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HTTPS and Basic Authentication

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HTTPS and Basic Authentication

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To secure the communication between Packetbeat and Elasticsearch, you can use HTTPS and basic authentication. Here is a sample configuration:

elasticsearch:

  enabled: true
  username: packetbeat 
  password: verysecret 
  protocol: https 
  hosts: ["packetbeat.example.com:9200"]

	The username to use for authenticating to Elasticsearch.
	The password to use for authenticating to Elasticsearch.
	This setting enables the HTTPS protocol.
	The IP/port of the Elasticsearch nodes.

Elasticsearch doesn’t have built-in basic authentication, but you can achieve it either by using a web proxy or by using the Shield commercial plugin.

Packetbeat verifies the validity of the server certificates and only accepts trusted certificates. Creating a correct SSL/TLS infrastructure is outside the scope of this document, but a good guide to follow is the Running a Certificate Authority appendix from the Shield guide.

By default Packetbeat uses the list of trusted certificate authorities from the operating system where the Beat is running. You can configure Packetbeat to use a specific list of CA certificates instead of the list from the OS. Here is an example:

elasticsearch:
  enabled: true
  username: packetbeat
  password: verysecret
  protocol: https
  hosts: ["elasticsearch.example.com:9200"]
  save_topology: true
  certificate_authorities: 
    - /etc/pki/my_root_ca.pem
    - /etc/pki/my_other_ca.pem

The list of CA certificates to trust

For any given connection, the SSL/TLS certificates must have a subject that matches the value specified for hosts, or the TLS handshake fails. For example, if you specify hosts: ["foobar:9200"], the certificate MUST include foobar in the subject (CN=foobar) or as a subject alternative name (SAN). Make sure the hostname resolves to the correct IP address. If no DNS is available, then you can associate the IP address with your hostname in /etc/hosts (on Unix systems).

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