Security Onion: Security Onion 3.0.0 Now Available with New and Improved Interface and Much More!

Security Onion 3.0.0 is now available and includes a new and improved interface, updated components, and many quality of life improvements!

For a full screenshot tour, please see the First Time Users section of our documentation:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/first-time-users

Security Onion 2.4 and 3.0

Security Onion 2.4 reached General Availability on August 15, 2023:

https://blog.securityonion.net/2023/08/security-onion-24-has-reached-general.html

Over the last 2.5 years, we've made lots of innovative changes to the platform but we kept the version number at 2.4. The time has come to move to Security Onion 3 to represent the innovation that we've already done and the innovation that we're planning to do!

Supported Operating Sytems

Please note that 3.0 will not work with anything but Oracle Linux 9. We will not test or support Ubuntu, Debian or any other distro. These other distros were not officially supported in 2.4 but we're officially removing them altogether in 3.0.

Stenographer Replaced with Suricata Full Packet Capture

Security Onion 3.0 is very similar to 2.4.210 and uses the exact same underlying operating system (Oracle Linux 9) and all of the same components with one exception: 3.0 no longer includes Stenographer and so full packet capture is handled by Suricata.

If you are still running Security Onion 2.4, then you will need to transition from Stenographer to Suricata before upgrading to Security Onion 3:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/2.4/suricata.html#switching-pcap-from-stenographer-to-suricata

JA4+

We added JA4 support in Security Onion 2.4.170:

https://blog.securityonion.net/2025/08/security-onion-24170-now-available.html

This release allows you to enable JA4+ (https://foxio.io/ja4) if you are able to accept the FoxIO license:

https://github.com/FoxIO-LLC/ja4/blob/main/LICENSE

For more information, please see the FoxIO Licensing FAQ:

https://github.com/FoxIO-LLC/ja4/blob/main/License%20FAQ.md

Zeek Plugins

This release allows you to dynamically load Zeek plugins. For more information, please see the Zeek section of our documentation:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/zeek/#custom-packages

New Documentation Site

We've got a brand new documentation site! Please note that some URLs have changed. If you don't immediately see the page you're looking for, try the search in the upper right corner.

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/

Updated Components

This release updates several components including:

ATTACK Navigator to 5.3.0
CyberChef to 10.22.1
ElastAlert 2 to 2.28.0
Golang to 1.26.1
Hydra to 25.4.0
Kafka to 3.9.2
Kratos to 25.4.0
Nginx to 1.29.6
OpenCanary to 0.9.7
Redis to 7.2.13
Suricata to 8.0.4
Telegraf to 1.38.0
Docker base images
SOC frontend 3rd party deps

Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)

You can see major components and their version numbers in the new Software Bill of Materials section of our documentation:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/software-bill-of-materials/

Release Notes

There are many more features and fixes included in this release! For a complete list of all changes, please see the Release Notes:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/release-notes#changes

Known Issues

For a list of known issues, please see:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/release-notes#known-issues

About Security Onion

Security Onion is a free and open platform built by defenders for defenders. It includes network visibility, host visibility, intrusion detection honeypots, log management, and case management.

For network visibility, we offer signature based detection via Suricata, rich protocol metadata and file extraction using your choice of either Zeek or Suricata, full packet capture, and file analysis. For host visibility, we offer the Elastic Agent which provides data collection, live queries via osquery, and centralized management using Elastic Fleet. Intrusion detection honeypots based on OpenCanary can be added to your deployment for even more enterprise visibility. All of these logs flow into Elasticsearch and we’ve built our own user interfaces for alerts, dashboards, threat hunting, case management, and grid management.

Security Onion has been downloaded over 2 million times and is being used by security teams around the world to monitor and defend their enterprises. Our easy-to-use Setup wizard allows you to build a distributed grid for your enterprise in minutes!

Documentation

You can find our online documentation here:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/

Documentation is always a work in progress. If you find documentation that needs to be updated, please let us know as described in the Feedback section below.

New Installations

If this is your first time installing Security Onion, then we highly recommend starting with an IMPORT installation as shown at:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/first-time-users

Once you’re comfortable with your IMPORT installation, then you can move on to more advanced installations as shown at:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/architecture

Existing 2.4 Installations

As mentioned above, Security Onion 3 only supports Oracle Linux 9. If you are running Security Onion 2.4 on some other unsupported distro, then you will need to perform a fresh installation of Security Onion 3.

If you have an existing Security Onion 2.4 installation running on Oracle Linux 9, you can upgrade to Security Onion 3 as shown here:

https://docs.securityonion.net/en/3/main/appendix

Before updating your production deployment, we highly recommend testing the upgrade process on a test deployment that closely matches your production deployment if possible. This is especially important for releases that update components like Salt and Elastic.

2.4 EOL

Security Onion 2.4 will reach End Of Life (EOL) on October 1, 2026. If you are a Security Onion Solutions customer, please feel free to reach out to our Support team for assistance.

Thanks

Lots of love went into this release!

Special thanks to all our folks working so hard to make this release happen!

Josh Brower
Jason Ertel
Corey Ogburn
Josh Patterson
Mike Reeves
Jorge Reyes
Matthew Wright

Questions, Problems, and Feedback

If you have any questions or problems, please create a new Discussion at:

https://securityonion.net/discuss

Security Onion Pro

Security Onion Pro includes many enterprise features that folks have been asking for:

Active Query Management
External API
Open ID Connect (OIDC)
Data at Rest Encryption
FIPS for the OS
DoD STIG for the OS
External Notifications in SOC
Time Tracking inside of Cases
Guaranteed Message Delivery
Manager of Managers
MCP Server
Security Onion App for Splunk
Hypervisor
Reports
Onion AI Assistant

You can read more about these enterprise features at:

https://securityonion.com/pro

Training

Need training? Start with our free Security Onion Essentials training and then take a look at some of our other official Security Onion training!

https://securityonion.net/training

Security Onion Solutions Hardware Appliances

We know Security Onion's hardware needs, and our appliances are the perfect match for the platform. Leave the hardware research, testing, and support to us, so you can focus on what's important for your organization. Not only will you have confidence that your Security Onion deployment is running on the best-suited hardware, you will also be supporting future development and maintenance of the Security Onion project!

https://securityonion.com/hardware