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Deploying Cyber Security Tools Portal to AWS EC2

This guide will walk you through hosting your application on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 instance. Since your application uses a real interactive terminal (node-pty), it requires a full virtual machine environment and cannot run on serverless platforms like Vercel.

Prerequisites

  • An AWS Account (you can use the Free Tier).
  • Basic familiarity with the terminal.

Step 1: Launch an EC2 Instance

  1. Log in to AWS Console and navigate to EC2.
  2. Click Launch Instance.
  3. Name: Give your instance a name (e.g., "CyberTools-Server").
  4. OS Image: Choose Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS (or 22.04 LTS). It's free-tier eligible and works great with Docker.
  5. Instance Type: Choose t2.micro (Free Tier eligible) or t3.micro.
  6. Key Pair:
    • Click "Create new key pair".
    • Name it (e.g., "cyber-key").
    • Type: RSA.
    • Format: .pem.
    • Click Create key pair. The file will download automatically. Keep this safe!
  7. Network Settings:
    • Check "Allow SSH traffic from" -> My IP (for security).
    • Check "Allow HTTP traffic from the internet".
    • Check "Allow HTTPS traffic from the internet".
  8. Click Launch Instance.

Step 2: Configure Security Group (Open Port 3000)

  1. Go to your instance dashboard and click on your new instance ID.
  2. Click the Security tab.
  3. Click the Security Group link (e.g., sg-01234...).
  4. Click Edit inbound rules.
  5. Click Add rule:
    • Type: Custom TCP
    • Port range: 3000
    • Source: 0.0.0.0/0 (Anywhere) - Note: For production, restrict this to your IP or use a reverse proxy like Nginx.
  6. Click Save rules.

Step 3: Connect to Your Instance

  1. Open your local terminal.
  2. Move your key file to a safe place (e.g., ~/.ssh/) and restrict permissions: 
    chmod 400 ~/.ssh/cyber-key.pem
  3. Connect via SSH (replace YOUR_PUBLIC_IP with the Public IPv4 address from the EC2 dashboard): 
    ssh -i ~/.ssh/cyber-key.pem ubuntu@YOUR_PUBLIC_IP

Step 4: Install Docker on EC2

Once connected to the server, run these commands to install Docker:

# Update packages
sudo apt-get update

# Install Docker
sudo apt-get install -y docker.io

# Start Docker and enable it to run on boot
sudo systemctl start docker
sudo systemctl enable docker

# Add your user to the docker group (so you don't need 'sudo' for docker commands)
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and log back in for the group change to take effect:

exit
# Reconnect
ssh -i ~/.ssh/cyber-key.pem ubuntu@YOUR_PUBLIC_IP

Step 5: Deploy the Application

You have two options to get your code onto the server:

Option A: Git Clone (Recommended)

If your code is on GitHub:

  1. Clone your repository: 
    git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/YOUR_REPO.git
cd YOUR_REPO

Option B: File Transfer (SCP)

If your code is only local:

  1. On your local machine, run: 
    # Zip your project (excluding node_modules)
zip -r cyber-tools.zip . -x "node_modules/*" ".git/*"

# Upload to EC2
scp -i ~/.ssh/cyber-key.pem cyber-tools.zip ubuntu@YOUR_PUBLIC_IP:~/
  2. On the EC2 instance: 
    sudo apt-get install unzip
unzip cyber-tools.zip -d cyber-tools
cd cyber-tools

Step 6: Build and Run with Docker

Inside your project directory on the server:

  1. Build the Docker image: 
    docker build -t cyber-tools .

6. Run the Docker Container

Run the container with the following command. Note the --network host and --cap-add=NET_ADMIN flags, which are required for the Live Packet Analyzer to capture network traffic.

sudo docker run -d \
  --name cyber-tools \
  --network host \
  --cap-add=NET_ADMIN \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  cyber-tools-app

Note: --network host allows the container to share the host's network stack, which is necessary for tshark to see the server's traffic. --cap-add=NET_ADMIN grants the necessary privileges to capture packets.

7. Access the Application

Open your browser and navigate to: http://<your-ec2-public-ip>:3000

(Since we are using --network host, the app binds directly to port 3000 on the host).

You should see your Cyber Security Tools Portal, and the terminal should be fully interactive!

Useful Commands

  • View Logs: docker logs -f cyber-app
  • Stop App: docker stop cyber-app
  • Update App:
    1. git pull (or upload new files)
    2. docker build -t cyber-tools .
    3. docker stop cyber-app
    4. docker rm cyber-app
    5. docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --restart always --name cyber-app cyber-tools