2. Installation

2.1. Requirements

Aurora runs on Windows 7 or newer and requires administrative privileges.

Other OS (Linux or macOS) are not supported.

2.1.1. Supported

  • Windows 7 x86 / x64

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 x64

  • Windows 8.1

  • Windows Server 2012

  • Windows Server 2012 R2

  • Windows 10

  • Windows 11

  • Windows Server 2016

  • Windows Server 2019

  • Windows Server 2022

2.1.2. Define an Antivirus / EDR Exclusion

It is recommended to exclude Aurora from your Antivirus / EDR solution.

Depending on your architecture and whether Aurora was installed or started interactively from a temporary directory, the exclusion paths are:

  1. For an installed Aurora

C:\Program Files\Aurora-Agent\aurora-agent-64.exe
C:\Program Files\Aurora-Agent\aurora-agent.exe

  1. For a interactively started Aurora the path you have used for extraction. For example:

C:\Temp\Aurora\aurora-agent-64.exe
C:\Temp\Aurora\aurora-agent.exe

2.2. Quick Start

  1. Extract the program package into a temporary folder (e.g. C:\aurora-agent)

  2. Make sure to place the *.lic file into the extracted folder

  3. Start a cmd.exe as administrator

  4. Navigate to the extracted folder

  5. Run the following command

aurora-agent.exe --install

  1. Verify that new events arrived in the local "Application" event log (Event Viewer)

  2. Run the following commands to get details on the current status of the agent

aurora-agent.exe --status
aurora-agent.exe --status --trace

2.3. Manual installation

2.3.1. Install Aurora

You can install the agent using the following command line from command line terminal that has been started "As Administrator".

aurora-agent.exe --install

After the installation the agent, configuration files and rules reside in C:\\Program Files\\Aurora Agent\\.

It automatically copies all rule files located in the subfolders signatures\sigma-rules and custom-signatures. The signatures\sigma-rules folder contains the current open source rule set maintained in the Sigma repository. The custom-signatures folder can be used to add your own sigma rules.

Aurora comes with with 4 configuration presets that we encourage you to explore and use:

  • Standard (agent-config-standard.yml)

  • Reduced (agent-config-reduced.yml)

  • Minimal (agent-config-minimal.yml)

  • Intense (agent-config-intense.yml)

The different presets are explained in more detail in the chapter configuration.

An installation that uses the preset named "reduced" would look like this:

aurora-agent.exe --install -c agent-config-reduced.yml

2.3.2. Custom Settings

Adding your own Sigma rules or IOCs is described in chapter custom signatures. The preferred way is to add them to the custom-signatures folder before you install Aurora.

All the flags that you use after --install get written to the configuration file named agent-config.yml in the C:\\Program Files\\Aurora Agent\\ folder and will be used by the service.

A typical command to install Aurora would look like this

aurora-agent.exe --install --activate-responses

2.3.3. Uninstall Aurora

To uninstall the agent simply run the following command:

aurora-agent.exe --uninstall

If the uninstaller fails due to unknown errors, you can uninstall Aurora manually with these commands

sc stop aurora-agent
sc delete aurora-agent
rmdir /s /q "C:\Program Files\Aurora-Agent"
schtasks /Delete /F /TN aurora-agent-program-update
schtasks /Delete /F /TN aurora-agent-signature-update

2.4. Installation using ASGARD

When using ASGARD Management Center, Aurora can be installed using the Service Control tab; see the relevant chapter in the ASGARD manual for details.