The Options button can be found in the Applications menu dropdown menu:
Clicking the Options button opens the main options menu where various settings for the Maltego Graph Client can be configured. The options menu is sorted by different tabs, each of which are explained in the following sub-sections.
General
The first tab in the Options menu is General options where you can choose the default web browser for Maltego Graph to use and to setup a proxy.
Default web browser
By default, Maltego Graph will use your system’s default web browser. Clicking the Web Browser dropdown field will show a list of web browsers that are installed on the system and allow you to choose a new web browser for Maltego to use.
Proxy settings
Proxies are often used within corporate networks as methods of controlling how clients within the network get out to the Internet. Maltego requires an Internet connection and if you do need to use it within your corporate network use this option to set it up.
There are three proxy options in Maltego described below:
No proxy – Use this setting if you have a direct connection to the Internet and do not connect through a web proxy.
Use System Proxy Settings – This option will use your system’s proxy settings. Clicking the Reload button will force Maltego to reload the proxy settings from the system in case of any changes to the system settings are made.
Manual Proxy Settings – This options allows you to specify the hostname/IP address and the port number for your web proxy. Clicking the More button will open the Advanced Proxy Options window:
From the Advanced Proxy Options, you can choose to use the proxy specified for all protocols or specify different proxies for HTTPS and SOCKS. You can also add to the No Proxy Host list, each item in this list should be comma separated. Finally, from these options you can specify proxy authentication details if you are connecting to the Internet through an authenticated proxy.
Once proxy settings have been configured, the Test connection button can be clicked to check whether the Maltego client can connect to the Internet using the proxy details. If the Maltego client can make a connection to the Maltego servers, a tick mark will be returned as in the image below:
Java Options
The next tab in the Options menu is the Java Options.
Any changes that are made to the Java Options will be applied the next time Maltego is run.
Set Recommended Options
Clicking the Set Recommended Options button will detect which versions of Java is installed on the machine and set the most suitable one, it will also automatically allocate memory for Maltego to use depending on how much memory is available on the system.
Java Runtime
Details about the version of Java that is being used can be found under the Java Runtime section.
Clicking the dropdown menu for the Path field will list all the versions of Java that are detected on the system. If your installation of Java is not found in the list, Browse can be used to manually specify the path to Java’s home directory.
Java 8, 11 or 17 is recommended for running the latest version of the Maltego
Memory
The last option that can be set from the Java Options tab is the maximum amount of memory that the Maltego client can use. Remember, Maltego loves memory so don’t be stingy.
Collections
From the Collections tab, the rule ratio for collection nodes can be set. The default value for the ratio is 1.5:
In Maltego there are two main collection methods called neighbor rule and chain rule.
Neighbor rule - When node A links to B,C,D,E...Z then A->[B-Z] is collected in what's called the neighbor rule.
Chain rule - If A->B, C->D, E->F....Y->Z then it results in two collections - call them [#]->[%] where [#] is A,C,E,G and [%] is B,D,F,H - that is the chain rule. In order for the chain rule to trigger you still need a common node at the top too - e.g. A->[#]->[%] and everything in [#] need to be same entity type (same with [%]). They also need to 1:1 relationship - in other words each website needs to resolve to one IP address - e.g. they need to be connected in the same way.
In tests we've notice that we want to collect with the neighbor rule much earlier (e.g. smaller numbers) than when we want to collect using the chain rule. In other words - you want to chain-rule-collect only if there are LOTS of pairs. The 'ratio' shows the relationship between those thresholds. For instance - if the ratio is 2 and the collection limit is set on 10 then neighbors will collect when it hits 10 nodes and chains (or pairs) will only collect when there are 20 nodes.
Files
From the Files tab, you can choose whether images from a graph are saved with the Maltego graph file. Leaving this option checked enhances offline support and bandwidth usage at the cost of increased file size.
Audio
The Maltego Graph (Desktop) application makes various sounds when different events happen on a graph to notify you. These sounds can be disabled from the Audio tab in the options menu:
Discovery
From the Discovery options, you can choose what happens when an Entity type is installed that already exists in Maltego Graph. You can also choose what happens when an icon, that matches an existing icon, is installed. The image below shows the different options that are available to choose from (the defaults settings are shown):
Transforms
From the Transforms tab in the options menu you can choose whether links between the same two entities that are created from the same transform should merge or not. The default setting for this is to have the links merge. You can also choose the timeout for transforms, the default value for this setting is 2 minutes and is given in milli-seconds. This means if a transform does not provide a result within two minutes, the transform will fail. Setting this option to 0, means the transforms will never timeout.
Display
From the Display tab, there are various settings that can be configured to adjust the user interface of the Maltego client.
The following sections will cover each part of the Display options tab.
Manual Links
The first setting in the Manual Links settings allows you to choose if the Edit properties dialog should open when a new manual link is created.
The next two settings set the color for manual and transform created links. The default colors are two different shades of gray. Clicking the change button will open a color palette where a new default color for the type of links can be chosen:
Overlay Icons
The first checkbox lets you choose if the Entity type icon should be overlaid for Entities that have custom images for their icons. For example, the Twitter Affiliation Entity returned from a Transform will set the Entity icon to the Twitter user’s profile image, when this option is checked (which is the default option). The Entity type icon will be overlaid the profile image in the bottom left-hand corner of the entity as shown in the image below:
By default, when an attachment is added to an entity, a small paper-clip icon will be overlaid the entity icon on the left-hand side. The second checkbox allows you to choose whether this paper clip icon is shown when an attachment is added.
Font Sizes
The Maltego Graph (Desktop) application attempts to set font sizes according to the pixel density detected on the system. However, this section allows you to choose your own font sizes for different windows in Maltego Graph. It is often useful to bump up all the font sizes when using a 4k monitor that is physically small.
The first option sets the font of the Detail View. The image below shows the Detail View with two different font sizes for this option set:
The next option is to choose the font size of the Machines window’s logs. Again, the image below shows a comparison of two different font sizes set for this option:
Changing the Other components font field will adjust all other text in the Maltego client user interface. A restart is required before any changes are applied.
The font size for the Transform Output window can be changed by right-clicking anywhere in the transform output window and then either increasing or decreasing the font sizes as shown in the image below:
The font anti-aliasing provides various options for changing the anti-aliasing that is used to render text on a Maltego graph. The options are shown in the image below. The Maltego client will need to be restarted before any changes are made.
Entity label length
In Maltego Graph, Entity values will be truncated with an ellipsis to help neaten the graph from long Entity values. By default, all values that are longer than 32 characters will be truncated. The image below shows an example of a truncated domain Entity:
The full Entity value can be seen by double clicking the entity’s value:
The Max Entity Label Length option allows you to choose how many characters an Entity value can be before it is truncated. You can also choose to completely switch off truncating Entity values.
Home
From the Home options, you can choose if you want the Home page to open automatically when the Maltego Client is started:
Updates
From the Updates tab, you can choose if you want Maltego Graph to automatically check for updates.
Miscellaneous
From the Miscellaneous tab, you can chose to send error reports to us and automatically
