Installing and configuring Wazuh Server on CentOS 7

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Wazuh is a free, open-source, and enterprise-ready security monitoring solution for threat detection, integrity monitoring, incident response, and compliance.

In this tutorial, we are going to show Distributed architecture installation. The distributed architectures control the Wazuh manager and elastic stack clusters via different hosts. Wazuh manager and Elastic Stack are managed on the same platform by single-host implementations.

Wazuh server: Runs the API and Wazuh Manager. The data from deployed agents are collected and analyzed.
Elastic Stack: Runs Elasticsearch, Filebeat, and Kibana (including Wazuh). It reads, parses, indexes, and stores Wazuh manager alert data.
Wazuh agent: Runs on the host monitored, collecting log and configuration data, and detecting intrusions and anomalies.

1. Installing Wazuh Server

Pre-setup

Let’s set the hostname first. Launch Terminal and enter the following command:

hostnamectl set-hostname wazuh-server

Update CentOS and packages:

yum update -y

Next, install NTP and check its service status.

yum install ntp

systemctl status ntpd

If the service is not started, start it using below command:

systemctl start ntpd

Enable NTP on system boot:

systemctl enable ntpd

Modify firewall rules to allow NTP service. Run the following commands to enable service.

firewall-cmd --add-service=ntp --zone=public --permanent

firewall-cmd --reload

Installing Wazuh Manager

Let’s add key:

rpm --import https://packages.wazuh.com/key/GPG-KEY-WAZUH

Edit the Wazuh repository:

vim /etc/yum.repos.d/wazuh.repo

Add the following content to the file.

[wazuh_repo]
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.wazuh.com/key/GPG-KEY-WAZUH
enabled=1
name=Wazuh repository
baseurl=https://packages.wazuh.com/3.x/yum/
protect=1

Save and exit the file.

List the repositories using the repolist command.

yum repolist

Install the Wazuh manager using the below command:

yum install wazuh-manager -y

Then, install Wazuh Manager, and check the status of it.

systemctl status wazuh-manager

Installing the Wazuh API

NodeJS >= 4.6.1 is required to run the Wazuh API.

Add the official NodeJS repository:

curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | bash -

install NodeJS:

yum install nodejs -y

Install the Wazuh API. It will update NodeJS if it is required:

yum install wazuh-api

Check the status of wazuh-api.

systemctl status wazuh-api

Change the default credentials manually using the following commands:

cd /var/ossec/api/configuration/auth

Set a password for the user.

node htpasswd -Bc -C 10 user darshana

Restart API.

systemctl restart wazuh-api

If you need it, you can change the port manually. The file /var/ossec/api/configuration/config.js contains the parameter:

// TCP Port used by the API.
config.port = "55000";

We are not changing the default port.

Installing Filebeat

Filebeat is the tool on the Wazuh server that securely forwards alerts and archived events to Elasticsearch. To install it, run the following command:

rpm --import https://packages.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch

Setup repository:

vim /etc/yum.repos.d/elastic.repo

Add the following contents to the server:

[elasticsearch-7.x]
name=Elasticsearch repository for 7.x packages
baseurl=https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/yum
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch
enabled=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

Install Filebeat:

yum install filebeat-7.5.1

Download the Filebeat configuration file from the Wazuh repository. This is pre-configured to forward Wazuh alerts to Elasticsearch:

curl -so /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wazuh/wazuh/v3.11.0/extensions/filebeat/7.x/filebeat.yml

Change file Permissions:

chmod go+r /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml

Download the alerts template for Elasticsearch:

curl -so /etc/filebeat/wazuh-template.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wazuh/wazuh/v3.11.0/extensions/elasticsearch/7.x/wazuh-template.json

chmod go+r /etc/filebeat/wazuh-template.json

Download the Wazuh module for Filebeat:

curl -s https://packages.wazuh.com/3.x/filebeat/wazuh-filebeat-0.1.tar.gz | sudo tar -xvz -C /usr/share/filebeat/module

Add Elasticsearch server IP. Edit “filebeat.yml.”

vim /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml

Modify the following line.

output.elasticsearch.hosts: ['http://ELASTIC_SERVER_IP:9200']

Enable and start the Filebeat service:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable filebeat.service
systemctl start filebeat.service

2. Installing Elastic Stack

Now we are going configure second Centos server with ELK.

Do the configurations on your elastic stack server.

Preconfigurations

As usual, let’s set-hostname first.

hostnamectl set-hostname elk

Update the system:

yum update -y

Installing ELK

Install Elastic Stack with RPM packages and then add the Elastic repository and its GPG key:

rpm --import https://packages.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch

Create a repository file:

vim /etc/yum.repos.d/elastic.repo

Add the following content to the file:

[elasticsearch-7.x]
name=Elasticsearch repository for 7.x packages
baseurl=https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/yum
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch
enabled=1
autorefresh=1
type=rpm-md

Installing Elasticsearch

Install the Elasticsearch package:

yum install elasticsearch-7.5.1

Elasticsearch listens by default on the loopback interface (localhost). Configure Elasticsearch to listen to a non-loopback address by editing /etc / elasticsearch / elasticsearch.yml and uncommenting network.host configuration. Adjust the IP value you want to connect to:

network.host: 0.0.0.0

Change firewall rules.

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-rich-rule='
rule family="ipv4"
source address="34.232.210.23/32"
port protocol="tcp" port="9200" accept'

Reload firewall rules:

firewall-cmd --reload

The further configuration will be necessary for the elastic search configuration file.

Edit the “elasticsearch.yml” file.

vim /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml

Change or edit “node.name” and “cluster.initial_master_nodes”.

node.name: <node_name>

cluster.initial_master_nodes: ["<node_name>"]

Enable and start the Elasticsearch service:

systemctl daemon-reload

Enable on system boot.

systemctl enable elasticsearch.service

Start elastic search service.

systemctl start elasticsearch.service

Check the status of the elastic search.

systemctl status elasticsearch.service

Check the log file for any issues.

tail -f /var/log/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.log

Once Elasticsearch is up and running, we need to load the Filebeat template. Run the following command on the Wazuh server (We installed filebeat there.)

filebeat setup --index-management -E setup.template.json.enabled=false

Installing Kibana

Install the Kibana package:

yum install kibana-7.5.1

Install the Wazuh app plugin for Kibana:

sudo -u kibana /usr/share/kibana/bin/kibana-plugin install https://packages.wazuh.com/wazuhapp/wazuhapp-3.11.0_7.5.1.zip

Kibana PluginNeed to modify Kibana configurations to access Kibana from the outside.

Edit the Kibana configuration file.

vim /etc/kibana/kibana.yml

Change the following line.

server.host: "0.0.0.0"

Configure the URLs of the Elasticsearch instances.

elasticsearch.hosts: ["http://localhost:9200"]

Enable and start the Kibana service:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable kibana.service
systemctl start kibana.service

Adding Wazuh API to Kibana Configurations

Edit “wazuh.yml.”

vim /usr/share/kibana/plugins/wazuh/wazuh.yml

Edit hostname, username, and password:

Save and exit the file and restart the Kibana service.

systemctl restart kibana.service

We installed the Wazuh server and the ELK server. Now we are going to add hosts using an agent.

3. Installing Wazuh agent

I. Adding Ubuntu Server

a. Installing needed packages

apt-get install curl apt-transport-https lsb-release gnupg2

Install the Wazuh repository GPG key:

curl -s https://packages.wazuh.com/key/GPG-KEY-WAZUH | apt-key add -

Add the repository and then update repositories.

echo "deb https://packages.wazuh.com/3.x/apt/ stable main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wazuh.list

apt-get update

b. Installing the Wazuh agent

Blow command adds “WAZUH_MANAGER” IP to wazuh-agent configuration automatically when installing it.

WAZUH_MANAGER="52.91.79.65" apt-get install wazuh-agent

II. Adding CentOS host

Add the Wazuh repository.

rpm --import http://packages.wazuh.com/key/GPG-KEY-WAZUH

Edit and add to the repository:

vim /etc/yum.repos.d/wazuh.repo

Add the following contents:

[wazuh_repo]
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.wazuh.com/key/GPG-KEY-WAZUH
enabled=1
name=Wazuh repository
baseurl=https://packages.wazuh.com/3.x/yum/
protect=1

Install the agent.

WAZUH_MANAGER="52.91.79.65" yum install wazuh-agent

4. Accessing Wazuh Dashboard

Browse Kibana using the IP.

http://IP or hostname:5601/

You will see the below interface.

Then click on “Wazuh ” Icon to go to its Dashboard. You will see “Wazuh” Dashboard as follows.

Here you can see connected agents, security information management, etc.. when you click on security events; you can see a graphical view of events.

If you reached this far, congrats! That’s all about installing and configuring the Wazuh server on CentOS.