Copyright 2018-2019 Crown Copyright
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
Logging Made Easy is a self-install tutorial for small organisations to gain a basic level of centralised security logging for Windows clients and provide functionality to detect attacks. It's the coming together of multiple free and open-source software, where LME helps the reader integrate them together to produce an end-to-end logging capability. We also provide some pre-made configuration files and scripts, although there is the option to do it on your own.
Logging Made Easy can:
- Tell you about software patch levels on enrolled devices
- Show where administrative commands are being run on enrolled devices
- See who is using which machine
- In conjunction with threat reports, it is possible to query for the presence of an attacker in the form of Tools, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs)
LME is currently in early development, and as such we are marking it as Alpha.
This is not a professional tool, and should not be used as a SIEM.
LME is a 'homebrew' way of gathering logs and querying for attacks.
We have done the hard work to make things simple. We will tell you what to download, which configurations to use and have created convenience scripts to auto-configure wherever possible.
The current architecture is based upon Windows Clients, Microsoft Sysmon, Windows Event Forwarding and the ELK stack.
We are not able to comment on or troubleshoot individual installations, If you believe you have have found an issue with the LME code or documentation please submit a GitHub issue.
From one man bands with a handful devices to look after, through to organisations with approximately 250 devices.
LME is for you if:
- You don’t have a SOC, SIEM or any monitoring in place at the moment
- You lack the budget, time or understanding to set up your own logging system
- You recognise the need to begin gathering logs and monitoring your IT.
- You understand the LME has limitations, and is better than nothing - but no match for a professional tool.
If any, or all, of these criteria fit, then LME is a step in the right direction for you
LME could also be useful for:
- Small isolated networks where corporate monitoring doesn’t reach
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is a UK Government department with the mission of:
"Helping to make the UK the safest place to live and work online."
..more can be found on www.ncsc.gov.uk.
We recognise the importance of gathering the right logs for security monitoring and post incident purposes, but we also recognise the pressures that face organisations. Budgets, deadlines and expertise. By producing LME we are attempting to reduce the barrier to entry for small organisations who don’t know where to start. LME may not be a fully-featured professional offering, but a step in the right direction that will make a difference in a cyber incident scenario.
Although in it’s infancy, we are hoping that LME will help organisations to make themselves more secure now and encourage better security monitoring in the future.
Prerequisites - Start deployment here
Chapter 1 - Set up Windows Event Forwarding
Chapter 3A – Database (Easy Method)
Chapter 3B – Database (Manual Method)
Chapter 4 - Post Install Actions
- Shane M, NCSC Technical Lead.
- Lucy A, David L and Oli T, Cabinet Office Government Security Group, funding and project management.
- Adam B, NCSC, Customer Liaison / Developer.
- Duncan A, NCC Group, Lead Developer.
- Harry G and Alfie T, NCSC, creating visualisations.
These organisations spent time trialing earlier versions of LME which was critical to development and publication.
- Diane L at Ofqual
- Gavin M at Creative Scotland
- Carol P and Andy M at Renfrewshire Council
- Chris B and Andrew H at Cardiff Council
- Julian D and the team at Companies House
- Martin O at TeamGB
- The NCSC CAPRI team
- David C
- Roberto Rodriguez (@Cyb3rWard0g and @THE_HELK) provided guidance and authored HELK (similar to LME but more featured) HELK on Github
- Carl Morris sharing experiences behind his 44Con presentation
- SwiftOnSecurity for creating an open-source Sysmon configuration which we refer to.
- Jessica Payne acknowledging her WEFFLES blog highlighting what's possible with in-built Windows functionality.
- Ryan Watson and Syspanda from which the Sysmon install script was adapted from.
- Sysmon from the Sysinternals team at Microsoft.
- Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana and Winlogbeat from Elastic.co and their github
- Docker Community Edition