Seth Grover1d ago

Malcolm v26.05.0 delivers a mix of feature improvements, performance improvements, bug fixes, dependency updates, and deployment refinements across Malcolm and Hedgehog for both Docker- and Kubernetes-based workflows.

If you are upgrading from an existing Malcolm installation, run ./scripts/status for Malcolm to migrate some settings prior to running ./scripts/configure, ./scripts/start, or other Malcolm control scripts.

https://github.com/idaholab/Malcolm/compare/v26.04.1...v26.05.0

  • ✨ Features and enhancements
    • #726 — use hierarchical structure for NetBox device roles
      • Expanded/reworked NetBox preloaded device roles into a hierarchical taxonomy (thanks Crubumble)
    • #867 — examine large chown'ed directories in container images and see if they can be reduced
    • #954 — allow users to provide custom netbox scripts to be automatically registered on startup (thanks PrudhviChanda)
      • Added NetBox custom script support in the container/runtime and docs, including bind-mounting ./netbox/custom-scripts and automatic script registration at startup
      • Renamed NetBox startup/control scripts from netbox/scripts to netbox/control-scripts
    • Added file.strings extraction/indexing/search support across Strelka → Logstash → OpenSearch templates (wildcard field mapping type) → Arkime/WISE
    • Added configurable Zeek file analyzer timeout via ZEEK_FILE_ANALYZER_TIMEOUT_SEC
    • netdev users in ISO-installed environment can run nmcli and nmtui to configure network interfaces.
    • the malcolm_appliance_packager.sh script that creates a tarball of Malcolm images can now package for both Malcolm and Hedgehog profiles.
  • ✅ Component version updates
  • 🐛 Bug fixes
    • #757 — multiple OpenSearch nodes (using Malcolm-Helm) fail to communicate with each other due to self-signed certs (thanks scott-jeffery)
      • OpenSearch post-start setup now supports configurable default replica counts instead of always forcing single-node replicas to 0
      • OpenSearch self-signed internal cert generation can now be skipped when external/preexisting certs are being used
    • #827 — Fix raspberry pi build which is broken since v25.12.0 Hedgehog/Malcolm platform unification
      • Updated Hedgehog Raspberry Pi docs and first-boot behavior/documentation
      • Hedgehog Raspberry Pi image now forces password change for sensor on first login and disables direct root password login by default
      • Refactored Raspberry Pi GitHub Actions build into reusable workflow .github/workflows/raspi-build-push.yml
    • #878 — Arkime capture Fails to Start on Hedgehog When WISE Web Config Is Enabled
      • Arkime RBAC role-mapping injection is now only applied when role-based access control is enabled
      • Arkime WISE configuration initialization now handles missing/empty persistent config files more robustly
      • Arkime live capture now normalizes WISE URLs better, follows redirects when probing, and avoids some bad URL construction edge cases
    • #957 — configuration script can disable ICS parsers unintentionally
    • #959 — Arkime sessions view attempts to load PCAP for Zeek and Suricata logs (which don't have PCAP) (see also arkime/arkime#3934)
    • Fixed one-off cleanup of interrupted Zeek intel files during stop --wipe
  • 🧹 Code and project maintenance
    • Documentation improvements
    • #913 — replace ingress-nginx which is EOL
      • Switched Kubernetes ingress example/docs from ingress-nginx to Traefik and replaced the old Vagrant example with a new RKE2/Traefik-based environment
      • Fixed malformed indentation in kubernetes/01-volumes-nfs.yml.example for the filescan volume section
      • Removed deprecated Kubernetes example files for ingress-nginx and the old separate NFS-server Vagrant setup
      • opensearch is no longer part of the hedgehog Docker Compose profile, and some depends_on relationships were adjusted accordingly
    • #942 - Fixed mutable default argument usage in Zeek threat feed helper functions (thanks @stef41)
    • #917 — develop IronBank (US DoD) images for Malcolm
  • 📄 Configuration changes for Malcolm (in environment variables in ./config/). The Malcolm control script (e.g., ./scripts/status, ./scripts/start) automatically handles creation and migration of variables according to ./config/env-var-actions.yml.
    • Added ZEEK_FILE_ANALYZER_TIMEOUT_SEC (default 5) to zeek.env. This is the default amount of time a file can be inactive before the file analysis gives up and discards any internal state related to the file.
    • ZEEK_CLUSTER_BACKEND can be specified in zeek.env to specify the Zeek cluster backend (ZeroMQ vs Broker).
  • ❌ Errata
    • Under NetBox → Plugins → NetBox HealthCheck Plugin → HealthCheck the error "unavailable: Unable to connect to Redis: Connection Error" is displayed. This is a side effect of #882 and does not actually indicate a problem with NetBox or its connection to Valkey. This will be fixed in the next release.

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #Strelka #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL

Seth GroverApr 15

Malcolm v26.04.1 contains improvements, bug fixes, security updates, and component bumps.

If you are upgrading from an existing Malcolm installation, run ./scripts/status for Malcolm to migrate some settings prior to running ./scripts/configure, ./scripts/start, or other Malcolm control scripts.

v26.02.0...v26.04.1

Note that v26.04.1 is the same as v26.04.0 released last week, apart from the fix for bug #943. If you're already running v26.04.0 and don't use the encrypted install option in the installer ISO, you probably don't need to worry about updating to v26.04.1. The full release notes from v26.04.0 are also included here.

  • ✨ Features and enhancements
    • implemented easier way to enable/disable Strelka scanners #935
    • Handle nested file scanning (e.g., from ZIP files) with Strelka #922
    • index selected Strelka result fields #919
  • ✅ Component version updates
  • 🐛 Bug fixes
    • Hedgehog Linux Breaking on Reboot after Encrypted Quick Install with Multiple Drives #943
    • Fix YAML syntax error in kubernetes/15-redis.yml due to missing end quote #926
    • Using remote elasticsearch data store uses deprecated ssl_certificate_verification setting [https://github.com/cisagov/Malcolm/issues/915]
    • fix Malcolm API loopback webhook to handle RBAC and non-JSON formatted events #916
    • fix issues in zeekdeploy.sh to handle long crypto handshakes and Zeek's state DB getting out of sync
  • 🧹 Code and project maintenance
    • swap redis out for valkey #882
    • pin all third-party GitHub CI actions at known good SHA sums to mitigate things like the Trivy supply chain attack #933
    • some minor tweaks to various Dockerfiles and ISO build scripts to address vulnerability scanner findings
    • some documentation updates
  • 📄 Configuration changes for Malcolm (in environment variables in ./config/). The Malcolm control script (e.g., ./scripts/status, ./scripts/start) automatically handles creation and migration of variables according to ./config/env-var-actions.yml.
    • Added ARKIME_PCAP_LIBPCAP to arkime.env should uses wish to revert to older libpcap mode for PCAP file processing rather than faster scheme processing (default false)
    • FILEBEAT_SCANNER_FINGERPRINT_LENGTH's default in filescan.env has been changed from 1024 to 512
    • redis.env has been renamed to valkey.env and its variables also have been renamed accordingly
    • STRELKA_SCANNERS has been added to pipeline.env for #935
    • ZEEK_DISABLE_SPICY_ZIP has been added to zeek.env for #922 (default true)

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #Strelka #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL

Seth GroverDec 18

Malcolm v25.12.1 contains a few critical bug fixes and component version updates.

https://github.com/idaholab/Malcolm/compare/v25.12.0...v25.12.1

  • ✨ Features and enhancements
    • Installer splash screen shows "HEDGEHOG" when using Hedgehog run profile
  • ✅ Component version updates
  • 🐛 Bug fixes
    • Changed field used in Threat Intelligence dashboard's file type table from zeek.intel.file_mime_type to file.mime_type so filters created from it can work on other dashboards
    • link for threat intelligence URL doesn't work correctly from dashboards (behind reverse proxy) (#832)
    • self-signed certificates not accepted by Chrome (#833)
    • Malcolm ISO installer's automatic partitioning may create too-small /var partition (#835)
  • 🧹 Code and project maintenance

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL

Seth GroverNov 4, 2025

Malcolm v25.11.0 includes an overhaul of the install.py installation/configuration script, a few bug fixes, and some component version updates.

https://github.com/idaholab/Malcolm/compare/v25.09.0...v25.11.0

  • ✨ Features and enhancements
    • We're in the process of majorly overhauling our install.py script (#395) used for setting up a Linux or MacOS system to run Malcolm and for configuring Malcolm's runtime options. There are future updates still to come (#766) but for now the command-line and dialog-based interfaces' functionality and backend are in place. The step-by-step wizard has been replaced with a menu-based interface that allows for changing individual values without having to step through the whole set of questions. The Docker-based Malcolm installation example on Ubuntu and end-to-end installation example have useful information about this change, as does the command-line arguments document. We've done a lot of testing on what's a complete rewrite of this, but there is a possibility we missed something; if you find an issue with the new install/configure script, please open a discussion or log a bug and let us know. For the next release or so, we're leaving the legacy installer in place as scripts/legacy_install.py which could be used in a pinch (e.g., run scripts/legacy_install.py --configure for the old configuration menu).
    • We've incorporated a new "Connections Tree" visualization. This visualization tracks the potential of lateral movement based on the observed communications between all devices that reach a root node, identified by IP address. It gives a high-level view showing both direct and indirect connetions between the root IP and all of its destinations, regardless of time, along with enriched data for each endpoint and connection.
    • Updates to the Validated Design Architecture Review (VADR) dashboards.
    • The OpenSearch container now includes the repository-s3 plugin, useful for those who wish to configure OpenSearch's snapshots to save to S3-compatible buckets.
  • ✅ Component version updates
  • 🐛 Bug fixes
    • Double imports when restarting Malcolm (#588) (thanks @KchChr)
  • 🧹 Code and project maintenance
    • Refactored a number of Python functions to reduce cyclomatic complexity (#765, work ongoing)
  • 📄 Configuration changes (in environment variables in ./config/) for Malcolm and in control_vars.conf for Hedgehog Linux. The Malcolm control script (e.g., ./scripts/status, ./scripts/start, etc.) should take care of creating new variables and migrating existing ones as needed based on the rules in ./config/env-var-actions.yml without intervention on the user's part.
    • Malcolm
      • NGINX_RESOLVER_IPV4_OFF and NGINX_RESOLVER_IPV6_OFF have been renamed to NGINX_RESOLVER_IPV4 and NGINX_RESOLVER_IPV6, respectively, and their logic reversed, in nginx.env.

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL

Seth GroverSep 24, 2025

Malcolm v25.09.0 includes new features and available customizations, improvements to Threat Intelligence, component version updates, and several important bug fixes.

https://github.com/idaholab/Malcolm/compare/v25.08.1...v25.09.0

  • ✨ Features and enhancements
    • improve Modbus register tracking with new modbus_detailed.log (cisagov/Malcolm#762)
    • add non-LVM option(s) for Malcolm/Hedgehog Linux ISO installers (cisagov/Malcolm#725)
    • allow configuring default search time frame for OpenSearch Dashboards (cisagov/Malcolm#724)
    • allow customizing maximum upload file size (cisagov/Malcolm#769)
    • add Arkime capture statistics to the Packet Capture Statistics dashboard (cisagov/Malcolm#703)
    • integrate Validated Architecture Design Review (VADR) dashboards (cisagov/Malcolm#780)
    • Threat Intelligence improvements
      • support Google Threat Intelligence feed for building Zeek intel source (cisagov/Malcolm#758)
      • renamed Zeek Intelligence dashboard to Threat Intelligence and improved it
      • links from context menu items in Arkime and Dashboards (like reference URLs for IOCs) now ask the user before navigating to external sites
    • Added icons with links to "ready" and "ingest statistics" APIs to landing page
    • Include tx-rx-secure.sh in files packaged by malcolm_appliance_packager.sh
  • ✅ Component version updates
  • 🐛 Bug fixes
    • Python code handling X-Forwarded- headers should do case insensitive lookup (cisagov/Malcolm#764)
    • uploaded PCAPs that result in no filename-derived tags erroneously end up with internal tags on them (cisagov/Malcolm#774)
    • installer option for encrypted storage are not marking secondary data/artifact storage for encryption (cisagov/Malcolm#779)
    • Malcolm/Hedgehog Linux ISO-installed environments' auditd service fails to start (cisagov/Malcolm#761)
    • Failed shard query error on Overview dashboard (cisagov/Malcolm#754)
  • 🧹 Code and project maintenance
    • refactor GitHub build actions for Malcolm Docker images to reduce duplication (cisagov/Malcolm#717)
  • 📄 Configuration changes (in environment variables in ./config/) for Malcolm and in control_vars.conf for Hedgehog Linux. The Malcolm control script (e.g., ./scripts/status, ./scripts/start, etc.) should take care of creating new variables and migrating existing ones as needed based on the rules in ./config/env-var-actions.yml.
    • Malcolm
      • PCAP_UPLOAD_MAX_FILE_GB added to upload-common.env to allow configuring maximum PCAP upload size (cisagov/Malcolm#769)
      • DASHBOARDS_TIMEPICKER_FROM and DASHBOARDS_TIMEPICKER_TO added to dashboards-helper.env to allow configuring default search time frame for OpenSearch Dashboards (cisagov/Malcolm#724)

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL

Release Malcolm v25.09.0 · idaholab/Malcolm

Malcolm v25.09.0 includes new features and available customizations, improvements to Threat Intelligence, component version updates, and several important bug fixes. v25.08.1...v25.09.0 ✨ Features...

GitHub
Seth GroverJul 30, 2025

Malcolm v25.07.0 includes quite a few new features and enhancements, performance improvements, bug fixes, and component version updates.

If you are updating from a version older than v25.06.0, please read those release notes prior to updating to this version.

  • ✨ Features and enhancements
    • Add IANA service name and description enrichment to Zeek's known_services.log (#705)
    • Improve the speed of pruning files (#710)
    • allow multiple instance of Suricata in PCAP processing mode via UNIX socket (#707)
    • expose Arkime WISE tagging features to the user (#377)
    • handle comma- or semicolon-separated directories for PCAP_PROCESSED_DIRECTORY (to support new live PCAP processing method in Malcolm-Helm) (#702)
    • handle new OPCUA Binary summary logs (#709)
    • incorporate new ANSI C12.22 parser and add corresponding dashboard (#708)
    • overhauled instructions for Deploying Malcolm on Amazon Web Services (AWS) including deploying Malcolm on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) in Auto Mode
    • install.py script is now a bit more robust in trying to help ensure the correct packages and Python libraries are installed
  • ✅ Component version updates
    • Fluent Bit to v4.0.5
    • Arkime v5.7.1
    • Supercronic v0.2.34
    • OpenSearch and OpenSearch Dashboards v3.1.0
    • Keycloak v26.2.5
    • yq v4.47.1
    • NetBox v4.3.4
      • NetBox Initializers plugin v4.3.0
      • NetBox Topology Views plugin v4.3.0
    • Zeek v7.2.2
    • Spicy v1.13.2
    • urllib3 Python Library to v2.5.0 (addresses CVE-2025-50181)
    • ICSNPP Zeek network analyzer updates
      • BACnet parser fixes for previously unsupported services (see cisagov/icsnpp-bacnet#50 and cisagov/icsnpp-bacnet#51)
      • Ethernet/IP various fixes (cisagov/icsnpp-enip#34 (partial); cisagov/icsnpp-enip#35; cisagov/icsnpp-enip#36; cisagov/icsnpp-enip#37; cisagov/icsnpp-enip#38)
      • GENISYS minor updates (cisagov/icsnpp-genisys#25)
      • OPCUA Binary summary logs (cisagov/icsnpp-opcua-binary#102)
      • S7comm fixes for ACK message processing (cisagov/icsnpp-s7comm#19; cisagov/icsnpp-s7comm#20)
  • 🐛 Bug fixes
    • zeek logs not cleaned by clean-processed-folder.py due to MIME type mismatch (#712)
    • packet capture statistics dashboard not working in Kibana (#704)
    • need to adjust shared object creation script (e.g., dashboards import) for new versions of Kibana (#713)
    • log fingerprinting needs to be examined to avoid unintentional collisions (#715)
    • install.py issues in Rocky Linux, Almalinux (#385)
    • OpenSearch container health check issue when OpenSearch is disabled (#716)
    • investigate NetBox API access via Malcolm's netbox endpoint and mapi endpoint (#701)

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL #DHS #CISA #CISAgov

Seth GroverJun 23, 2025

Malcolm v25.06.0 includes a some new and oft-requested features, bug fixes, and component version bumps.

Compare v25.05.0 to v25.06.0

NOTE: As this Malcolm release enables the OpenSearch Security Plugin as described below, even inter-container access to OpenSearch must now be authenticated when using Malcolm's embedded OpenSearch instance. To accomplish this, an internal-use-only account and password is used for connecting to OpenSearch by Malcolm's other components as needed. This credential (saved in .opensearch.primary.curlrc in the Malcolm installation directory) needs to be generated before Malcolm starts up the first time after upgrading. To do so, please run ./scripts/auth_setup and select (Re)generate internal passwords for local primary OpenSearch instance. This credential is only used internally for OpenSearch and cannot be used to remotely access Malcolm.

  • ✨ Features and enhancements
    • This release adds role-based access control (RBAC) to Malcolm (cisagov/Malcolm#460).
      • Malcolm's RBAC feature is based on Keycloak realm roles and is implemented in to layers:
      • Whenever possible, Malcolm's backend Keycloak realm roles are mapped to the roles/groups/permissions features provided by the components that make up Malcolm (see release notes for details)
      • For other Malcolm components that don't implement their own permission management systems, Malcolm handles the enforcement roles based on request URIs in its NGINX proxy layer.
      • This is an optional feature. RBAC is only available when the authentication method is keycloak or keycloak_remote. With other authentication methods such as HTTP basic or LDAP, or when RBAC is disabled, all Malcolm users effectively have administrator privileges.
      • Because the OpenSearch Security Plugin requires TLS even internally, Malcolm's internal connections to the embedded OpenSearch instance, when used, are now all performed over HTTPS. However, this is all handled internally and should not behave or appear different to the user than it did in previous versions.
      • See the role-based access control documentation for more information on this feature.
    • Malcolm's embedded KeyCloak instance now automatically creates and configures the default client by ID, if specified in ./config/keycloak.env.
    • Allow user to specify subnet filters for NetBox autopopulation (cisagov/Malcolm#634)
      • This feature is especially useful for excluding dynamic address ranges such as those used by DHCP, which should generally not trigger autopopulation in NetBox. Since these addresses can change frequently and aren't tied to specific devices, including them could result in inaccurate or noisy inventory data. By fine-tuning which private subnets are included or excluded, users can ensure that only meaningful, typically static assignments are autopopulated.
    • Expose init arguments for Arkime's db.pl and also use them for Malcolm's creation of its own index templates (cisagov/Malcolm#692)
    • Extend Zeek's intel.log with additional fields using corelight/ExtendIntel (part 1) (cisagov/Malcolm#502)
      • This integrates the corelight/ExtendIntel plugin into Malcolm internally but does not significantly change how Malcolm presents intel.log to the user. Further work to do so will be continued in cisagov/Malcolm#695.
    • Some internal tweaks to the PCAP processing pipeline that are going to be leveraged by the Malcolm-Helm project (idaholab/Malcolm#630)
    • Handle a fix in the ICSNPP OPCUA-Binary plugin that adds a new sec_token_id field (cisagov/icsnpp-opcua-binary#101)
    • Moved the configuration for Zeek's use of the zeek-kafka plugin to its own file (kafka.zeek) to make it easier to override in Docker using a volume bind mount or in K8s using a configMap.
    • Changed some internal objects used for NetBox enrichment caching from Ruby's Concurrent::Hash to Concurrent::Map for better performance
    • Minor improvements to the icons, shortcuts, and convenience bash functions in the ISO-installed Malcolm desktop environment
    • NGINX now generates a robots.txt file to avoid web crawlers
  • ✅ Component version updates
  • 🐛 Bug fixes
    • NetBox autodiscovery no longer populating host name from DNS, DHCP, NTLM (regression, cisagov/Malcolm#699)
    • documentation served at /readme is trying to pull fonts from use.fontawesome.com (cisagov/Malcolm#694)
    • support fractional gigabytes correctly when generating Arkime's config.ini setting maxFileSizeG from PCAP_ROTATE_MEGABYTES
    • Improved logstash filters that calculate unique hashes used as document IDs for Zeek and Suricata logs to better prevent duplicate logs from being written to the document store
  • 🧹 Code and project maintenance
    • Tweaked some code comments and documentation to bring the cisagov and idaholab repos into harmony.
    • Documentation improvements
    • Removed some unused files and outdated comments

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #rbac #Zeek #Arkime #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL #DHS #CISA #CISAgov

Seth GroverMay 6, 2025

Malcolm v25.04.1 contains new features and improvements, component version updates, bug fixes, and other great stuff.

For these notes, I'm lumping v25.04.0 and v25.04.1 together, as v25.04.1 was released only two days after v25.04.0 in order to update Arkime to v5.6.4 which mitigates newly-discovered remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities.

https://github.com/idaholab/Malcolm/compare/v25.03.1...v25.04.1

  • ✨ Features and enhancements

    • add option to use external NetBox instance (cisagov/Malcolm#597)
    • add -q/--quiet option for start/restart (cisagov/Malcolm#656)
    • handle non-HTTPS arkime case (cisagov/Malcolm#629)

    • lots of improvements to control.py and install.py for Kubernetes deployment

      • improved start/stop/wipe control script behavior
      • allow providing resource requests in manifests via YML file and command-line argument
      ...
      Kubernetes:
      -n, --namespace <string>
      Kubernetes namespace
      --skip-persistent-volume-checks [SKIPPERVOLCHECKS]
      Skip checks for PersistentVolumes/PersistentVolumeClaims in manifests (only for "start" operation with Kubernetes)
      --no-capture-pods [NOCAPTUREPODSSTART]
      Do not deploy pods for traffic live capture/analysis (only for "start" operation with Kubernetes)
      --no-capabilities [NOCAPABILITIES]
      Do not specify modifications to container capabilities (only for "start" operation with Kubernetes)
      --inject-resources [INJECTRESOURCES]
      Inject container resources from kubernetes-container-resources.yml (only for "start" operation with Kubernetes)
      --image-source <string>
      Source for container images (e.g., "ghcr.io/idaholab/malcolm"; only for "start" operation with Kubernetes)
      --image-tag <string> Tag for container images (e.g., "25.04.0"; only for "start" operation with Kubernetes)
      --delete-namespace [DELETENAMESPACE]
      Delete Kubernetes namespace (only for "wipe" operation with Kubernetes)
      ...

    • improvements to Malcolm's vanilla Kubernetes manifests

      • lowered the amount of storage for the persistent volumes in the AWS EFS example
      • replaced name label with app label for deployments in accordance with best practices

    • improve links on landing page for NetBox and auth to accurately reflect what Malcolm is using

    • added more smarts to the NGINX startup script to dynamically set up upstreams that may or may not exist based on enabled or disabled Malcolm features

    • fixed a minor issue in the script setting up Zeek intelligence updates where it would remove its own lockfile

  • ✅ Component version updates

    • Alpine Linux v3.21
    • Arkime v5.6.4 to resolve RCE vulnerabilities, as described below in the #announcements channel on the Arkime slack: * possible to bypass forced expressions for some API calls * direct access to OpenSearch/Elasticsearch could be used to create session documents that hang viewer or have viewer execute code * since Arkime 5.1.0 any arkimeUser user could create OpenSearch/Elasticsearch documents in any index that viewer had access to
    • Keycloak v26.2
    • NetBox v4.2.8
    • netbox-initializers v4.2.0
    • netbox-topology v4.2.1
    • Fluent Bit to v4.0.1

  • 🐛 Bug fixes

    • API tokens created in NetBox still require authentication through NGINX reverse proxy (cisagov/Malcolm#383)
    • adjust Logstash health check so K8s liveness probe doesn't kill it (cisagov/Malcolm#630)
    • be more resilient in zeekctl status checks in zeekdeploy.sh (cisagov/Malcolm#652)
    • in deployments with multiple zeek-live containers, each container's restarting causes the others to restart zeek (cisagov/Malcolm#651)

  • 🧹 Code and project maintenance

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL #DHS #CISA #CISAgov

Release v25.04.1 · idaholab/Malcolm

Malcolm v25.04.1 contains only one change: updating Arkime to v5.6.4 which mitigates newly-discovered remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. v25.04.0...v25.04.1 ✅ Component version updates ...

GitHub
Seth GroverMar 28, 2025

This has been a busy month for Malcolm! I pushed hard to get v25.03.0 out earlier this month, as it contained pretty much just the Keycloak integration one of our partners (and major funding sources) was waiting for. Rather than wait until April for the other stuff that would have gone into the regular end-of-the-month release, I decided to pull those items into this smaller release just a week and a half after the last one.

Malcolm v25.03.1 contains a few enhancements, bug fixes, and several component version updates, including one that addresses a CVE that may affect Hedgehog Linux Kiosk mode and Malcolm's API container.

NOTE: If you have not already upgraded to v25.03.0, read the notes for v25.02.0 and v25.03.0 and follow the Read Before Upgrading instructions on those releases.

Changes in this release

  • ✨ Features and enhancements
    • Incorporate new S7comm device identification log, s7comm_known_devices.log (#622)
    • Display current PCAP, Zeek, and Suricata capture results in Hedgehog Linux Kiosk mode (#566)
    • Keycloak authentication: configurable group or role membership restrictions for login (#633) (see Requiring user groups and realm roles)
    • Mark newly-discovered and uninventoried devices in logs during NetBox enrichment (#573)
    • Added "Apply recommended system tweaks automatically without asking for confirmation?" question to install.py to allow the user to accept changes to sysctl.conf, grub kernel parameters, etc., without having to answer "yes" to each one.
  • ✅ Component version updates
  • 🐛 Bug fixes
    • Fix install.py error when answering yes to "Pull Malcolm images?" with podman (#604)
    • Order of user-provided tags from PCAP upload interface not preserved (#624)
  • 📄 Configuration changes (in environment variables in ./config/) for Malcolm and in control_vars.conf for Hedgehog Linux
  • 🧹 Code and project maintenance
    • Ensure Malcolm's NetBox configuration Python scripts are baked into the image in addition to bind-mounting them in docker-compose.yml at runtime.

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️.

Malcolm operates as a cluster of containers 📦, isolated sandboxes which each serve a dedicated function of the system. This makes Malcolm deployable with frameworks like Docker 🐋, Podman 🦭, and Kubernetes ⎈. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

Alternatively, dedicated official ISO installer images 💿 for Malcolm and Hedgehog Linux 🦔 can be downloaded from Malcolm's releases page on GitHub. Due to limits on individual files in GitHub releases, these ISO files have been split 🪓 into 2GB chunks and can be reassembled with scripts provided for both Bash 🐧 (release_cleaver.sh) and PowerShell 🪟 (release_cleaver.ps1). See Downloading Malcolm - Installer ISOs for instructions.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #SSO #OIDC #Keycloak #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL #DHS #CISA #CISAgov

Release Malcolm v25.03.0 · cisagov/Malcolm

Malcolm v25.03.0 adds authentication via Keycloak and includes a few component version updates. v25.02.0...v25.03.0 Read Before Upgrading As described below, a number of changes were made to envir...

GitHub
Seth GroverMar 19, 2025

Malcolm v25.03.0 adds 🔐 authentication via Keycloak and all that entails: single sign-on (SSO), identity providers, federation of LDAP/Kerberos servers, and more! Malcolm can connect to an existing Keycloak server or it can use its own embedded Keycloak instance. This release also includes a few component version updates.

Please read the release notes from this release and from v25.02.0 for some things to check prior to updating.

Malcolm is a powerful, easily deployable network 🖧 traffic analysis tool suite for network security monitoring 🕵🏻‍♀️. Check out the Quick Start guide for examples on how to get up and running.

As always, join us on the Malcolm discussions board 💬 to engage with the community, or pop some corn 🍿 and watch a video 📼.

#Malcolm #HedgehogLinux #Zeek #Arkime #NetBox #OpenSearch #Elasticsearch #Suricata #SSO #OIDC #Keycloak #PCAP #NetworkTrafficAnalysis #networksecuritymonitoring #OT #ICS #icssecurity #CyberSecurity #Cyber #Infosec #INL #DHS #CISA #CISAgov

Release Malcolm v25.03.0 · cisagov/Malcolm

Malcolm v25.03.0 adds authentication via Keycloak and includes a few component version updates. v25.02.0...v25.03.0 Read Before Upgrading As described below, a number of changes were made to envir...

GitHub