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Use TheHive as a cluster#

This guide provides configuration examples for TheHive, Cassandra and MinIO to build a fault-tolerant cluster of 3 active nodes.

Prerequisite#

3 servers with TheHive and Cassandra installed.

TheHive#

In this guide, we are considering the node 1 to be the master node. Start by configuring akka component by editing the /etc/thehive/application.conf file of each node like the following:

/etc/thehive/application.conf
akka {
  cluster.enable = on 
  actor {
    provider = cluster
  }
remote.artery {
  canonical {
    hostname = "<My IP address>"
    port = 2551
  }
}
# seed node list contains at least one active node
cluster.seed-nodes = [
                      "akka://application@<Node 1 IP address>:2551",
                      "akka://application@<Node 2 IP address>:2551",
                      "akka://application@<Node 3 IP address>:2551"
                     ]
}

Cassandra#

We are considering setting up a cluster of 3 active nodes of Cassandra with a replication factor of 3. That means that all nodes are active and the data is present on each node. This setup is tolerant to a 1 node failure.

For the rest of this section, we consider that all nodes sit on the same network.

Configuration#

Nodes configuration#

For each node, update configuration files with the following parameters:

  • /etc/cassandra/cassandra.yml
/etc/cassandra/cassandra.yml
cluster_name: 'thp'
num_tokens: 256
authenticator: PasswordAuthenticator
authorizer: CassandraAuthorizer
role_manager: CassandraRoleManager
data_file_directories:
    - /var/lib/cassandra/data
commitlog_directory: /var/lib/cassandra/commitlog
saved_caches_directory: /var/lib/cassandra/saved_caches
seed_provider:
    - class_name: org.apache.cassandra.locator.SimpleSeedProvider
      parameters:
        - seeds: "<ip node 1>, <ip node 2>, <ip node 3>"
listen_interface : eth0
rpc_interface: eth0
endpoint_snitch: SimpleSnitch

Ensure to setup the right interface name.

  • delete file /etc/cassandra/cassandra-topology.properties
rm /etc/cassandra/cassandra-topology.properties

Start nodes#

On each node, start the service:

service cassandra start

Ensure that all nodes are up and running:

root@cassandra:/# nodetool status
Datacenter: dc1
===============
Status=Up/Down
|/ State=Normal/Leaving/Joining/Moving
--  Address      Load       Tokens       Owns (effective)  Host ID                               Rack
UN  <ip node 1>  776.53 KiB  256          100.0%            a79c9a8c-c99b-4d74-8e78-6b0c252abd86  rack1
UN  <ip node 2>  671.72 KiB  256          100.0%            8fda2906-2097-4d62-91f8-005e33d3e839  rack1
UN  <ip node 3>  611.54 KiB  256          100.0%            201ab99c-8e16-49b1-9b66-5444044fb1cd  rack1

Initialise the database#

On one node run (default password for cassandra account is cassandra):

cqlsh <ip node X> -u cassandra
  • Start by changing the password of superadmin named cassandra: 
ALTER USER cassandra WITH PASSWORD 'NEWPASSWORD';

exit and reconnect.

  • Ensure user accounts are duplicated on all nodes 
ALTER KEYSPACE system_auth WITH replication = {'class': 'SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor': 3 };
  • Create keyspace named thehive
CREATE KEYSPACE thehive WITH replication = {'class': 'SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor': '3' } AND durable_writes = 'true';
  • Create role thehive and grant permissions on thehive keyspace (choose a password)
CREATE ROLE thehive WITH LOGIN = true AND PASSWORD = 'PASSWORD';
GRANT ALL PERMISSIONS ON KEYSPACE thehive TO 'thehive';

TheHive associated configuration#

Update the configuration of thehive accordingly in /etc/thehive/application.conf :

/etc/thehive/application.conf
## Database configuration
db.janusgraph {
  storage {
    ## Cassandra configuration
    # More information at https://docs.janusgraph.org/basics/configuration-reference/#storagecql
    backend = cql
    hostname = ["<ip node 1>", "<ip node 2>", "<ip node 3>"]
    # Cassandra authentication (if configured)
    username = "thehive"
    password = "PASSWORD"
    cql {
      cluster-name = thp
      keyspace = thehive
    }
  }

Troubleshooting#

Example of error message in /var/log/cassandra/ log files

InvalidRequest: code=2200 [Invalid query] message=”org.apache.cassandra.auth.CassandraRoleManager doesn’t support PASSWORD”.`

set the value authenticator: PasswordAuthenticator in cassandra.yaml

Caused by: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: com.datastax.driver.core.exceptions.UnauthorizedException: Unable to perform authorization of permissions: Unable to perform authorization of super-user permission: Cannot achieve consistency level LOCAL_ONE

Fix it by running following CQL command: 

ALTER KEYSPACE system_auth WITH replication = {'class': 'SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor': 3 };

and with the following command: 

nodetool repair -full

MinIO#

MinIO distributed mode requires fresh directories. Here is an example of implementation of MinIO with TheHive.

The following procedure should be applied on all servers belonging the the cluster. We are considering the setup where the cluster is composed of 3 servers named minio1, minio2 & minio3.

Create a dedicated system account#

Create a dedicated user and group for MinIO. 

adduser minio-user
addgroup minio-user

Create at least 2 data volumes on each server#

Create 2 folders on each server:

mkdir -p /srv/minio/{1,2}
chown -R minio-user:minio-user /srv/minio

Setup hosts files#

Edit /etc/hosts of all servers

ip-minio-1     minio1
ip-minio-2     minio2
ip-minio-3     minio3

installation#

Example for DEB packages

wget https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/linux-amd64/minio_20220607003341.0.0_amd64.deb
wget https://dl.min.io/client/mc/release/linux-amd64/mcli_20220509040826.0.0_amd64.deb
dpkg -i minio_20220607003341.0.0_amd64.deb
dpkg -i mcli_20220509040826.0.0_amd64.deb

Visit https://dl.min.io/ to find last version of required packages.

Configuration#

Create or edit file /etc/default/minio

/etc/default/minio
MINIO_OPTS="--address :9100 --console-address :9001"
MINIO_VOLUMES="http://minio{1...3}:9100/srv/minio/{1...2}"
MINIO_ROOT_USER=thehive
MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD=password
MINIO_SITE_REGION="us-east-1"

Enable and start the service#

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

Prepare the service for TheHive#

Following operations should be performed once all servers are up and running. A new server CAN NOT be added afterward.
Connect using the access key and secret key to one server with your browser on port 9100: http://minio:9100

Create a bucket named thehive

The bucket should be created and available on all your servers.

TheHive associated configuration#

For each TheHive node of the cluster, add the relevant storage configuration. Example for the first node:

/etc/thehive/application.conf
storage {
  provider: s3
  s3 {
    bucket = "thehive"
    readTimeout = 1 minute
    writeTimeout = 1 minute
    chunkSize = 1 MB
    endpoint = "http://<IP_MINIO_1>:9100"
    accessKey = "thehive"
    secretKey = "password"
    region = "us-east-1"
  }
}
alpakka.s3.access-style = path
/etc/thehive/application.conf
storage {
  provider: s3
  s3 {
    bucket = "thehive"
    readTimeout = 1 minute
    writeTimeout = 1 minute
    chunkSize = 1 MB
    endpoint = "http://<IP_MINIO_1>:9100"
    accessKey = "thehive"
    aws.credentials.provider = "static"
    aws.credentials.secret-access-key = "password"
    access-style = path
    aws.region.provider = "static"
    aws.region.default-region = "us-east-1"
  }
}

The configuration is backward compatible

Each TheHive server can connect to one MinIO server.