentOS packages.
• Includes new parsers from upstream and community contributions.
• Rebuilt and revalidated all Logstash parsers against latest syntax
• Better handles dynamic (boot-time) memory allocation for Elasticsearch.
• Rebuilt all Kibana dashboards to handle updated index mappings and field names
• IPv6 addresses can now be handled as IPs instead of strings
• Features many under-the hood changes that will make our roadmap much smoother in the future

The SOF-ELK platform was initially developed for SANS FOR572, Advanced Network Forensics and Analysis, and is now used in SANS SEC555, SIEM with Tactical Analysis. Additional course integrations are being actively worked at this time and considered for future versions. However, SOF-ELK was always designed as a free resource for the digital forensic and broader information security communities at large — a ready-to-use appliance that teams can use without having to invest the many hours into deploying, configuring, and maintaining an Elastic Stack instance. We hope you check out the latest version of the SOF-ELK distribution.