From version 5.0 onward, Shield is part of X-Pack. For more information, see Securing the Elastic Stack.
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Elastic Docs ›Shield [2.4] ›Getting Started with Shield

Enable Message Authentication

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Enable Message Authentication

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Message authentication verifies that a message has not been tampered with or corrupted in transit during node-to-node communication.

To enable message authentication:

  1. Run the syskeygen tool from ES_HOME without any options:

    bin/shield/syskeygen

    This creates a system key file in CONFIG_DIR/shield/system_key.

  2. Copy the genererated system key to the rest of the nodes in the cluster.

The system key is a symmetric key, so the same key must be on every node in the cluster.

Now that you’ve enabled message authentication, you might also want to Enable Auditing to keep track of attempted and successful interactions with your Elasticsearch cluster.

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