Maltego Server Guides

Deploying the Standard Transforms Add-on (CTAS) Server with Docker

Modified on: Tue, 3 Jun, 2025 at 10:51 AM

Introduction

The Maltego Standard Transforms Add-on (CTAS) Server is available as a Docker image. Your delivery document includes a link to deployment assets that can be used to deploy the server. You will need to download it on the machine that will be running the Docker containers.

These instructions were tested on an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS host using IPv4. Instructions may differ slightly depending on your preferred host operating system and network configuration.

Software Requirements

The host machine running the Docker containers will need to have the following dependencies installed:

Docker Daemon (CE or EE) - Read more: https://docs.docker.com/get-started/overview/
Docker Compose - Read more: https://docs.docker.com/compose/

Note: 
1. Recommended Docker Server Version >= 20.10.23
2. Recommended Docker Compose version >= v2.15.1

Starting the Server

After you have installed Docker and Docker Compose on your host machine, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Login to Docker registry

To download the latest Docker images, you first need to log into our Docker registry using the following command:

docker login registry.paterva.com

Enter the Docker Registry username and password as specified in the Delivery document.

Note: If the delivery document contains multiple server licenses, the password is different per server license.

Step 2: Download Deployment Assets.

Your delivery document includes a link to deployment assets that can be used to deploy the server. You need to download it on the machine that will be running the Docker containers. You can also download the deployment asset via

wget https://downloads.maltego.com/ctas/ctas_3.3.0.tar

Or

curl https://downloads.maltego.com/ctas/ctas_3.3.0.tar -o ctas_3.2.0.tar

Step 3: Starting the Server

From the directory containing the compose file and api_keys.json file in place, we can now deploy the "CTAS" application using Docker Compose. It is recommended to change the default password in the docker compose file. This can be done by changes the value of POSTGRES_PASSWORD in docker compose file as per the code snippet below:

Changing the Default Password (Optional)

version: "3.4" 
services: 
  --- 
  ctasdispatcher: 
    image: ${DOCKER_REGISTRY}/ctasdispatcher:${VERSION} 
    networks: 
      - ctas
    restart: unless-stopped 
    depends_on: 
      - postgres 
    environment: 
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: M5F0PNem3HPk #ChangeMe 
  --- 

  --- 
  postgres: 
  networks: 
    - ctas 
  image: postgres:13 
  restart: unless-stopped 
  environment: 
    POSTGRES_PASSWORD: M5F0PNem3HPk #ChangeMe 
  volumes: 
    - ctas_db_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data # DB 
  ---

Navigate to the directory after extracting the downloaded file, and run the following commands:

curl https://downloads.maltego.com/ctas/ctas_3.3.0.tar -o ctas_3.3.0.tar
mkdir -p $HOME/ctas/
tar -xvf ctas_3.3.0.tar -C $HOME/ctas/
cd $HOME/ctas
./start.sh

The server's Docker images will be pulled and from the Docker Registry. Once the images have been pulled, the containers will start running automatically in Detached mode (-d). You can now access the server's web interface using the host machine's IPv4 address or DNS Name. e.g., https://{{ Server IPv4 or DNS Name }}/.

Note: Throughout this article, we will consider "https://ctas-internal.maltego.com/" as a host name bind to the CTAS Server.

Note: For detailed instructions on configuring your API keys, please refer to the article, Setting Your API Keys.