VECTR is a powerful platform designed to track and optimize red and blue team testing activities, helping organisations measure and enhance their detection and prevention capabilities. By organising assessment groups with campaigns and test cases, VECTR enables teams to simulate a wide range of attack scenarios. In this blog I will walk through configuration of the application on a Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Virtual Machine. I will be following the installation guide on the VECTR website HERE.
I will be configuring a containerised version of VECTR using docker. There are some prerequisite steps to carry out to enable this and they can be found HERE on the docker configuration website.
# update the Advanced Package Tool index
sudo apt-get update
# Install curl over HTTPS
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
# Add the docker GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) key so that the downloaded packages can be verified
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
# Set up the docker repository (it is best to cut these commands from your VM browser as cutting/pasting them into the VM from your host browser causes errors)
echo \
"deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
# re-update the APT index
sudo apt-get update
# Install all the docker components
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin# create a directory to run VECTR from and navigate into it
sudo mkdir -p /opt/vectr && cd /opt/vectr
# pull the VECTR runtime application
sudo wget https://github.com/SecurityRiskAdvisors/VECTR/releases/download/ce-9.5.2/sra-vectr-runtime-9.5.2-ce.zip
# extract the compressed runtime application
sudo unzip sra-vectr-runtime-9.5.2-ce.zip
# list all the files in the directory (you should have a docker-compose.yml and a .env file)
ls -al
# edit the environment file
sudo vim .env
# change the VECTR_DATA_KEY and the REDIS_PASSWORD and COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME and exit vim. Make a note of the VECTR hostname and port for later.
# Bring up all the required VECTR containers in detached mode
sudo docker compose up -d
# Docker compose will pull/create/start the necessary containers. You can also check the status of you docker containers with this command
sudo docker ps
If all your containers have built correctly you will now be able to browse to the VECTR application at https://VECTR_HOSTNAME:VECTR_PORT, which you view in the .env file. The initial default credential are 'admin' and '11_ThisIsTheFirstPassword_11' which should be changed on first log-on. 
There are two demo environments (Health and Financial Service) to use to help you navigate around the application.
In this blog we have walked through configuring the VECTR application on Ubuntu using docker compose. In future blogs we will cover creation of bespoke environments, campaigns and reports.