NOTE: You are looking at documentation for an older release. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
Auditing Security Settings
editAuditing Security Settings
editAll of these settings can be added to the elasticsearch.yml
configuration
file. For more information, see
Auditing security events.
General Auditing Settings
edit-
xpack.security.audit.enabled
-
Set to
true
to enable auditing on the node. The default value isfalse
. -
xpack.security.audit.outputs
-
Specifies where audit logs are output. For example:
[ index, logfile ]
. The default value islogfile
, which puts the auditing events in a dedicated file named<clustername>_audit.log
on each node.You can also specify
index
, which puts the auditing events in an Elasticsearch index that is prefixed with.security_audit_log
. The index can reside on the same cluster or a separate cluster. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. The outputs setting will be removed in 7.0 as there will only be one supported output type (logfile
). Users who wish to store their audit information in an Elasticsearch index should write to the log file output, and a use a file ingestion component to index it into Elasticsearch.For backwards compatibility reasons, if you use the logfile output type, a
<clustername>_access.log
file is also created. It contains the same information, but it uses the older (pre-6.5.0) formatting style. If the backwards compatible format is not required, it should be disabled. To do that, change its logger level tooff
in thelog4j2.properties
file. For more information, see Configuring logging levels.If the index is unavailable, it is possible for auditing events to be lost. The
index
output type should therefore be used in conjunction with thelogfile
output type and the latter should be the official record of events. This unreliability is an important reason for why theindex
output type was deprecated in 6.7.0 and will be removed in 7.0.
Audited Event Settings
editThe events and some other information about what gets logged can be controlled by using the following settings:
-
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.include
-
Specifies which events to include in the auditing output. The default value is:
access_denied, access_granted, anonymous_access_denied, authentication_failed, connection_denied, tampered_request, run_as_denied, run_as_granted
. -
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.exclude
- Excludes the specified events from the output. By default, no events are excluded.
-
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.emit_request_body
-
Specifies whether to include the request body from REST requests on certain event types such as
authentication_failed
. The default value isfalse
.No filtering is performed when auditing, so sensitive data may be audited in plain text when including the request body in audit events.
Local Node Info Settings
edit-
xpack.security.audit.logfile.emit_node_name
-
Specifies whether to include the node name as a field in
each audit event.
The default value is
true
. -
xpack.security.audit.logfile.emit_node_host_address
-
Specifies whether to include the node’s IP address as a field in each audit event.
The default value is
false
. -
xpack.security.audit.logfile.emit_node_host_name
-
Specifies whether to include the node’s host name as a field in each audit event.
The default value is
false
. -
xpack.security.audit.logfile.emit_node_id
-
Specifies whether to include the node id as a field in each audit event.
This is available for the new format only. That is to say, this information
does not exist in the
<clustername>_access.log
file. Unlike node name, whose value might change if the administrator changes the setting in the config file, the node id will persist across cluster restarts and the administrator cannot change it. The default value istrue
.
Audit Logfile Event Ignore Policies
editThese settings affect the ignore policies that enable fine-grained control over which audit events are printed to the log file. All of the settings with the same policy name combine to form a single policy. If an event matches all of the conditions for a specific policy, it is ignored and not printed.
-
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.ignore_filters.<policy_name>.users
- A list of user names or wildcards. The specified policy will not print audit events for users matching these values.
-
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.ignore_filters.<policy_name>.realms
- A list of authentication realm names or wildcards. The specified policy will not print audit events for users in these realms.
-
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.ignore_filters.<policy_name>.roles
- A list of role names or wildcards. The specified policy will not print audit events for users that have these roles. If the user has several roles, some of which are not covered by the policy, the policy will not cover this event.
-
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.ignore_filters.<policy_name>.indices
- A list of index names or wildcards. The specified policy will not print audit events when all the indices in the event match these values. If the event concerns several indices, some of which are not covered by the policy, the policy will not cover this event.
Audit Log Indexing Configuration Settings
edit
[6.7.0]
Deprecated in 6.7.0. xpack.security.audit.index
settings namespace refers to the index
audit output type which is deprecated and will be removed in 7.0
-
xpack.security.audit.index.bulk_size
-
Controls how many audit events are batched into a single write. The default
value is
1000
. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. -
xpack.security.audit.index.flush_interval
-
Controls how often buffered events are flushed to the index. The default value
is
1s
. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. -
xpack.security.audit.index.rollover
-
Controls how often to roll over to a new index:
hourly
,daily
,weekly
, ormonthly
. The default value isdaily
. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. -
xpack.security.audit.index.events.include
-
Specifies the audit events to be indexed. The default value is
anonymous_access_denied, authentication_failed, realm_authentication_failed, access_granted, access_denied, tampered_request, connection_granted, connection_denied, run_as_granted, run_as_denied
. See Audit event types for the complete list. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. -
xpack.security.audit.index.events.exclude
- Excludes the specified auditing events from indexing. By default, no events are excluded. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
-
xpack.security.audit.index.events.emit_request_body
-
Specifies whether to include the request body from REST requests on certain
event types such as
authentication_failed
. The default value isfalse
. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. -
xpack.security.audit.index.settings
-
Specifies settings for the indices that the events are stored in. For example, the following configuration sets the number of shards and replicas to 1 for the audit indices: [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.settings: index: number_of_shards: 1 number_of_replicas: 1
These settings apply to the local audit indices, as well as to the remote audit indices, but only if the remote cluster does not have security features enabled or the Elasticsearch versions are different. If the remote cluster has security features enabled and the versions coincide, the settings for the audit indices there will take precedence, even if they are unspecified (i.e. left to defaults).
Remote Audit Log Indexing Configuration Settings
edit
[6.7.0]
Deprecated in 6.7.0. xpack.security.audit.index
settings namespace refers to the index
audit output type which is deprecated and will be removed in 7.0
To index audit events to a remote Elasticsearch cluster, you configure the following
xpack.security.audit.index.client
settings:
-
xpack.security.audit.index.client.hosts
-
Specifies a comma-separated list of
host:port
pairs. These hosts should be nodes in the remote cluster. If you are using default values for thetransport.port
setting, you can omit theport
value. Otherwise, it must match thetransport.port
setting. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. -
xpack.security.audit.index.client.cluster.name
- Specifies the name of the remote cluster. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
-
xpack.security.audit.index.client.xpack.security.user
-
Specifies the
username:password
pair that is used to authenticate with the remote cluster. This user must have authority to create the.security-audit
index on the remote cluster. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
If the remote Elasticsearch cluster has Transport Layer Security (TLS/SSL) enabled, you
must set the following setting to true
:
-
xpack.security.audit.index.client.xpack.security.transport.ssl.enabled
-
Used to enable or disable TLS/SSL for the transport client that forwards audit
logs to the remote cluster. The default is
false
. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
You must also specify the information necessary to access certificates. See Auditing TLS/SSL Settings.
You can pass additional settings to the remote client by specifying them in the
xpack.security.audit.index.client
namespace.
[6.7.0]
Deprecated in 6.7.0.
For example,
you can add transport settings and
advanced TCP settings in that namespace. To allow the remote
client to discover all of the nodes in the remote cluster you can specify the
client.transport.sniff
setting:
xpack.security.audit.index.client.transport.sniff: true