Configure Invicti for Linux on AWS (Ubuntu)
Invicti Enterprise can be configured to run scanner agents on Amazon Web Services (AWS). When you launch a new scan, Invicti Enterprise creates a new Linux instance for the target scan and terminates it automatically once the scan is completed.
This document explains how to configure Invicti Enterprise for Linux on AWS to run scanner agents. For more information about using cloud providers with Invicti Enterprise, refer to the cloud provider settings document.
There are 7 steps to this process:
- Step 1: Select a region
- Step 2: Create S3 buckets
- Step 3: Create IAM users and policies
- Step 4: Create an AMI for the scanner agent
- Step 5: Configure Invicti Enterprise
- Step 6: Update the scanner agent
- Step 7: Update Mono
Step 1: Select a region
Invicti Enterprise uses AWS S3 buckets for object storage and EC2 service for launching new instances.
For information on how to select a region, refer to Amazon's EMR documentation.
S3 and EC2 resources need to be in the same AWS region. Choose an AWS region and create all resources in that same region.
Step 2: Create S3 buckets
Invicti Enterprise needs three different buckets to store scan data. Follow the following steps to create S3 buckets.
- Open the AWS console and navigate to the S3 service.
- Create 3 buckets. One for raw scan data, one for screenshots, and one for customizations. These bucket names could be used:
exampleinc.ne.scandata(for raw scan data)exampleinc.ne.scanscreenshots(for form authentication screenshots)exampleinc.ne.customizations(for customizations)
You can apply the following precautions to harden your buckets.
- Enable Encryption: Amazon provides a default encryption service or you can use your own keys. For more information, refer to Amazon S3 default encryption for S3 buckets.
- Monitoring and Auditing: Amazon provides ways to monitor and audit S3 buckets. For more information, refer to Amazon S3 Monitoring and Auditing Best Practices.
Step 3: Create IAM users and policies
During this step, you need to:
- Create an access policy for the web application
- Create an access policy for the scanner agent
- Create a user for the web application
- Create a user for the scanner agent
Create an access policy for the web application
- In the AWS console, navigate to the IAM service.
- Select Policies.
- Click Create Your Own Policy.
- Enter a policy name (for example,
NEWebAppPolicy). - Enter your bucket names in the following policy template code and paste it into the Policy Document field.
{
"Statement": [
{
"Action": [
"s3:*"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.scandata/*",
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.scanscreenshots/*",
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.customizations/*"
]
},
{
"Action": [
"ec2:CreateTags",
"ec2:DeleteTags",
"ec2:DescribeInstances",
"ec2:RunInstances",
"ec2:TerminateInstances"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": "*"
}
],
"Version": "2012-10-17"
}
- Click Create Policy.
Create an access policy for the scanner agent
- Select Policies.
- Click Create Your Own Policy.
- Enter a policy name for scanner agent (for example,
NEAgentPolicy). - Enter your bucket names into the following policy template code, and paste it into the Policy Document field.
{
"Statement": [
{
"Action": [
"s3:DeleteObject",
"s3:PutObject"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.scandata/*",
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.scanscreenshots/*"
]
},
{
"Action": [
"s3:ListBucket"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.customizations",
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.scandata",
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.scanscreenshots"
]
},
{
"Action": [
"s3:GetObject"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.customizations/*",
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.scandata/*",
"arn:aws:s3:::exampleinc.ne.scanscreenshots/*"
]
}
],
"Version": "2012-10-17"
}
- Click Create Policy.
Create a user for the web application
- Select Users.
- Click Add User.
- Enter a user name (for example,
NEWebApp). - After creating the user, select Permissions.
- Select Attach policies directly and use the Customer managed filter.
- Select the previously created web app policy (for example,
NEWebAppPolicy). - Click Attach existing policies directly.

- Click Next to create the web app user.
- To create your Access Keys, select the
NEWebappuser from the IAM page. - Open the Security credentials tab, scroll down to Access Keys, and select the Application running on an AWS compute service option.

- Copy those into your notes for the cloud provider settings
Create a user for the scanner agent
- Click Users.
- Click Add User.
- Enter a user name (for example,
NEAgent). - After creating the user, select Permissions.
- Select Attach policies directly and use the Customer managed filter.
- Select the previously created web app policy (for example,
NEAgentPolicy). - Click Attach existing policies directly.

- Click Next to create the NEAgent user.
- Select the
NEAgentuser from the IAM page to create your Access Keys. - Select Security, scroll down to Access Keys, then select the Application running on on an AWS compute service option.

- Copy those into your notes for the cloud provider settings.
Step 4: Create an AMI for the scanner agent
There are three steps to this process:
- Launch an instance for the scanner agent
- Configure the scanner agent instance
- Create a scanner agent image
Launch an instance for a scanner agent
- Navigate to the EC2 service.
- From the main menu, select Instances.
- Select Launch Instance.
- Choose Ubuntu instance base as the AMI.
- Select Choose Instance Type and choose an Instance Type (
c4.largeis recommended). - Select Configure Instance.
- Set the Auto-assign Public IP drop-down to Enable. (This is needed for RDP connections.)

- Select Next: Add Storage and set the Disk Size (a minimum of 30 GB is recommended).
- Select Next: Add Tags.
- Select Next: Configure Security Group.
- Select Review and Launch.
Configure a scanner agent instance
You need to install the Invicti Scanner Agent on the target EC2 instance. There are three steps to install the agent on your Ubuntu instance.
- Scanner agent instance configuration
- Set up agent as a Linux service
- Add a unit file for an Invicti agent
Scanner agent instance configuration
- Navigate to the EC2 service.
- Select Instances from the main menu.
- Right-click the previously launched scanner agent instance, and select Connect.

- Connect to your instance with the supplied RDP information.
- Ensure that you can connect to your on-premises Invicti Enterprise web application from this instance.
- Update the following operating system application repositories:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y - Install the following dependent packages:
sudo apt-get install p7zip-full sudo apt install -y wget gss-ntlmssp nano mono-complete apt-transport-https
Ensure your Mono version is version 5.20 or preceding. For more information, refer to the step 7: Update Mono section.
- Create a folder for Netsparker Scanner dependency:
sudo mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/.local/share/Netsparker_Ltd sudo chown -R ubuntu /home/ubuntu/.local/share/Netsparker_Ltd
- Install the Headless Chrome browser dependencies:
sudo apt install -y gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libatk-bridge2.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1
- Next, extract the TAR file:
- Download
invicti-agent-release-onpremises-2.3.0.0.taronto your Linux instance. - To extract the scan agent, run the following commands:
- Download
tar xf invicti-agent-release-onpremises-2.3.0.0.tar chmod +x .local-chromium/Linux-*/chrome-linux/chrome
IMPORTANT: you must change the agent folder name to invicti-agent after extracting the invicti-agent-release-onpremises-2.3.0.0.tar.
-
Open the
appsettings.jsonfile to enter the necessary information, such asApiToken:sudo nano appsettings.json -
You need to configure the
AgentInfosection of theappsetting.jsonfile in the following way:
- AgentName: This must be
invicti-agent - AgentType: Navigate to the
AgentInfosection and setagentTypetoCloud. - ApiToken: In Invicti Enterprise on-premises, the Agent Token is displayed on the Configure New Agent page. Copy the value into the
apiToken. - ApiRootUrl: This is the URL of Invicti Enterprise on-premises.
Set up an agent as a Linux service
A cloud agent should be configured as a Linux service so that it can poll the Invicti Enterprise servers regularly and can take the scan initiation command from the server.
Add a unit file for an Invicti agent
- Open a terminal
cd /etc/systemd/systemsudo touch invicti-agent.servicesudo nano invicti-agent.service
The AgentName in the appsetting.json file, the unit filename for the agent, and the agent folder name must be the same. This is required to start the scan agent as a Linux service.
- Add the following script into
invicti-agent.service:
[Unit]
Description=netsparker.service description
[Service]
Type=notify
KillMode=process
Restart=always
RestartSec=30
SyslogIdentifier= ubuntu
KillSignal=SIGINT
User=[YOUR_USER]
WorkingDirectory= [YOUR_AGENT_DIRECTORY_PATH]
ExecStart= /home/ubuntu/Netsparker.Cloud.Agent
ExecStop=/usr/bin/pkill -f /home/ubuntu/Nhs/NetsparkerHelperService.exe
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
- Save and close the document.
Next, you need to create an AMI that is used as a base image for new scans.
Create a scanner agent image
- Open the EC2 instances page on the AWS console.
- Select the EC2 instance and from the Actions menu click Instance State > Stop/ Wait for the agent instance to be stopped.
- Once the agent instance has stopped, right-click it, and click Create Image. Enter a name for your image and click Create Image.

- Navigate to the AMIs page and save your AMI ID (you need it later).
Step 5: Configure Invicti Enterprise
Follow these steps to configure Invicti Enterprise AWS settings.
- Create an RDP connection to your Invicti Enterprise web application server.
- Log in to Invicti Enterprise.
- Select Settings > Cloud Provider from the left-side menu.
- Enter your AWS settings.
- The settings for the Instance Type, Subnet ID, and Key Pair Name are in your stopped instance’s details in AWS.
- Click Security Group to get the Security Group id (for example,
sg-abc3fec2).
- You can now run new scans on your AWS environment.
Step 6: Update the scanner agent
Next, you need to update the scanner agent.
- In the AWS EC2 console, open the AMI page. Right-click your current scanner agent’s AMI and launch an instance.
- Once your scanner agent instance is ready, make an RDP connection to it.
- Download the Invicti Enterprise installation bundle. After downloading and extracting the
invicti-agent-release-onpremises-2.3.0.0.tarfile, configure your scanner agent instance as described in Scanner agent instance configuration. - Next, log in to Invicti Enterprise.
- From the main menu, select Settings > Cloud Provider Settings.
- Enter your new AMI and click Save.
Step 7: Update Mono
You need to update Mono so that the Netsparker Helper Service can work properly. You can update Mono as specified in the following steps:
For Ubuntu 18.04:
sudo apt install gnupg ca-certificatessudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EFecho "deb https://download.mono-project.com/repo/ubuntu stable-bionic/snapshots/5.20 main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-official-stable.listsudo apt updatesudo apt install mono-runtime
Need help?
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