- Elasticsearch Guide: other versions:
- Elasticsearch introduction
- Getting started with Elasticsearch
- Set up Elasticsearch
- Installing Elasticsearch
- Configuring Elasticsearch
- Important Elasticsearch configuration
- Important System Configuration
- Bootstrap Checks
- Heap size check
- File descriptor check
- Memory lock check
- Maximum number of threads check
- Max file size check
- Maximum size virtual memory check
- Maximum map count check
- Client JVM check
- Use serial collector check
- System call filter check
- OnError and OnOutOfMemoryError checks
- Early-access check
- G1GC check
- All permission check
- Discovery configuration check
- Starting Elasticsearch
- Stopping Elasticsearch
- Adding nodes to your cluster
- Set up X-Pack
- Configuring X-Pack Java Clients
- Bootstrap Checks for X-Pack
- Upgrade Elasticsearch
- API conventions
- Document APIs
- Search APIs
- Aggregations
- Metrics Aggregations
- Avg Aggregation
- Weighted Avg Aggregation
- Cardinality Aggregation
- Extended Stats Aggregation
- Geo Bounds Aggregation
- Geo Centroid Aggregation
- Max Aggregation
- Min Aggregation
- Percentiles Aggregation
- Percentile Ranks Aggregation
- Scripted Metric Aggregation
- Stats Aggregation
- Sum Aggregation
- Top Hits Aggregation
- Value Count Aggregation
- Median Absolute Deviation Aggregation
- Bucket Aggregations
- Adjacency Matrix Aggregation
- Auto-interval Date Histogram Aggregation
- Children Aggregation
- Composite Aggregation
- Date Histogram Aggregation
- Date Range Aggregation
- Diversified Sampler Aggregation
- Filter Aggregation
- Filters Aggregation
- Geo Distance Aggregation
- GeoHash grid Aggregation
- GeoTile Grid Aggregation
- Global Aggregation
- Histogram Aggregation
- IP Range Aggregation
- Missing Aggregation
- Nested Aggregation
- Parent Aggregation
- Range Aggregation
- Reverse nested Aggregation
- Sampler Aggregation
- Significant Terms Aggregation
- Significant Text Aggregation
- Terms Aggregation
- Pipeline Aggregations
- Avg Bucket Aggregation
- Derivative Aggregation
- Max Bucket Aggregation
- Min Bucket Aggregation
- Sum Bucket Aggregation
- Stats Bucket Aggregation
- Extended Stats Bucket Aggregation
- Percentiles Bucket Aggregation
- Moving Average Aggregation
- Moving Function Aggregation
- Cumulative Sum Aggregation
- Bucket Script Aggregation
- Bucket Selector Aggregation
- Bucket Sort Aggregation
- Serial Differencing Aggregation
- Matrix Aggregations
- Caching heavy aggregations
- Returning only aggregation results
- Aggregation Metadata
- Returning the type of the aggregation
- Metrics Aggregations
- Indices APIs
- Create Index
- Delete Index
- Get Index
- Indices Exists
- Open / Close Index API
- Shrink Index
- Split Index
- Rollover Index
- Put Mapping
- Get Mapping
- Get Field Mapping
- Types Exists
- Index Aliases
- Update Indices Settings
- Get Settings
- Analyze
- Index Templates
- Indices Stats
- Indices Segments
- Indices Recovery
- Indices Shard Stores
- Clear Cache
- Flush
- Refresh
- Force Merge
- cat APIs
- Cluster APIs
- Query DSL
- Scripting
- Mapping
- Analysis
- Anatomy of an analyzer
- Testing analyzers
- Analyzers
- Normalizers
- Tokenizers
- Standard Tokenizer
- Letter Tokenizer
- Lowercase Tokenizer
- Whitespace Tokenizer
- UAX URL Email Tokenizer
- Classic Tokenizer
- Thai Tokenizer
- NGram Tokenizer
- Edge NGram Tokenizer
- Keyword Tokenizer
- Pattern Tokenizer
- Char Group Tokenizer
- Simple Pattern Tokenizer
- Simple Pattern Split Tokenizer
- Path Hierarchy Tokenizer
- Path Hierarchy Tokenizer Examples
- Token Filters
- ASCII Folding Token Filter
- Flatten Graph Token Filter
- Length Token Filter
- Lowercase Token Filter
- Uppercase Token Filter
- NGram Token Filter
- Edge NGram Token Filter
- Porter Stem Token Filter
- Shingle Token Filter
- Stop Token Filter
- Word Delimiter Token Filter
- Word Delimiter Graph Token Filter
- Multiplexer Token Filter
- Conditional Token Filter
- Predicate Token Filter Script
- Stemmer Token Filter
- Stemmer Override Token Filter
- Keyword Marker Token Filter
- Keyword Repeat Token Filter
- KStem Token Filter
- Snowball Token Filter
- Phonetic Token Filter
- Synonym Token Filter
- Parsing synonym files
- Synonym Graph Token Filter
- Compound Word Token Filters
- Reverse Token Filter
- Elision Token Filter
- Truncate Token Filter
- Unique Token Filter
- Pattern Capture Token Filter
- Pattern Replace Token Filter
- Trim Token Filter
- Limit Token Count Token Filter
- Hunspell Token Filter
- Common Grams Token Filter
- Normalization Token Filter
- CJK Width Token Filter
- CJK Bigram Token Filter
- Delimited Payload Token Filter
- Keep Words Token Filter
- Keep Types Token Filter
- Exclude mode settings example
- Classic Token Filter
- Apostrophe Token Filter
- Decimal Digit Token Filter
- Fingerprint Token Filter
- MinHash Token Filter
- Remove Duplicates Token Filter
- Character Filters
- Modules
- Index modules
- Ingest node
- Pipeline Definition
- Ingest APIs
- Accessing Data in Pipelines
- Conditional Execution in Pipelines
- Handling Failures in Pipelines
- Processors
- Append Processor
- Bytes Processor
- Convert Processor
- Date Processor
- Date Index Name Processor
- Dissect Processor
- Dot Expander Processor
- Drop Processor
- Fail Processor
- Foreach Processor
- GeoIP Processor
- Grok Processor
- Gsub Processor
- HTML Strip Processor
- Join Processor
- JSON Processor
- KV Processor
- Lowercase Processor
- Pipeline Processor
- Remove Processor
- Rename Processor
- Script Processor
- Set Processor
- Set Security User Processor
- Split Processor
- Sort Processor
- Trim Processor
- Uppercase Processor
- URL Decode Processor
- User Agent processor
- Managing the index lifecycle
- Getting started with index lifecycle management
- Policy phases and actions
- Set up index lifecycle management policy
- Using policies to manage index rollover
- Update policy
- Index lifecycle error handling
- Restoring snapshots of managed indices
- Start and stop index lifecycle management
- Using ILM with existing indices
- SQL access
- Overview
- Getting Started with SQL
- Conventions and Terminology
- Security
- SQL REST API
- SQL Translate API
- SQL CLI
- SQL JDBC
- SQL ODBC
- SQL Client Applications
- SQL Language
- Functions and Operators
- Comparison Operators
- Logical Operators
- Math Operators
- Cast Operators
- LIKE and RLIKE Operators
- Aggregate Functions
- Grouping Functions
- Date/Time and Interval Functions and Operators
- Full-Text Search Functions
- Mathematical Functions
- String Functions
- Type Conversion Functions
- Geo Functions
- Conditional Functions And Expressions
- System Functions
- Reserved keywords
- SQL Limitations
- Monitor a cluster
- Frozen indices
- Set up a cluster for high availability
- Roll up or transform your data
- X-Pack APIs
- Info API
- Cross-cluster replication APIs
- Explore API
- Freeze index
- Index lifecycle management API
- Licensing APIs
- Machine learning APIs
- Add events to calendar
- Add jobs to calendar
- Close jobs
- Create jobs
- Create calendar
- Create datafeeds
- Create filter
- Delete calendar
- Delete datafeeds
- Delete events from calendar
- Delete filter
- Delete forecast
- Delete jobs
- Delete jobs from calendar
- Delete model snapshots
- Delete expired data
- Find file structure
- Flush jobs
- Forecast jobs
- Get calendars
- Get buckets
- Get overall buckets
- Get categories
- Get datafeeds
- Get datafeed statistics
- Get influencers
- Get jobs
- Get job statistics
- Get machine learning info
- Get model snapshots
- Get scheduled events
- Get filters
- Get records
- Open jobs
- Post data to jobs
- Preview datafeeds
- Revert model snapshots
- Set upgrade mode
- Start datafeeds
- Stop datafeeds
- Update datafeeds
- Update filter
- Update jobs
- Update model snapshots
- Migration APIs
- Rollup APIs
- Security APIs
- Authenticate
- Change passwords
- Clear cache
- Clear roles cache
- Create API keys
- Create or update application privileges
- Create or update role mappings
- Create or update roles
- Create or update users
- Delete application privileges
- Delete role mappings
- Delete roles
- Delete users
- Disable users
- Enable users
- Get API key information
- Get application privileges
- Get role mappings
- Get roles
- Get token
- Get users
- Has privileges
- Invalidate API key
- Invalidate token
- OpenID Connect Prepare Authentication API
- OpenID Connect Authenticate API
- OpenID Connect Logout API
- SSL certificate
- Transform APIs
- Unfreeze index
- Watcher APIs
- Definitions
- Secure a cluster
- Overview
- Configuring security
- Encrypting communications in Elasticsearch
- Encrypting communications in an Elasticsearch Docker Container
- Enabling cipher suites for stronger encryption
- Separating node-to-node and client traffic
- Configuring an Active Directory realm
- Configuring a file realm
- Configuring an LDAP realm
- Configuring a native realm
- Configuring a PKI realm
- Configuring a SAML realm
- Configuring a Kerberos realm
- Security files
- FIPS 140-2
- How security works
- User authentication
- Built-in users
- Internal users
- Token-based authentication services
- Realms
- Realm chains
- Active Directory user authentication
- File-based user authentication
- LDAP user authentication
- Native user authentication
- OpenID Connect authentication
- PKI user authentication
- SAML authentication
- Kerberos authentication
- Integrating with other authentication systems
- Enabling anonymous access
- Controlling the user cache
- Configuring SAML single-sign-on on the Elastic Stack
- Configuring single sign-on to the Elastic Stack using OpenID Connect
- User authorization
- Auditing security events
- Encrypting communications
- Restricting connections with IP filtering
- Cross cluster search, clients, and integrations
- Tutorial: Getting started with security
- Tutorial: Encrypting communications
- Troubleshooting
- Some settings are not returned via the nodes settings API
- Authorization exceptions
- Users command fails due to extra arguments
- Users are frequently locked out of Active Directory
- Certificate verification fails for curl on Mac
- SSLHandshakeException causes connections to fail
- Common SSL/TLS exceptions
- Common Kerberos exceptions
- Common SAML issues
- Internal Server Error in Kibana
- Setup-passwords command fails due to connection failure
- Failures due to relocation of the configuration files
- Limitations
- Alerting on cluster and index events
- Command line tools
- How To
- Testing
- Glossary of terms
- Release highlights
- Breaking changes
- Release notes
- Elasticsearch version 7.2.1
- Elasticsearch version 7.2.0
- Elasticsearch version 7.1.1
- Elasticsearch version 7.1.0
- Elasticsearch version 7.0.0
- Elasticsearch version 7.0.0-rc2
- Elasticsearch version 7.0.0-rc1
- Elasticsearch version 7.0.0-beta1
- Elasticsearch version 7.0.0-alpha2
- Elasticsearch version 7.0.0-alpha1
Back up a cluster’s security configuration
editBack up a cluster’s security configuration
editSecurity configuration information resides in two places: files and indices.
Back up file-based security configuration
editElasticsearch security features are configured using the xpack.security
namespace inside the elasticsearch.yml
and
elasticsearch.keystore
files. In addition there are several other
extra configuration files inside the same ES_PATH_CONF
directory. These files define roles and role mappings and
configure the file realm. Some of the
settings specify file paths to security-sensitive data, such as TLS keys and
certificates for the HTTP client and inter-node communication and private key files for
SAML and the
Kerberos realms. All these are also stored inside
ES_PATH_CONF
; the path settings are relative.
The elasticsearch.keystore
, TLS keys and SAML, OIDC, and Kerberos
realms private key files require confidentiality. This is crucial when files
are copied to the backup location, as this increases the surface for malicious
snooping.
To back up all this configuration you can use a conventional file-based backup, as described in the previous section.
- File backups must run on every cluster node.
- File backups will store non-security configuration as well. Backing-up only security features configuration is not supported. A backup is a point in time record of state of the complete configuration.
Back up index-based security configuration
editElasticsearch security features store system configuration data inside a
dedicated index. This index is named .security-6
in the Elasticsearch 6.x versions and
.security-7
in the 7.x releases. The .security
alias always points to the
appropriate index. This index contains the data which is not available in
configuration files and cannot be reliably backed up using standard
filesystem tools. This data describes:
- the definition of users in the native realm (including hashed passwords)
- role definitions (defined via the create roles API)
- role mappings (defined via the create role mappings API)
- application privileges
- API keys
The .security
index thus contains resources and definitions in addition to
configuration information. All of that information is required in a complete
security features backup.
Use the standard Elasticsearch snapshot functionality to backup
.security
, as you would for any other data index.
For convenience, here are the complete steps:
-
Create a repository that you can use to backup the
.security
index. It is preferable to have a dedicated repository for this special index. If you wish, you can also snapshot the system indices for other Elastic Stack components to this repository.PUT /_snapshot/my_backup { "type": "fs", "settings": { "location": "my_backup_location" } }
The user calling this API must have the elevated
manage
cluster privilege to prevent non-administrators exfiltrating data. -
Create a user and assign it only the built-in
snapshot_user
role.The following example creates a new user
snapshot_user
in the native realm, but it is not important which realm the user is a member of:POST /_security/user/snapshot_user { "password" : "secret", "roles" : [ "snapshot_user" ] }
-
Create incremental snapshots authorized as
snapshot_user
.The following example shows how to use the create snapshot API to backup the
.security
index to themy_backup
repository:This parameter value captures all the persistent settings stored in the global cluster metadata as well as other configurations such as aliases and stored scripts. Note that this includes non-security configuration and that it complements but does not replace the filesystem configuration files backup.
The index format is only compatible within a single major version, and cannot be restored onto a version earlier than the version from which it originated. For example, you can restore a security snapshot from 6.6.0 into a 6.7.0 cluster, but you cannot restore it to a cluster running Elasticsearch 6.5.0 or 7.0.0.
Controlling access to the backup repository
editThe snapshot of the security index will typically contain sensitive data such as user names and password hashes. Because passwords are stored using cryptographic hashes, the disclosure of a snapshot would not automatically enable a third party to authenticate as one of your users or use API keys. However, it would disclose confidential information.
It is also important that you protect the integrity of these backups in case you ever need to restore them. If a third party is able to modify the stored backups, they may be able to install a back door that would grant access if the snapshot is loaded into an Elasticsearch cluster.
We recommend that you:
-
Snapshot the
.security
index in a dedicated repository, where read and write access is strictly restricted and audited. - If there are indications that the snapshot has been read, change the passwords of the users in the native realm and revoke API keys.
- If there are indications that the snapshot has been tampered with, do not restore it. There is currently no option for the restore process to detect malicious tampering.
On this page