Microsoft DNS Server

Collect logs from Microsoft DNS Server with Elastic Agent.


Version	1.0.1 (View all)
Compatible Kibana version(s)	8.13.0 or higher
Supported Serverless project types What's this?	Security Observability
Subscription level What's this?	Basic
Level of support What's this?	Elastic

The Elastic integration for DNS Server logs is designed to facilitate the collection, aggregation, and analysis of DNS logs from both Audit and Analytical categories. By capturing detailed DNS event data, this integration enables organizations to enhance their visibility into DNS transactions, detect potential security threats, and optimize their network performance. Leveraging the powerful capabilities of Elastic Stack, this integration provides real-time insights and analytics, empowering IT and security teams to quickly respond to incidents and maintain robust network infrastructure integrity.

Data streams

The Microsoft DNS Server integration collects two type of data: audit and analytical.

Analytical events represent the bulk of DNS events, an analytic event is logged each time the server sends or receives DNS information.

Audit events enable change tracking on the DNS server. An audit event is logged each time server, zone, or resource record settings are changed. This includes operational events such as dynamic updates, zone transfers, and DNSSEC zone signing and unsigning.

Requirements

Elastic Agent must be installed.
You can install only one Elastic Agent per host.

Installing and managing an Elastic Agent:

You have a few options for installing and managing an Elastic Agent:

Install a Fleet-managed Elastic Agent (recommended):

With this approach, you install Elastic Agent and use Fleet in Kibana to define, configure, and manage your agents in a central location. We recommend using Fleet management because it makes the management and upgrade of your agents considerably easier.

Install Elastic Agent in standalone mode (advanced users):

With this approach, you install Elastic Agent and manually configure the agent locally on the system where it’s installed. You are responsible for managing and upgrading the agents. This approach is reserved for advanced users only.

Install Elastic Agent in a containerized environment:

You can run Elastic Agent inside a container, either with Fleet Server or standalone. Docker images for all versions of Elastic Agent are available from the Elastic Docker registry, and we provide deployment manifests for running on Kubernetes.

There are some minimum requirements for running Elastic Agent and for more information, refer to the link here.

This integration is supported in every Windows versions supported by Filebeat, starting from Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.

The minimum kibana.version required is 8.13.0.

Configuration

DNS analytical events are not enabled by default. To enable it, you can follow the guide to enable DNS diagnostics logging of Microsoft's documentation.

Note: DNS logging and diagnostics feature in Windows is designed to have a very low impact on performance. However, according to the Audit and analytic event logging section of the docs, typically will only affect DNS server performance at very high DNS query rates. For example, a DNS server running on modern hardware that is receiving 100,000 queries per second (QPS) can experience a performance degradation of 5% when analytic logs are enabled.

Usage

DNS Analytical events are collected through Event Tracing for Windows (ETW), a mechanism that allows real-time logging and capturing of Windows system events. This collection can be done either by initiating a new ETW session to gather logs directly from the DNS Server provider or by reading pre-existing logs from a .etl (Event Trace Log) file.

This integration provides a native filtering mechanism called Match All Keyword. This filter uses a 64-bit bitmask to specify which events to capture based on their defined keywords. Each keyword corresponds to a specific type of event detailed in the DNS Server provider's manifest.

To view these keywords and understand what types of events can be traced, you can run the following command in a command prompt: logman query providers "Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer". Here is an example of the output:

PS> logman query providers "Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer"

Provider                                 GUID
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer              {EB79061A-A566-4698-9119-3ED2807060E7}

Value               Keyword              Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0x0000000000000001  QUERY_RECEIVED
0x0000000000000002  RESPONSE_SUCCESS
0x0000000000000004  RESPONSE_FAILURE
0x0000000000000008  IGNORED_QUERY
0x0000000000000010  RECURSE_QUERY_OUT
0x0000000000000020  RECURSE_RESPONSE_IN
0x0000000000000040  RECURSE_QUERY_DROP
0x0000000000000080  DYN_UPDATE_RECV
0x0000000000000100  DYN_UPDATE_RESPONSE
0x0000000000000200  IXFR_REQ_OUT
0x0000000000000400  IXFR_REQ_RECV
0x0000000000000800  IXFR_RESP_OUT
0x0000000000001000  IXFR_RESP_RECV
0x0000000000002000  AXFR_REQ_OUT
0x0000000000004000  AXFR_REQ_RECV
0x0000000000008000  AXFR_RESP_OUT
0x0000000000010000  AXFR_RESP_RECV
0x0000000000020000  XFR_NOTIFY_IN
0x0000000000040000  XFR_NOTIFY_OUT
0x0000000000080000  AUDIT_ZONES
0x0000000000100000  AUDIT_REC_ADMIN
0x0000000000200000  AUDIT_ZONESCOPE
0x0000000000400000  AUDIT_ZONE_SIGN
0x0000000000800000  AUDIT_ROLLOVER
0x0000000001000000  AUDIT_FORWARDER
0x0000000002000000  AUDIT_REC_DYN_UPDATE
0x0000000004000000  AUDIT_ROOTHINTS
0x0000000008000000  AUDIT_SERVER_CONFIG
0x0000000010000000  AUDIT_RECURSIONSCOPE
0x0000000020000000  AUDIT_EXPORT_IMPORT
0x0000000040000000  AUDIT_REC_SCAVENGER
0x0000000080000000  AUDIT_CACHE
0x0000000100000000  AUDIT_TRUST_ANCHOR
0x0000000200000000  XFR_NOTIFY_ACK_IN
0x0000000400000000  DYN_UPDATE_FORWARD
0x0000000800000000  INTERNAL_LOOKUP_CNAME
0x0000001000000000  INTERNAL_LOOKUP_ADDITIONAL
0x0000002000000000  AUDIT_SERVER_ADMIN
0x0000004000000000  AUDIT_SERVER
0x0000008000000000  DYN_UPDATE_RESPONSE_IN
0x0000010000000000  XFR_NOTIFY_ACK_OUT
0x0000020000000000  AUDIT_POLICY
0x0000040000000000  RRL_TO_BE_DROPPED_RESPONSE
0x0000080000000000  RRL_TO_BE_TRUNCATED_RESPONSE
0x0000100000000000  RRL_TO_BE_LEAKED_RESPONSE
0x0000200000000000  AUDIT_RRL
0x0000400000000000  AUDIT_TENANT
0x0000800000000000  RECURSE_ALIAS_FAILURE
0x8000000000000000  Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer/Analytical Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Server/Analytical
0x4000000000000000  Microsoft-Windows-DNSServer/Audit Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Server/Audit

Value               Level                Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0x02                win:Error            Error
0x03                win:Warning          Warning
0x04                win:Informational    Information

PID                 Image
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0x00000354          C:\Windows\System32\dns.exe
0x00000354          C:\Windows\System32\dns.exe


The command completed successfully.

The output lists various event types with corresponding keywords, allowing you to select which events to monitor. For example, if you want to track recursive queries, you would look for keywords like RECURSE_QUERY_OUT, RECURSE_RESPONSE_IN, and RECURSE_QUERY_DROP. To set up filtering for these specific events, you would calculate the sum of their bitmask values. The result for this particular case would be 0x8000000000000070 (notice that it includes 0x8000000000000000 to match Analytical events as well).

On the other hand, Audit events are exposed through Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Server/Audit event log channel.

Logs reference

Analytical

Exported fields

Field	Description	Type
@timestamp	Event timestamp.	date
cloud.account.id	The cloud account or organization id used to identify different entities in a multi-tenant environment. Examples: AWS account id, Google Cloud ORG Id, or other unique identifier.	keyword
cloud.availability_zone	Availability zone in which this host is running.	keyword
cloud.image.id	Image ID for the cloud instance.	keyword
cloud.instance.id	Instance ID of the host machine.	keyword
cloud.instance.name	Instance name of the host machine.	keyword
cloud.machine.type	Machine type of the host machine.	keyword
cloud.project.id	Name of the project in Google Cloud.	keyword
cloud.provider	Name of the cloud provider. Example values are aws, azure, gcp, or digitalocean.	keyword
cloud.region	Region in which this host is running.	keyword
container.id	Unique container id.	keyword
container.image.name	Name of the image the container was built on.	keyword
container.labels	Image labels.	object
container.name	Container name.	keyword
data_stream.dataset	Data stream dataset.	constant_keyword
data_stream.namespace	Data stream namespace.	constant_keyword
data_stream.type	Data stream type.	constant_keyword
destination.as.number	Unique number allocated to the autonomous system. The autonomous system number (ASN) uniquely identifies each network on the Internet.	long
destination.as.organization.name	Organization name.	keyword
destination.as.organization.name.text	Multi-field of `destination.as.organization.name`.	match_only_text
destination.geo.city_name	City name.	keyword
destination.geo.continent_code	Two-letter code representing continent's name.	keyword
destination.geo.continent_name	Name of the continent.	keyword
destination.geo.country_iso_code	Country ISO code.	keyword
destination.geo.country_name	Country name.	keyword
destination.geo.location	Longitude and latitude.	geo_point
destination.geo.name	User-defined description of a location, at the level of granularity they care about. Could be the name of their data centers, the floor number, if this describes a local physical entity, city names. Not typically used in automated geolocation.	keyword
destination.geo.postal_code	Postal code associated with the location. Values appropriate for this field may also be known as a postcode or ZIP code and will vary widely from country to country.	keyword
destination.geo.region_iso_code	Region ISO code.	keyword
destination.geo.region_name	Region name.	keyword
destination.geo.timezone	The time zone of the location, such as IANA time zone name.	keyword
destination.ip	IP address of the destination (IPv4 or IPv6).	ip
destination.port	Port of the destination.	long
dns.header_flags	Array of 2 letter DNS header flags.	keyword
dns.id	The DNS packet identifier assigned by the program that generated the query. The identifier is copied to the response.	keyword
dns.question.name	The name being queried. If the name field contains non-printable characters (below 32 or above 126), those characters should be represented as escaped base 10 integers (\DDD). Back slashes and quotes should be escaped. Tabs, carriage returns, and line feeds should be converted to \t, \r, and \n respectively.	keyword
dns.question.type	The type of record being queried.	keyword
dns.response_code	The DNS response code.	keyword
ecs.version	ECS version this event conforms to. `ecs.version` is a required field and must exist in all events. When querying across multiple indices -- which may conform to slightly different ECS versions -- this field lets integrations adjust to the schema version of the events.	keyword
event.action	The action captured by the event. This describes the information in the event. It is more specific than `event.category`. Examples are `group-add`, `process-started`, `file-created`. The value is normally defined by the implementer.	keyword
event.category	This is one of four ECS Categorization Fields, and indicates the second level in the ECS category hierarchy. `event.category` represents the "big buckets" of ECS categories. For example, filtering on `event.category:process` yields all events relating to process activity. This field is closely related to `event.type`, which is used as a subcategory. This field is an array. This will allow proper categorization of some events that fall in multiple categories.	keyword
event.code	Identification code for this event, if one exists. Some event sources use event codes to identify messages unambiguously, regardless of message language or wording adjustments over time. An example of this is the Windows Event ID.	keyword
event.created	`event.created` contains the date/time when the event was first read by an agent, or by your pipeline. This field is distinct from `@timestamp` in that `@timestamp` typically contain the time extracted from the original event. In most situations, these two timestamps will be slightly different. The difference can be used to calculate the delay between your source generating an event, and the time when your agent first processed it. This can be used to monitor your agent's or pipeline's ability to keep up with your event source. In case the two timestamps are identical, `@timestamp` should be used.	date
event.dataset	Event dataset.	constant_keyword
event.ingested	Timestamp when an event arrived in the central data store. This is different from `@timestamp`, which is when the event originally occurred. It's also different from `event.created`, which is meant to capture the first time an agent saw the event. In normal conditions, assuming no tampering, the timestamps should chronologically look like this: `@timestamp` < `event.created` < `event.ingested`.	date
event.kind	This is one of four ECS Categorization Fields, and indicates the highest level in the ECS category hierarchy. `event.kind` gives high-level information about what type of information the event contains, without being specific to the contents of the event. For example, values of this field distinguish alert events from metric events. The value of this field can be used to inform how these kinds of events should be handled. They may warrant different retention, different access control, it may also help understand whether the data is coming in at a regular interval or not.	keyword
event.module	Event module.	constant_keyword
event.original	Raw text message of entire event. Used to demonstrate log integrity or where the full log message (before splitting it up in multiple parts) may be required, e.g. for reindex. This field is not indexed and doc_values are disabled. It cannot be searched, but it can be retrieved from `_source`. If users wish to override this and index this field, please see `Field data types` in the `Elasticsearch Reference`.	keyword
event.outcome	This is one of four ECS Categorization Fields, and indicates the lowest level in the ECS category hierarchy. `event.outcome` simply denotes whether the event represents a success or a failure from the perspective of the entity that produced the event. Note that when a single transaction is described in multiple events, each event may populate different values of `event.outcome`, according to their perspective. Also note that in the case of a compound event (a single event that contains multiple logical events), this field should be populated with the value that best captures the overall success or failure from the perspective of the event producer. Further note that not all events will have an associated outcome. For example, this field is generally not populated for metric events, events with `event.type:info`, or any events for which an outcome does not make logical sense.	keyword
event.provider	Source of the event. Event transports such as Syslog or the Windows Event Log typically mention the source of an event. It can be the name of the software that generated the event (e.g. Sysmon, httpd), or of a subsystem of the operating system (kernel, Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing).	keyword
event.reason	Reason why this event happened, according to the source. This describes the why of a particular action or outcome captured in the event. Where `event.action` captures the action from the event, `event.reason` describes why that action was taken. For example, a web proxy with an `event.action` which denied the request may also populate `event.reason` with the reason why (e.g. `blocked site`).	keyword
event.severity	The numeric severity of the event according to your event source. What the different severity values mean can be different between sources and use cases. It's up to the implementer to make sure severities are consistent across events from the same source. The Syslog severity belongs in `log.syslog.severity.code`. `event.severity` is meant to represent the severity according to the event source (e.g. firewall, IDS). If the event source does not publish its own severity, you may optionally copy the `log.syslog.severity.code` to `event.severity`.	long
event.type	This is one of four ECS Categorization Fields, and indicates the third level in the ECS category hierarchy. `event.type` represents a categorization "sub-bucket" that, when used along with the `event.category` field values, enables filtering events down to a level appropriate for single visualization. This field is an array. This will allow proper categorization of some events that fall in multiple event types.	keyword
host.architecture	Operating system architecture.	keyword
host.containerized	If the host is a container.	boolean
host.domain	Name of the domain of which the host is a member. For example, on Windows this could be the host's Active Directory domain or NetBIOS domain name. For Linux this could be the domain of the host's LDAP provider.	keyword
host.hostname	Hostname of the host. It normally contains what the `hostname` command returns on the host machine.	keyword
host.id	Unique host id. As hostname is not always unique, use values that are meaningful in your environment. Example: The current usage of `beat.name`.	keyword
host.ip	Host ip addresses.	ip
host.mac	Host mac addresses.	keyword
host.name	Name of the host. It can contain what `hostname` returns on Unix systems, the fully qualified domain name, or a name specified by the user. The sender decides which value to use.	keyword
host.os.build	OS build information.	keyword
host.os.codename	OS codename, if any.	keyword
host.os.family	OS family (such as redhat, debian, freebsd, windows).	keyword
host.os.kernel	Operating system kernel version as a raw string.	keyword
host.os.name	Operating system name, without the version.	keyword
host.os.name.text	Multi-field of `host.os.name`.	text
host.os.platform	Operating system platform (such centos, ubuntu, windows).	keyword
host.os.version	Operating system version as a raw string.	keyword
host.type	Type of host. For Cloud providers this can be the machine type like `t2.medium`. If vm, this could be the container, for example, or other information meaningful in your environment.	keyword
input.type	Input type.	keyword
log.file.path	Full path to the log file this event came from, including the file name. It should include the drive letter, when appropriate. If the event wasn't read from a log file, do not populate this field.	keyword
log.level	Original log level of the log event. If the source of the event provides a log level or textual severity, this is the one that goes in `log.level`. If your source doesn't specify one, you may put your event transport's severity here (e.g. Syslog severity). Some examples are `warn`, `err`, `i`, `informational`.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.additional_info	Any additional information relevant to the event.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.bytes_sent	The number of bytes sent in the DNS response.	long
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.cache_scope	Indicates whether the DNS data came from a cache and the scope of that cache.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.description	A textual description of the event.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.destination.ip	The IP address of the destination where the DNS query is sent or the response is received.	ip
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.destination.port	The network port on the destination host used in the DNS transaction.	long
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.dnssec	Indicates whether DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions) was used in the DNS transaction.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.elapsed_time	The time taken to process the DNS query or transaction.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.forward_interface_ip	The IP address of the network interface used to forward DNS queries to an upstream server.	ip
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.guid	A globally unique identifier associated with the event.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.interface_ip	The IP address of the network interface on the DNS server that handled the transaction.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.keywords	Keywords associated with the event, useful for categorizing or filtering.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.packet_data	The raw data of the DNS packet.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.policy_name	The name of any policy that influenced the handling of the DNS query or response.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.queries_attached	Number of queries that are associated with a particular event or transaction within the DNS server.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.question_name	The domain name queried in the DNS request.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.question_type	The type of DNS query, e.g., A, AAAA, MX, etc.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.qxid	The query transaction identifier.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.reason	The reason for any actions taken during the DNS transaction.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.recursion_depth	The depth of the recursion used in resolving the DNS query.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.recursion_scope	Indicates the scope of recursion allowed in the DNS query handling.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.response_code	The DNS response code, such as NOERROR, NXDOMAIN, etc.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.scope	General scope of the log or event, potentially indicating the context or breadth of impact.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.secure	Indicates whether the transaction was conducted over a secure channel.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.source.ip	The IP address of the source from which the DNS query originated.	ip
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.source.port	The network port on the source host used in the DNS transaction.	long
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.xid	The transaction identifier for the DNS request.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.zone	The DNS zone that is the subject of the query or affected by the event.	keyword
microsoft_dnsserver.analytical.zone_scope	Specifies the scope of the DNS zone involved in the event.	keyword
network.bytes	Total bytes transferred in both directions. If `source.bytes` and `destination.bytes` are known, `network.bytes` is their sum.	long
network.direction	Direction of the network traffic. When mapping events from a host-based monitoring context, populate this field from the host's point of view, using the values "ingress" or "egress". When mapping events from a network or perimeter-based monitoring context, populate this field from the point of view of the network perimeter, using the values "inbound", "outbound", "internal" or "external". Note that "internal" is not crossing perimeter boundaries, and is meant to describe communication between two hosts within the perimeter. Note also that "external" is meant to describe traffic between two hosts that are external to the perimeter. This could for example be useful for ISPs or VPN service providers.	keyword
network.protocol	In the OSI Model this would be the Application Layer protocol. For example, `http`, `dns`, or `ssh`. The field value must be normalized to lowercase for querying.	keyword
network.transport	Same as network.iana_number, but instead using the Keyword name of the transport layer (udp, tcp, ipv6-icmp, etc.) The field value must be normalized to lowercase for querying.	keyword
process.pid	Process id.	long
process.thread.id	Thread ID.	long
related.ip	All of the IPs seen on your event.	ip
source.as.number	Unique number allocated to the autonomous system. The autonomous system number (ASN) uniquely identifies each network on the Internet.	long
source.as.organization.name	Organization name.	keyword
source.as.organization.name.text	Multi-field of `source.as.organization.name`.	match_only_text
source.geo.city_name	City name.	keyword
source.geo.continent_code	Two-letter code representing continent's name.	keyword
source.geo.continent_name	Name of the continent.	keyword
source.geo.country_iso_code	Country ISO code.	keyword
source.geo.country_name	Country name.	keyword
source.geo.location	Longitude and latitude.	geo_point
source.geo.name	User-defined description of a location, at the level of granularity they care about. Could be the name of their data centers, the floor number, if this describes a local physical entity, city names. Not typically used in automated geolocation.	keyword
source.geo.postal_code	Postal code associated with the location. Values appropriate for this field may also be known as a postcode or ZIP code and will vary widely from country to country.	keyword
source.geo.region_iso_code	Region ISO code.	keyword
source.geo.region_name	Region name.	keyword
source.geo.timezone	The time zone of the location, such as IANA time zone name.	keyword
source.ip	IP address of the source (IPv4 or IPv6).	ip
source.port	Port of the source.	long
tags	List of keywords used to tag each event.	keyword
winlog.activity_id	A globally unique identifier that identifies the current activity. The events that are published with this identifier are part of the same activity.	keyword
winlog.channel	Used to enable special event processing. Channel values below 16 are reserved for use by Microsoft to enable special treatment by the ETW runtime. Channel values 16 and above will be ignored by the ETW runtime (treated the same as channel 0) and can be given user-defined semantics.	keyword
winlog.flags	Flags that provide information about the event such as the type of session it was logged to and if the event contains extended data.	keyword
winlog.keywords	The keywords are used to classify an event.	keyword
winlog.opcode	Code used to mark events with special semantics. Internal ETW metadata.	keyword
winlog.provider_guid	A globally unique identifier that identifies the provider that logged the event.	keyword
winlog.session	Configured session to forward ETW events from providers to consumers.	keyword
winlog.task	A categorical identifier for the type of task performed during the event.	keyword
winlog.version	Specify the version of a manifest-based event.	long

Audit