3. Installation

3.1. Requirements

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

Other OS (Linux or macOS) are not supported.

3.1.1. 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

3.1.2. 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:\aurora\aurora-agent-64.exe
C:\aurora\aurora-agent.exe

3.2. Quick Start

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

  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

C:\aurora>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

C:\aurora>aurora-agent.exe --status
C:\aurora>aurora-agent.exe --status --trace

3.3. Manual installation

3.3.1. Install Aurora

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

C:\aurora>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 sub-folders 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:

C:\aurora>aurora-agent.exe --install -c agent-config-reduced.yml

3.3.2. Custom Settings

Adding your own Sigma rules or IOCs is described in chapter Custom Signatures and IOCs. 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

C:\aurora>aurora-agent.exe --install --activate-responses

3.3.3. Uninstall Aurora

To uninstall the agent simply run the following command:

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

If the uninstaller fails due to unknown errors, you can uninstall Aurora manually with these commands (Run from an administrative shell)

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

3.4. 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.