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Export Teleport Audit Events to the Elastic Stack

Teleport's Event Handler plugin receives audit events from the Teleport Auth Service and forwards them to your log management solution, letting you perform historical analysis, detect unusual behavior, and form a better understanding of how users interact with your Teleport cluster.

In this guide, we will show you how to configure Teleport's Event Handler plugin to send your Teleport audit events to the Elastic Stack. In this setup, the Event Handler plugin forwards audit events from Teleport to Logstash, which stores them in Elasticsearch for visualization and alerting in Kibana.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport cluster version 15.4.22 or above. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.

  • The tctl admin tool and tsh client tool.

    On Teleport Enterprise, you must use the Enterprise version of tctl, which you can download from your Teleport account workspace. Otherwise, visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh for Teleport Community Edition.

Recommended: Configure Machine ID to provide short-lived Teleport credentials to the plugin. Before following this guide, follow a Machine ID deployment guide to run the tbot binary on your infrastructure.

  • Logstash version 8.4.1 or above running on a Linux host. In this guide, you will also run the Event Handler plugin on this host.

  • Elasticsearch and Kibana version 8.4.1 or above, either running via an Elastic Cloud account or on your own infrastructure. You will need permissions to create and manage users in Elasticsearch.

    We have tested this guide on the Elastic Stack version 8.4.1.

Step 1/4. Set up the Event Handler plugin​

The Event Handler plugin is a binary that runs independently of your Teleport cluster. It authenticates to your Teleport cluster and Logstash using mutual TLS. In this section, you will install the Event Handler plugin on the Linux host where you are running Logstash and generate credentials that the plugin will use for authentication.

Install the Event Handler plugin​

Follow the instructions for your environment to install the Event Handler plugin on your Logstash host:

$ curl -L -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-event-handler-v15.4.22-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf teleport-event-handler-v15.4.22-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
$ sudo ./teleport-event-handler/install

We currently only build the Event Handler plugin for amd64 machines. For ARM architecture, you can build from source.

Generate a starter config file​

Generate a configuration file with placeholder values for the Teleport Event Handler plugin. Later in this guide, we will edit the configuration file for your environment.

Run the configure command to generate a sample configuration. Replace mytenant.teleport.sh with the DNS name of your Teleport Enterprise Cloud tenant:

$ teleport-event-handler configure . mytenant.teleport.sh:443

You'll see the following output:

Teleport event handler 15.4.22

[1] mTLS Fluentd certificates generated and saved to ca.crt, ca.key, server.crt, server.key, client.crt, client.key
[2] Generated sample teleport-event-handler role and user file teleport-event-handler-role.yaml
[3] Generated sample fluentd configuration file fluent.conf
[4] Generated plugin configuration file teleport-event-handler.toml

The plugin generates several setup files:

$ ls -l
# -rw------- 1 bob bob     1038 Jul  1 11:14 ca.crt
# -rw------- 1 bob bob     1679 Jul  1 11:14 ca.key
# -rw------- 1 bob bob     1042 Jul  1 11:14 client.crt
# -rw------- 1 bob bob     1679 Jul  1 11:14 client.key
# -rw------- 1 bob bob      541 Jul  1 11:14 fluent.conf
# -rw------- 1 bob bob     1078 Jul  1 11:14 server.crt
# -rw------- 1 bob bob     1766 Jul  1 11:14 server.key
# -rw------- 1 bob bob      260 Jul  1 11:14 teleport-event-handler-role.yaml
# -rw------- 1 bob bob      343 Jul  1 11:14 teleport-event-handler.toml
File(s)Purpose
ca.crt and ca.keySelf-signed CA certificate and private key for Fluentd
server.crt and server.keyFluentd server certificate and key
client.crt and client.keyFluentd client certificate and key, all signed by the generated CA
teleport-event-handler-role.yamluser and role resource definitions for Teleport's event handler
fluent.confFluentd plugin configuration
Running the Event Handler separately from the log forwarder

This guide assumes that you are running the Event Handler on the same host or Kubernetes pod as your log forwarder. If you are not, you will need to instruct the Event Handler to generate mTLS certificates for subjects besides localhost. To do this, use the --cn and --dns-names flags of the teleport-event-handler configure command.

For example, if your log forwarder is addressable at forwarder.example.com and the Event Handler at handler.example.com, you would run the following configure command:

$ teleport-event-handler configure --cn=handler.example.com --dns-names=forwarder.example.com

The command generates client and server certificates with the subjects set to the value of --cn.

The --dns-names flag accepts a comma-separated list of DNS names. It will append subject alternative names (SANs) to the server certificate (the one you will provide to your log forwarder) for each DNS name in the list. The Event Handler looks up each DNS name before appending it as an SAN and exits with an error if the lookup fails.

We'll re-purpose the files generated for Fluentd in our Logstash configuration.

Define RBAC resources​

The teleport-event-handler configure command generated a file called teleport-event-handler-role.yaml. This file defines a teleport-event-handler role and a user with read-only access to the event API:

kind: role
metadata:
  name: teleport-event-handler
spec:
  allow:
    rules:
      - resources: ['event', 'session']
        verbs: ['list','read']
version: v5
---
kind: user
metadata:
  name: teleport-event-handler
spec:
  roles: ['teleport-event-handler']
version: v2

Move this file to your workstation (or recreate it by pasting the snippet above) and use tctl on your workstation to create the role and the user:

$ tctl create -f teleport-event-handler-role.yaml
# user "teleport-event-handler" has been created
# role 'teleport-event-handler' has been created
Using tctl on the Logstash host?

If you are running Teleport on your Elastic Stack host, e.g., you are exposing Kibana's HTTP endpoint via the Teleport Application Service, running the tctl create command above will generate an error similar to the following:

ERROR: tctl must be either used on the auth server or provided with the identity file via --identity flag

To avoid this error, create the teleport-event-handler-role.yaml file on your workstation, then sign in to your Teleport cluster and run the tctl command locally.

Enable issuing of credentials for the Event Handler role​

With the role created, you now need to allow the Machine ID bot to produce credentials for this role.

This can be done with tctl, replacing my-bot with the name of your bot:

$ tctl bots update my-bot --add-roles teleport-event-handler

Export the access plugin identity​

Give the plugin access to a Teleport identity file. We recommend using Machine ID for this in order to produce short-lived identity files that are less dangerous if exfiltrated, though in demo deployments, you can generate longer-lived identity files with tctl:

Configure tbot with an output that will produce the credentials needed by the plugin. As the plugin will be accessing the Teleport API, the correct output type to use is identity.

For this guide, the directory destination will be used. This will write these credentials to a specified directory on disk. Ensure that this directory can be written to by the Linux user that tbot runs as, and that it can be read by the Linux user that the plugin will run as.

Modify your tbot configuration to add an identity output.

If running tbot on a Linux server, use the directory output to write identity files to the /opt/machine-id directory:

outputs:
- type: identity
  destination:
    type: directory
    # For this guide, /opt/machine-id is used as the destination directory.
    # You may wish to customize this. Multiple outputs cannot share the same
    # destination.
    path: /opt/machine-id

If running tbot on Kubernetes, write the identity file to Kubernetes secret instead:

outputs:
  - type: identity
    destination:
      type: kubernetes_secret
      name: teleport-event-handler-identity

If operating tbot as a background service, restart it. If running tbot in one-shot mode, execute it now.

You should now see an identity file under /opt/machine-id or a Kubernetes secret named teleport-event-handler-identity. This contains the private key and signed certificates needed by the plugin to authenticate with the Teleport Auth Service.

Step 2/4. Configure a Logstash pipeline​

The Event Handler plugin forwards audit logs from Teleport by sending HTTP requests to a user-configured endpoint. We will define a Logstash pipeline that handles these requests, extracts logs, and sends them to Elasticsearch.

Create a role for the Event Handler plugin​

Your Logstash pipeline will require permissions to create and manage Elasticsearch indexes and index lifecycle management policies, plus get information about your Elasticsearch deployment. Create a role with these permissions so you can later assign it to the Elasticsearch user you will create for the Event Handler.

In Kibana, navigate to "Management" > "Roles" and click "Create role". Enter the name teleport-plugin for the new role. Under the "Elasticsearch" section, under "Cluster privileges", enter manage_index_templates, manage_ilm, and monitor.

Under "Index privileges", define an entry with audit-events-* in the "Indices" field and write and manage in the "Privileges" field. Click "Create role".

Creating an Elasticsearch role

Create an Elasticsearch user for the Event Handler​

Create an Elasticsearch user that Logstash can authenticate as when making requests to the Elasticsearch API.

In Kibana, find the hamburger menu on the upper left and click "Management", then "Users" > "Create user". Enter teleport for the "Username" and provide a secure password.

Assign the user the teleport-plugin role we defined earlier.

Prepare TLS credentials for Logstash​

Later in this guide, your Logstash pipeline will use an HTTP input to receive audit events from the Teleport Event Handler plugin.

Logstash's HTTP input can only sign certificates with a private key that uses the unencrypted PKCS #8 format. When you ran teleport-event-handler configure earlier, the command generated an encrypted RSA key. We will convert this key to PKCS #8.

You will need a password to decrypt the RSA key. To retrieve this, execute the following command in the directory where you ran teleport-event-handler configure:

$ cat fluent.conf | grep passphrase
private_key_passphrase "ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff"

Convert the encrypted RSA key to an unencrypted PKCS #8 key. The command will prompt your for the password you retrieved:

$ openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -in server.key -nocrypt -out pkcs8.key

Enable Logstash to read the new key, plus the CA and certificate we generated earlier:

$ chmod +r pkcs8.key ca.crt server.crt

Define an index template​

When the Event Handler plugin sends audit events to Logstash, Logstash needs to know how to parse these events to forward them to Elasticsearch. You can define this logic using an index template, which Elasticsearch uses to construct an index for data it receives.

Create a file called audit-events.json with the following content:

{
  "index_patterns": ["audit-events-*"],
  "template": {
    "settings": {},
    "mappings": {
      "dynamic":"true"
    }
  }
}

This index template modifies any index with the pattern audit-events-*. Because it includes the "dynamic": "true" setting, it instructs Elasticsearch to define index fields dynamically based on the events it receives. This is useful for Teleport audit events, which use a variety of fields depending on the event type.

Define a Logstash pipeline​

On the host where you are running Logstash, create a configuration file that defines a Logstash pipeline. This pipeline will receive logs from port 9601 and forward them to Elasticsearch.

On the host running Logstash, create a file called /etc/logstash/conf.d/teleport-audit.conf with the following content:

input {
  http {
    port => 9601
    ssl =>  true
    ssl_certificate => "/home/server.crt"
    ssl_key =>  "/home/pkcs8.key"
    ssl_certificate_authorities => [
      "/home/ca.crt"
    ]
    ssl_verify_mode => "force_peer"
  }
}
output {
  elasticsearch {
    user => "teleport"
    password => "ELASTICSEARCH_PASSPHRASE"
    template_name => "audit-events"
    template => "/home/audit-events.json"
    index => "audit-events-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}"
    template_overwrite => true
  }
}

In the input.http section, update ssl_certificate and ssl_certificate_authorities to include the locations of the server certificate and certificate authority files that the teleport-event-handler configure command generated earlier.

Logstash will authenticate client certificates against the CA file and present a signed certificate to the Teleport Event Handler plugin.

Edit the ssl_key field to include the path to the pkcs8.key file we generated earlier.

In the output.elasticsearch section, edit the following fields depending on whether you are using Elastic Cloud or your own Elastic Stack deployment:

Assign cloud_auth to a string with the content teleport:PASSWORD, replacing PASSWORD with the password you assigned to your teleport user earlier.

Visit https://cloud.elastic.co/deployments, find the "Cloud ID" field, copy the content, and add it as the value of cloud_id in your Logstash pipeline configuration. The elasticsearch section should resemble the following:

  elasticsearch {
    cloud_id => "CLOUD_ID"
    cloud_auth => "teleport:PASSWORD" 
    template_name => "audit-events"
    template => "/home/audit-events.json"
    index => "audit-events-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}"
    template_overwrite => true
  }

Finally, modify template to point to the path to the audit-events.json file you created earlier.

Because the index template we will create with this file applies to indices with the prefix audit-events-*, and we have configured our Logstash pipeline to create an index with the title "audit-events-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}, Elasticsearch will automatically index fields from Teleport audit events.

Disable the Elastic Common Schema for your pipeline​

The Elastic Common Schema (ECS) is a standard set of fields that Elastic Stack uses to parse and visualize data. Since we are configuring Elasticsearch to index all fields from your Teleport audit logs dynamically, we will disable the ECS for your Logstash pipeline.

On the host where you are running Logstash, edit /etc/logstash/pipelines.yml to add the following entry:

- pipeline.id: teleport-audit-logs
  path.config: "/etc/logstash/conf.d/teleport-audit.conf"
  pipeline.ecs_compatibility: disabled

This disables the ECS for your Teleport audit log pipeline.

tip

If your pipelines.yml file defines an existing pipeline that includes teleport-audit.conf, e.g., by using a wildcard value in path.config, adjust the existing pipeline definition so it no longer applies to teleport-audit.conf.

Run the Logstash pipeline​

Restart Logstash:

$ sudo systemctl restart logstash

Make sure your Logstash pipeline started successfully by running the following command to tail Logstash's logs:

$ sudo journalctl -u logstash -f

When your Logstash pipeline initializes its http input and starts running, you should see a log similar to this:

Sep 15 18:27:13 myhost logstash[289107]: [2022-09-15T18:27:13,491][INFO ][logstash.inputs.http][main][33bdff0416b6a2b643e6f4ab3381a90c62b3aa05017770f4eb9416d797681024] Starting http input listener {:address=>"0.0.0.0:9601", :ssl=>"true"}

These logs indicate that your Logstash pipeline has connected to Elasticsearch and installed a new index template:

Sep 12 19:49:06 myhost logstash[33762]: [2022-09-12T19:49:06,309][INFO ][logstash.outputs.elasticsearch][main] Elasticsearch version determined (8.4.1) {:es_version=>8}
Sep 12 19:50:00 myhost logstash[33762]: [2022-09-12T19:50:00,993][INFO ][logstash.outputs.elasticsearch][main] Installing Elasticsearch template {:name=>"audit-events"}
Pipeline not starting?

If Logstash fails to initialize the pipeline, it may continue to attempt to contact Elasticsearch. In that case, you will see repeated logs like the one below:

Sep 12 19:43:04 myhost logstash[33762]: [2022-09-12T19:43:04,519][WARN ][logstash.outputs.elasticsearch][main] Attempted to resurrect connection to dead ES instance, but got an error {:url=>"http://teleport:xxxxxx@127.0.0.1:9200/", :exception=>LogStash::Outputs::ElasticSearch::HttpClient::Pool::HostUnreachableError, :message=>"Elasticsearch Unreachable: [http://127.0.0.1:9200/][Manticore::ClientProtocolException] 127.0.0.1:9200 failed to respond"}

Diagnosing the problem​

To diagnose the cause of errors initializing your Logstash pipeline, search your Logstash journalctl logs for the following, which indicate that the pipeline is starting. The relevant error logs should come shortly after these:

Sep 12 18:15:52 myhost logstash[27906]: [2022-09-12T18:15:52,146][INFO][logstash.javapipeline][main] Starting pipeline {:pipeline_id=>"main","pipeline.workers"=>2, "pipeline.batch.size"=>125, "pipeline.batch.delay"=>50,"pipeline.max_inflight"=>250,"pipeline.sources"=>["/etc/logstash/conf.d/teleport-audit.conf"],:thread=>"#<Thread:0x1c1a3ee5 run>"}
Sep 12 18:15:52 myhost logstash[27906]: [2022-09-12T18:15:52,912][INFO][logstash.javapipeline][main] Pipeline Java execution initialization time {"seconds"=>0.76}

Disabling Elasticsearch TLS​

This guide assumes that you have already configured Elasticsearch and Logstash to communicate with one another via TLS.

If your Elastic Stack deployment is in a sandboxed or low-security environment (e.g., a demo environment), and your journalctl logs for Logstash show that Elasticsearch is unreachable, you can disable TLS for communication between Logstash and Elasticsearch.

Edit the file /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml to set xpack.security.http.ssl.enabled to false, then restart Elasticsearch.

Step 3/4. Run the Event Handler plugin​

Configure the Teleport Event Handler​

In this section, you will configure the Teleport Event Handler for your environment.

Earlier, we generated a file called teleport-event-handler.toml to configure the Fluentd event handler. This file includes setting similar to the following:

storage = "./storage"
timeout = "10s"
batch = 20
namespace = "default"
# The window size configures the duration of the time window for the event handler
# to request events from Teleport. By default, this is set to 24 hours.
# Reduce the window size if the events backend cannot manage the event volume 
# for the default window size.
# The window size should be specified as a duration string, parsed by Go's time.ParseDuration.
window-size = "24h"

[forward.fluentd]
ca = "/home/bob/event-handler/ca.crt"
cert = "/home/bob/event-handler/client.crt"
key = "/home/bob/event-handler/client.key"
url = "https://fluentd.example.com:8888/test.log"
session-url = "https://fluentd.example.com:8888/session"

[teleport]
addr = "example.teleport.com:443"
identity = "identity"

Modify the configuration to replace fluentd.example.com with the domain name of your Fluentd deployment.

Update the configuration file as follows.

Change forward.fluentd.url to the scheme, host and port you configured for your Logstash http input earlier, https://localhost:9601. Change forward.fluentd.session-url to the same value with the root URL path: https://localhost:9601/.

Change teleport.addr to the host and port of your Teleport Proxy Service, or the Auth Service if you have configured the Event Handler to connect to it directly, e.g., mytenant.teleport.sh:443.

addr: Include the hostname and HTTPS port of your Teleport Proxy Service or Teleport Enterprise Cloud account (e.g., teleport.example.com:443 or mytenant.teleport.sh:443).

identity: Fill this in with the path to the identity file you exported earlier.

client_key, client_crt, root_cas: Comment these out, since we are not using them in this configuration.

If you are providing credentials to the Event Handler using a tbot binary that runs on a Linux server, make sure the value of identity in the Event Handler configuration is the same as the path of the identity file you configured tbot to generate, /opt/machine-id/identity.

Start the Teleport Event Handler​

Start the Teleport Teleport Event Handler by following the instructions below.

Copy the teleport-event-handler.toml file to /etc on your Linux server. Update the settings within the toml file to match your environment. Make sure to use absolute paths on settings such as identity and storage. Files and directories in use should only be accessible to the system user executing the teleport-event-handler service such as /var/lib/teleport-event-handler.

Next, create a systemd service definition at the path /usr/lib/systemd/system/teleport-event-handler.service with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Teleport Event Handler
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/teleport-event-handler start --config=/etc/teleport-event-handler.toml --teleport-refresh-enabled=true
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/teleport-event-handler.pid

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

If you are not using Machine ID to provide short-lived credentials to the Event Handler, you can remove the --teleport-refresh-enabled true flag.

Enable and start the plugin:

$ sudo systemctl enable teleport-event-handler
$ sudo systemctl start teleport-event-handler
Choose when to start exporting events

You can configure when you would like the Teleport Event Handler to begin exporting events when you run the start command. This example will start exporting from May 5th, 2021:

$ teleport-event-handler start --config /etc/teleport-event-handler.toml --start-time "2021-05-05T00:00:00Z"

You can only determine the start time once, when first running the Teleport Event Handler. If you want to change the time frame later, remove the plugin state directory that you specified in the storage field of the handler's configuration file.

Once the Teleport Event Handler starts, you will see notifications about scanned and forwarded events:

$ sudo journalctl -u teleport-event-handler
DEBU   Event sent id:f19cf375-4da6-4338-bfdc-e38334c60fd1 index:0 ts:2022-09-21
18:51:04.849 +0000 UTC type:cert.create event-handler/app.go:140
...

Step 4/4. Create a data view in Kibana​

Make it possible to explore your Teleport audit events in Kibana by creating a data view. In the Elastic Stack UI, find the hamburger menu on the upper left of the screen, then click "Management" > "Data Views". Click "Create data view".

For the "Name" field, use "Teleport Audit Events". In "Index pattern", use audit-events-* to select all indices created by our Logstash pipeline. In "Timestamp field", choose time, which Teleport adds to its audit events.

Creating a data view

To use your data view, find the search box at the top of the Elastic Stack UI and enter "Discover". On the upper left of the screen, click the dropdown menu and select "Teleport Audit Events". You can now search and filter your Teleport audit events in order to get a better understanding how users are interacting with your Teleport cluster.

Creating a data view

For example, we can click the event field on the left sidebar and visualize the event types for your Teleport audit events over time:

Creating a visualization

Troubleshooting connection issues​

If the Teleport Event Handler is displaying error logs while connecting to your Teleport Cluster, ensure that:

  • The certificate the Teleport Event Handler is using to connect to your Teleport cluster is not past its expiration date. This is the value of the --ttl flag in the tctl auth sign command, which is 12 hours by default.
  • Ensure that in your Teleport Event Handler configuration file (teleport-event-handler.toml), you have provided the correct host and port for the Teleport Proxy Service or Auth Service.

Next steps​

Now that you are exporting your audit events to the Elastic Stack, consult our audit event reference so you can plan visualizations and alerts.

While this guide uses the tctl auth sign command to issue credentials for the Teleport Event Handler, production clusters should use Machine ID for safer, more reliable renewals. Read our guide to getting started with Machine ID.