FlagTheCapture presents a quick guide to setting up your own Splunk server.
What is Splunk?
Splunk is a web-based, data processing app. With Splunk, you can search, analyze, and visualize data. Any data. From network traffic, to web server logs, to housing prices.
Splunk has recently become popular with Cybersecurity enthusiasts because it simplifies many tasks, like finding trends in data, spotting anomalous events, and presenting findings in a way that’s visually appealing and meaningful for non-technical users.
Splunk is a web-based, data processing app. With Splunk, you can search, analyze, and visualize data. Any data. From network traffic, to web server logs, to housing prices.
Splunk has recently become popular with Cybersecurity enthusiasts because it simplifies many tasks, like finding trends in data, spotting anomalous events, and presenting findings in a way that’s visually appealing and meaningful for non-technical users.
It’s used by many top security teams to monitor the activities across their network.
Singapore Housing Dashboard created by Mark Bosco
Here’s how you can get your personal instance of Splunk running, in time for your next CTF competition.
- Go to https://www.splunk.com/.
- Click on “Free Splunk”. Sign up for a new account, or log in if you already have a Splunk account.
- Go to https://www.splunk.com/en_us/download/splunk-enterprise.html.
- Depending on the machine you want to install Splunk on, download either the Windows or Linux installer.
- On the machine that you want to use as the Splunk Server, start the installation process.
- Take note of the administrator account credentials that you key in here.
- Once installation is complete, open a web browser on the Splunk machine and go to http://localhost:8000. Log in with administrator credentials.
- Your Splunk instance is ready for use.
What’s next?
Pro Tips for your new Splunk installation
- Access Splunk from another device. Get another device on the same network, and use a web browser to visit your Splunk server’s IP address. Don’t forget to add port 8000 to the end of the URL. Yes, you can use Splunk from your mobile phone too.
- Feed your Splunk instance some data. You can download official Splunk training datasets at https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/SearchTutorial/Systemrequirements#Download_the_tutorial_data_files.
- Grab some fancy add-ons. The Splunk community has created many interesting and fun apps that extend Splunk’s functionality, from animated charts to special integrations with hardware firewalls. You will need a Splunk web account to download add-ons.
