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Export Teleport Audit Events to Splunk

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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 the Teleport Event Handler plugin to send your Teleport audit events to Splunk.

How it works​

The Teleport Event Handler authenticates to the Teleport Auth Service to receive audit events over a gRPC stream, sends them to a local Fluentd instance as HTTP requests. The Fluentd instance forwards these requests to the Splunk HTTP Event Collector (HEC), which in turn sends them to Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise for visualization and alerting.

Prerequisites​

  • Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise v9.0.1 or above.
  • Fluentd version v1.12.4 or greater. The Teleport Event Handler will create a new fluent.conf file you can integrate into an existing Fluentd system, or use with a fresh setup.
  • A server, virtual machine, Kubernetes cluster, or Docker environment to run the Teleport Event Handler plugin.
  • On Splunk Enterprise, port 8088 should be open to traffic from the host running the Teleport Event Handler and Fluentd instance.

This guide requires you to have completed one of the Event Handler setup guides:

The instructions below demonstrate a local test of the Event Handler plugin on your workstation. You will need to adjust paths, ports, and domains for other environments.

Step 1/4. Configure Splunk​

In this section, you will configure Splunk to ingest and index Teleport audit events, and create a token for the HEC to authenticate to Splunk. All steps within this section take place within the Splunk web interface.

Create an index for Teleport audit events​

  1. Visit the home page of the Splunk UI and navigate to Settings > Indexes. Click New Index. Name your index teleport-audit-logs and assign the Index Data Type field to Events.
  2. Fill in the values of the remaining fields, Max raw data size and Searchable retention (days) based on the needs of your organization.
  3. Click Save.

[Optional] Create a source type for Teleport audit events​

By default, Splunk's _json source type expects the time field to be in a different format than that of Teleport audit events. This means that the event will show up in Splunk at the time it was ingested, not at the time it was generated. Adjust the format of the time field in Splunk so Teleport audit events appear as expected.

  1. Navigate to Settings -> Source Types.
  2. Find the _json source type and click Clone.
  3. Name the new source type _json-gotime.
  4. Under Timestamp click Advanced.
  5. Input %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%3NZ and click Save.

Create a token for the HTTP Event Collector​

  1. Visit the home page of the Splunk UI.
  2. Navigate to Settings > Data inputs.
  3. In the Local inputs table, find the HTTP Event Collector row and click Add new.
  4. Enter a name you can use to recognize the token later so you can manage it, e.g., Teleport Audit Events.
  5. Click Next.
  6. In the Input Settings view, next to the Source type field, click Select.
  7. In the Select Source Type dropdown menu, click Structured, then choose the _json-gotime type you created earlier. If you skipped that optional step, choose _json. Splunk will index incoming logs as JSON, which is the format the Event Handler uses to send logs to Splunk.
  8. In the Index section, select the teleport-audit-logs index you created earlier.
  9. Click Review, then view the summary and click Submit.
  10. Copy the Token Value field and assign TOKEN to it so you can use it later in this guide.

Step 2/4. Connect Fluentd to the Splunk HTTP Event Collector​

While Splunk used to maintain a dedicated output plugin at https://github.com/splunk/fluent-plugin-splunk-hec, this has been deprecated. We can still connect Fluentd to the HEC using Fluentd's built-in HTTP output plugin.

In Step 1, you generated a configuration file for Fluentd at fluent.conf. Edit your fluent.conf file as follows:

  1. Edit the <parse> section with the following section:

        <parse>
      @type json
      json_parser oj

      # This time format is used by the plugin. This field is required.
      time_type string
      time_format %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S
      keep_time_key true
    </parse>

    This will preserve the time field in the JSON when it is sent to Splunk. Some Fluentd output plugins require having a parsed time available.

  2. Assign https://splunk-hec.example.com:8088/services/collector/raw to your Splunk HTTP Event Collector endpoint.

    For Splunk Enterprise, this will be of the format:

    • https://<host>:8088/services/collector/raw

    For Splunk Cloud, this will be of the format:

    • AWS: https://http-inputs-<host>.splunkcloud.com:443/services/collector/raw
    • Google Cloud / Azure: https://http-inputs.<host>.splunkcloud.com:443/services/collector/raw
    • Free Trial: https://<host>.splunkcloud.com:8088/services/collector/raw

    For more information on Splunk HEC URIs, see Splunk HTTP Event Collector .

  3. Edit the <match test.log> section with the following section.

     <match test.log>
   @type http
   endpoint splunk-endpoint
   headers {"Authorization": "Splunk TOKEN"}
   # tls_verify_mode none
   <buffer>
     flush_interval 2s
   </buffer>
 </match>

    This configures Fluentd to authenticate to the HEC using the token you generated earlier. If using Splunk Cloud Free Trial, uncomment tls_verify_mode none to allow self-signed certificates.

  4. Test your changes by running Fluentd:

    docker run -u $(id -u ${USER}):$(id -g ${USER}) -p 8888:8888 -v $(pwd):/keys -v $(pwd)/fluent.conf:/fluentd/etc/fluent.conf fluent/fluentd:edge

Step 3/4. Run the Event Handler plugin​

Now that you have configured your Fluentd instance to receive logs via HTTP and forward them to Splunk, you will modify the Event Handler configuration and run the Event Handler to test your configuration.

Configure the Event Handler​

Edit the configuration for the Event Handler, depending on your installation method.

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

storage = "./storage"
timeout = "10s"
batch = 20
# concurrency is the number of concurrent sessions to process. By default, this is set to 5.
concurrency = 5
# 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"
# types is a comma-separated list of event types to search when forwarding audit
# events. For example, to limit forwarded events to user logins
# and new Access Requests, you can assign this field to
# "user.login,access_request.create".
types = ""
# skip-event-types is a comma-separated list of audit log event types to skip.
# For example, to forward all audit events except for new app deletion events,
# you can include the following assignment:
# skip-event-types = ["app.delete"]
skip-event-types = []
# skip-session-types is a comma-separated list of session recording event types to skip.
# For example, to forward all session events except for malformed SQL packet
# events, you can include the following assignment:
# skip-session-types = ["db.session.malformed_packet"]
skip-session-types = []

[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"
# The Event Handler appends `.<session-id>.log` to `session-url` when sending
# session recording events. For example, if `session-url` is
# `https://fluentd.example.com:8888/session`, the actual requests are sent to
# paths like `/session.<session-id>.log`. Ensure that your log collector's
# tag matching or routing rules account for this suffix (e.g., use `session.*`
# as a match pattern in Fluentd or Fluent Bit).
session-url = "https://fluentd.example.com:8888/session"

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

Update the following fields.

[teleport]

addr: Include the hostname and HTTPS port of your Teleport Proxy Service or Teleport Enterprise Cloud account: teleport.example.com:443

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

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.

[forward.fluentd]

ca: Include the path to the CA certificate: /home/bob/event-handler/ca.crt

cert: Include the path to the Fluentd client certificate. /home/bob/event-handler/client.crt

key: Include the path to the Fluentd client key. /home/bob/event-handler/client.key

url: Include the Fluentd URL where the audit event logs will be sent.

session-url: Include the Fluentd URL where the session logs will be sent.

Start the Event Handler​

Start the 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 & Workload Identity 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:2022-09-2118:51:04.849 +0000 UTC type:cert.create event-handler/app.go:140...

Step 4/4. Visualize your audit events in Splunk​

Since our setup forwards audit events to Splunk in the structured JSON format, Splunk automatically indexes them, so fields will be available immediately for use in visualizations. You can use these fields to create dashboards that track the way users are interacting with your Teleport cluster.

For example, from the Splunk UI home page, navigate to Search & Reporting > Dashboards > Create New Dashboard. Enter "Teleport Audit Log Types" for the title of your dashboard and click Classic Dashboards. Click Create then, in the Edit Dashboard view, click Add Panel.

In the Add Panel sidebar, click New > Column Chart. For the Search String field, enter the following:

index="teleport-audit-logs" | timechart count by event

Once you click Add to Dashboard you will see a count of Teleport event types over time, which gives you a general sense of how users are interacting with Teleport:

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.
  • In your Teleport Event Handler configuration file, you have provided the correct host and port for the Teleport Proxy Service.

Next steps​

Now that you are exporting your audit logs to Splunk, consult our audit log reference so you can plan visualizations and alerts.

  • To see all of the options you can set in the values file for the teleport-plugin-event-handler Helm chart, consult our reference guide.