Introduction

Suricata is a high-performance Network IDS, IPS, and Network Security Monitoring engine. Elastic Stack, also known as the ELK stack, is a powerful collection of tools for data ingestion, storage, search, and visualization. This tutorial will guide you through the process of installing and configuring Suricata IDS alongside Elastic Stack on Debian 12.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

1. A Debian 12 server or desktop system
2. Root or sudo privileges

Step 1: Install Suricata

Install Suricata on Debian 12:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y suricata

Step 2: Configure Suricata

Edit the Suricata configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/suricata/suricata.yaml

Configure Suricata according to your requirements. You can enable/disable rules, configure logging, and more.

Step 3: Start Suricata

Start the Suricata service:

sudo systemctl start suricata

Step 4: Install and Configure Elastic Stack

Follow the official documentation to install and configure the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, and Beats) on Debian 12:

Elastic Stack Documentation

Step 5: Configure Suricata Output

Configure Suricata to send logs to Logstash for processing:

output:
  logstash:
    enabled: yes
    hosts:
      - logstash_ip:5044

Step 6: Restart Suricata

Restart the Suricata service for the configuration changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart suricata

Step 7: Verify Operation

Verify that Suricata is sending logs to Logstash and view the processed logs in Kibana.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured Suricata IDS alongside Elastic Stack on Debian 12. Your system is now equipped with a powerful network security monitoring solution.