Wazuh launches version 4.4 with a suite of new capabilities

Open source security provider Wazuh has launched the latest version of its unified extended detection and response (XDR) and security information and event management (SIEM) platform with a suite of upgraded capabilities.

Wazuh 4.4 adds a string of new features to Wazuh agents and managers, which users deploy on endpoints and servers respectively. These features include support for IPv6 for agent-manager connections, search upgrade to OpenSearch v2.4.1, vulnerability detection for Suse Linux, updates to Linux software composition analysis (SCA) policies, and Azure integrations in Linux agents.

“The 4.4 launch implies that all the packages and images for the version such as the AMI, OVA, and Docker images for the Wazuh central components, and the Windows, macOS, Linux, and other operating systems packages for the Wazuh agent are immediate and publicly available,” said Santiago Bassett, CEO of Wazuh.

Amazon Machine Images, Open Virtualization Appliance, and Docker images are all pre-configured virtual machine images made available by AWS, VMware, and public docker registries to help users download and deploy across various virtualization platforms.

Wazuh’s free and open source managed security platform can be accessed both as an on-premises as well as SaaS-based offering providing detection, incident response, and compliance management capabilities to its customers. The SaaS-based offering is called the Wazuh Cloud.

Upgrade includes support for IPv6

In order to keep up with the networking standards, Wazuh has updated its platform to add the latest internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) support to allow agents to register and connect to managers through an Ipv6 address.

“It means customers can leverage the benefits of the IPv6 protocol with better security and performance in the agent-server communication,” Bassett said. “Connecting through IPv4 is still possible, but now its users can opt to set IPv6 parameters for the connections.”

Wazuh indexer and dashboard have been reworked to run the latest version of OpenSearch, Amazon’s open source search and analytics engine. Wazuh now integrates with OpenSearch 2.4.1 to provide a scalable and centralized solution for indexing and analyzing security events and logs collected by its endpoint agents.

Wazuh has also updated the SCA policies for Ubuntu Linux 20.04 and 22.04 because the existing version had some errors, the company said. As part of this task, it has used the Center for Internet Security guidelines for Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS systems.

“Previously, the SCA policy for Ubuntu 20.04 systems didn’t work as expected. In particular cases, the Wazuh agent didn’t report the actual system state correctly using the SCA policy file for this operating system. Wazuh would report some particular configuration test results as failed when they should have actually been reported as passed,” Bassett added.

Added support for Suse Linux

Wazuh 4.4 now supports vulnerability detection in the Suse Linux systems. This was previously available for select Linux systems and other operating systems including Windows, macOS, and FreeBSD.

The company has also added support for Azure integration on its Linux-based agents. This is done by modifying the package generation process to add Azure support on agents installed using Windows Packaging Project (WPK) packages, a distribution format for Windows applications.

Each new WPK package will contain all the updated binaries and source code, and the installer will update all files and binaries to support Azure integration.

“Previously, users needed to set up the Azure integration in the Wazuh server but now it’s possible to configure the very Linux agents to set up the Azure integration,” Bassett added.