Teleport
Export Teleport Audit Events to the Elastic Stack
- Edge version
- Version 17.x
- Version 16.x
- Version 15.x
- Older Versions
Teleport's Event Handler plugin receives audit events from the Teleport Auth Service and forwards them to your log management solution, letting you perform historical analysis, detect unusual behavior, and form a better understanding of how users interact with your Teleport cluster.
In this guide, we will show you how to configure Teleport's Event Handler plugin to send your Teleport audit events to the Elastic Stack. In this setup, the Event Handler plugin forwards audit events from Teleport to Logstash, which stores them in Elasticsearch for visualization and alerting in Kibana.
Prerequisites
-
A running Teleport cluster version 16.4.10 or above. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.
-
The
tctl
admin tool andtsh
client tool.Visit Installation for instructions on downloading
tctl
andtsh
.
Recommended: Configure Machine ID to provide short-lived Teleport
credentials to the plugin. Before following this guide, follow a Machine ID
deployment guide
to run the tbot
binary on your infrastructure.
-
Logstash version 8.4.1 or above running on a Linux host. In this guide, you will also run the Event Handler plugin on this host.
-
Elasticsearch and Kibana version 8.4.1 or above, either running via an Elastic Cloud account or on your own infrastructure. You will need permissions to create and manage users in Elasticsearch.
We have tested this guide on the Elastic Stack version 8.4.1.
Step 1/4. Set up the Event Handler plugin
The Event Handler plugin is a binary that runs independently of your Teleport cluster. It authenticates to your Teleport cluster and Logstash using mutual TLS. In this section, you will install the Event Handler plugin on the Linux host where you are running Logstash and generate credentials that the plugin will use for authentication.
Install the Event Handler plugin
Follow the instructions for your environment to install the Event Handler plugin on your Logstash host:
The Event Handler plugin is provided in amd64
and arm64
binaries for downloading.
Replace ARCH
with your required version.
curl -L -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-event-handler-v16.4.10-linux-ARCH-bin.tar.gztar -zxvf teleport-event-handler-v16.4.10-linux-ARCH-bin.tar.gzsudo ./teleport-event-handler/install
The Event Handler plugin is provided in amd64
and arm64
binaries for downloading.
Replace ARCH
with your required version.
curl -L -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-event-handler-v16.4.10-darwin-ARCH-bin.tar.gztar -zxvf teleport-event-handler-v16.4.10-darwin-ARCH-bin.tar.gzsudo ./teleport-event-handler/install
Ensure that you have Docker installed and running.
docker pull public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-event-handler:16.4.10
To allow Helm to install charts that are hosted in the Teleport Helm repository, use helm repo add
:
helm repo add teleport https://charts.releases.teleport.dev
To update the cache of charts from the remote repository, run helm repo update
:
helm repo update
You will need Go >= 1.22.10 installed.
Run the following commands on your Universal Forwarder host:
git clone https://github.com/gravitational/teleport.git --depth 1 -b branch/v16cd teleport/integrations/event-handlermake build
The resulting executable will have the name event-handler
. To follow the
rest of this guide, rename this file to teleport-event-handler
and move it
to /usr/local/bin
.
Generate a starter config file
Generate a configuration file with placeholder values for the Teleport Event Handler plugin. Later in this guide, we will edit the configuration file for your environment.
Run the configure
command to generate a sample configuration. Replace
mytenant.teleport.sh
with the DNS name of your Teleport Enterprise Cloud
tenant:
teleport-event-handler configure . mytenant.teleport.sh:443
Run the configure
command to generate a sample configuration. Replace
teleport.example.com:443
with the DNS name and HTTPS port of Teleport's Proxy
Service:
teleport-event-handler configure . teleport.example.com:443
Run the configure
command to generate a sample configuration. Assign
TELEPORT_CLUSTER_ADDRESS
to the DNS name and port of your Teleport Auth
Service or Proxy Service:
TELEPORT_CLUSTER_ADDRESS=mytenant.teleport.sh:443docker run -v `pwd`:/opt/teleport-plugin -w /opt/teleport-plugin public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-event-handler:16.4.10 configure . ${TELEPORT_CLUSTER_ADDRESS?}
In order to export audit events, you'll need to have the root certificate and the client credentials available as a secret. Use the following command to create that secret in Kubernetes:
kubectl create secret generic teleport-event-handler-client-tls --from-file=ca.crt=ca.crt,client.crt=client.crt,client.key=client.key
This will pack the content of ca.crt
, client.crt
, and client.key
into the
secret so the Helm chart can mount them to their appropriate path.
Run the configure
command to generate a sample configuration:
docker run -v `pwd`:/opt/teleport-plugin -w /opt/teleport-plugin public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-event-handler:16.4.10 configure .
You'll see the following output:
Teleport event handler 16.4.10
[1] mTLS Fluentd certificates generated and saved to ca.crt, ca.key, server.crt, server.key, client.crt, client.key
[2] Generated sample teleport-event-handler role and user file teleport-event-handler-role.yaml
[3] Generated sample fluentd configuration file fluent.conf
[4] Generated plugin configuration file teleport-event-handler.toml
The plugin generates several setup files:
ls -l-rw------- 1 bob bob 1038 Jul 1 11:14 ca.crt
-rw------- 1 bob bob 1679 Jul 1 11:14 ca.key
-rw------- 1 bob bob 1042 Jul 1 11:14 client.crt
-rw------- 1 bob bob 1679 Jul 1 11:14 client.key
-rw------- 1 bob bob 541 Jul 1 11:14 fluent.conf
-rw------- 1 bob bob 1078 Jul 1 11:14 server.crt
-rw------- 1 bob bob 1766 Jul 1 11:14 server.key
-rw------- 1 bob bob 260 Jul 1 11:14 teleport-event-handler-role.yaml
-rw------- 1 bob bob 343 Jul 1 11:14 teleport-event-handler.toml
File(s) | Purpose |
---|---|
ca.crt and ca.key | Self-signed CA certificate and private key for Fluentd |
server.crt and server.key | Fluentd server certificate and key |
client.crt and client.key | Fluentd client certificate and key, all signed by the generated CA |
teleport-event-handler-role.yaml | user and role resource definitions for Teleport's event handler |
fluent.conf | Fluentd plugin configuration |
This guide assumes that you are running the Event Handler on the same host or
Kubernetes pod as your log forwarder. If you are not, you will need to instruct
the Event Handler to generate mTLS certificates for subjects besides
localhost
. To do this, use the --cn
and --dns-names
flags of the
teleport-event-handler
configure command.
For example, if your log forwarder is addressable at forwarder.example.com
and the
Event Handler at handler.example.com
, you would run the following configure
command:
teleport-event-handler configure --cn=handler.example.com --dns-names=forwarder.example.com
The command generates client and server certificates with the subjects set to
the value of --cn
.
The --dns-names
flag accepts a comma-separated list of DNS names. It will
append subject alternative names (SANs) to the server certificate (the one you
will provide to your log forwarder) for each DNS name in the list. The Event
Handler looks up each DNS name before appending it as an SAN and exits with an
error if the lookup fails.
We'll re-purpose the files generated for Fluentd in our Logstash configuration.
Define RBAC resources
The teleport-event-handler configure
command generated a file called
teleport-event-handler-role.yaml
. This file defines a teleport-event-handler
role and a user with read-only access to the event
API:
kind: role
metadata:
name: teleport-event-handler
spec:
allow:
rules:
- resources: ['event', 'session']
verbs: ['list','read']
version: v5
---
kind: user
metadata:
name: teleport-event-handler
spec:
roles: ['teleport-event-handler']
version: v2
Move this file to your workstation (or recreate it by pasting the snippet above)
and use tctl
on your workstation to create the role and the user:
tctl create -f teleport-event-handler-role.yamluser "teleport-event-handler" has been created
role 'teleport-event-handler' has been created
If you are running Teleport on your Elastic Stack host, e.g., you are exposing
Kibana's HTTP endpoint via the Teleport Application Service, running the tctl create
command above will generate an error similar to the following:
ERROR: tctl must be either used on the auth server or provided with the identity file via --identity flag
To avoid this error, create the teleport-event-handler-role.yaml
file on your
workstation, then sign in to your Teleport cluster and run the tctl
command
locally.
Enable issuing of credentials for the Event Handler role
With the role created, you now need to allow the Machine ID bot to produce credentials for this role.
This can be done with tctl
, replacing my-bot
with the name of your bot:
tctl bots update my-bot --add-roles teleport-event-handler
In order for the Event Handler plugin to forward events from your Teleport
cluster, it needs signed credentials from the cluster's certificate authority.
The teleport-event-handler
user cannot request this itself, and requires
another user to impersonate this account in order to request credentials.
Create a role that enables your user to impersonate the teleport-event-handler
user. First, paste the following YAML document into a file called
teleport-event-handler-impersonator.yaml
:
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
name: teleport-event-handler-impersonator
spec:
options:
# max_session_ttl defines the TTL (time to live) of SSH certificates
# issued to the users with this role.
max_session_ttl: 10h
# This section declares a list of resource/verb combinations that are
# allowed for the users of this role. By default nothing is allowed.
allow:
impersonate:
users: ["teleport-event-handler"]
roles: ["teleport-event-handler"]
Next, create the role:
tctl create teleport-event-handler-impersonator.yaml
Add this role to the user that generates signed credentials for the Event Handler:
Assign the teleport-event-handler-impersonator
role to your Teleport user by running the appropriate
commands for your authentication provider:
-
Retrieve your local user's roles as a comma-separated list:
ROLES=$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.roles | join(",")') -
Edit your local user to add the new role:
tctl users update $(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') \ --set-roles "${ROLES?},teleport-event-handler-impersonator" -
Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.
-
Open your
github
authentication connector in a text editor:tctl edit github/github -
Edit the
github
connector, addingteleport-event-handler-impersonator
to theteams_to_roles
section.The team you should map to this role depends on how you have designed your organization's role-based access controls (RBAC). However, the team must include your user account and should be the smallest team possible within your organization.
Here is an example:
teams_to_roles: - organization: octocats team: admins roles: - access + - teleport-event-handler-impersonator
-
Apply your changes by saving closing the file in your editor.
-
Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.
-
Retrieve your
saml
configuration resource:tctl get --with-secrets saml/mysaml > saml.yamlNote that the
--with-secrets
flag adds the value ofspec.signing_key_pair.private_key
to thesaml.yaml
file. Because this key contains a sensitive value, you should remove the saml.yaml file immediately after updating the resource. -
Edit
saml.yaml
, addingteleport-event-handler-impersonator
to theattributes_to_roles
section.The attribute you should map to this role depends on how you have designed your organization's role-based access controls (RBAC). However, the group must include your user account and should be the smallest group possible within your organization.
Here is an example:
attributes_to_roles: - name: "groups" value: "my-group" roles: - access + - teleport-event-handler-impersonator
-
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f saml.yaml -
Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.
-
Retrieve your
oidc
configuration resource:tctl get oidc/myoidc --with-secrets > oidc.yamlNote that the
--with-secrets
flag adds the value ofspec.signing_key_pair.private_key
to theoidc.yaml
file. Because this key contains a sensitive value, you should remove the oidc.yaml file immediately after updating the resource. -
Edit
oidc.yaml
, addingteleport-event-handler-impersonator
to theclaims_to_roles
section.The claim you should map to this role depends on how you have designed your organization's role-based access controls (RBAC). However, the group must include your user account and should be the smallest group possible within your organization.
Here is an example:
claims_to_roles: - name: "groups" value: "my-group" roles: - access + - teleport-event-handler-impersonator
-
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f oidc.yaml -
Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.
Export the access plugin identity
Give the plugin access to a Teleport identity file. We recommend using Machine
ID for this in order to produce short-lived identity files that are less
dangerous if exfiltrated, though in demo deployments, you can generate
longer-lived identity files with tctl
:
Configure tbot
with an output that will produce the credentials needed by
the plugin. As the plugin will be accessing the Teleport API, the correct
output type to use is identity
.
For this guide, the directory
destination will be used. This will write these
credentials to a specified directory on disk. Ensure that this directory can
be written to by the Linux user that tbot
runs as, and that it can be read by
the Linux user that the plugin will run as.
Modify your tbot
configuration to add an identity
output.
If running tbot
on a Linux server, use the directory
output to write
identity files to the /opt/machine-id
directory:
outputs:
- type: identity
destination:
type: directory
# For this guide, /opt/machine-id is used as the destination directory.
# You may wish to customize this. Multiple outputs cannot share the same
# destination.
path: /opt/machine-id
If running tbot
on Kubernetes, write the identity file to Kubernetes secret
instead:
outputs:
- type: identity
destination:
type: kubernetes_secret
name: teleport-event-handler-identity
If operating tbot
as a background service, restart it. If running tbot
in
one-shot mode, execute it now.
You should now see an identity
file under /opt/machine-id
or a Kubernetes
secret named teleport-event-handler-identity
. This contains the private key and signed
certificates needed by the plugin to authenticate with the Teleport Auth
Service.
Like all Teleport users, teleport-event-handler
needs signed credentials in order to
connect to your Teleport cluster. You will use the tctl auth sign
command to
request these credentials.
The following tctl auth sign
command impersonates the teleport-event-handler
user,
generates signed credentials, and writes an identity file to the local
directory:
tctl auth sign --user=teleport-event-handler --out=identity
The plugin connects to the Teleport Auth Service's gRPC endpoint over TLS.
The identity file, identity
, includes both TLS and SSH credentials. The
plugin uses the SSH credentials to connect to the Proxy Service, which
establishes a reverse tunnel connection to the Auth Service. The plugin
uses this reverse tunnel, along with your TLS credentials, to connect to the
Auth Service's gRPC endpoint.
By default, tctl auth sign
produces certificates with a relatively short
lifetime. For production deployments, we suggest using Machine
ID to programmatically issue and renew
certificates for your plugin. See our Machine ID getting started
guide to learn more.
Note that you cannot issue certificates that are valid longer than your existing credentials.
For example, to issue certificates with a 1000-hour TTL, you must be logged in with a session that is
valid for at least 1000 hours. This means your user must have a role allowing
a max_session_ttl
of at least 1000 hours (60000 minutes), and you must specify a --ttl
when logging in:
tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --ttl=60060
If you are running the plugin on a Linux server, create a data directory to hold certificate files for the plugin:
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/teleport/plugins/api-credentialssudo mv identity /var/lib/teleport/plugins/api-credentials
If you are running the plugin on Kubernetes, Create a Kubernetes secret that contains the Teleport identity file:
kubectl -n teleport create secret generic --from-file=identity teleport-event-handler-identity
Once the Teleport credentials expire, you will need to renew them by running the
tctl auth sign
command again.
Step 2/4. Configure a Logstash pipeline
The Event Handler plugin forwards audit logs from Teleport by sending HTTP requests to a user-configured endpoint. We will define a Logstash pipeline that handles these requests, extracts logs, and sends them to Elasticsearch.
Create a role for the Event Handler plugin
Your Logstash pipeline will require permissions to create and manage Elasticsearch indexes and index lifecycle management policies, plus get information about your Elasticsearch deployment. Create a role with these permissions so you can later assign it to the Elasticsearch user you will create for the Event Handler.
In Kibana, navigate to "Management" > "Roles" and click "Create role". Enter the
name teleport-plugin
for the new role. Under the "Elasticsearch" section,
under "Cluster privileges", enter manage_index_templates
, manage_ilm
, and
monitor
.
Under "Index privileges", define an entry with audit-events-*
in the "Indices"
field and write
and manage
in the "Privileges" field. Click "Create role".
Create an Elasticsearch user for the Event Handler
Create an Elasticsearch user that Logstash can authenticate as when making requests to the Elasticsearch API.
In Kibana, find the hamburger menu on the upper left and click "Management",
then "Users" > "Create user". Enter teleport
for the "Username" and provide a
secure password.
Assign the user the teleport-plugin
role we defined earlier.
Prepare TLS credentials for Logstash
Later in this guide, your Logstash pipeline will use an HTTP input to receive audit events from the Teleport Event Handler plugin.
Logstash's HTTP input can only sign certificates with a private key that uses
the unencrypted PKCS #8 format. When you ran teleport-event-handler configure
earlier, the command generated an encrypted RSA key. We will convert this key to
PKCS #8.
You will need a password to decrypt the RSA key. To retrieve this, execute the
following command in the directory where you ran teleport-event-handler configure
:
cat fluent.conf | grep passphraseprivate_key_passphrase "ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff"
Convert the encrypted RSA key to an unencrypted PKCS #8 key. The command will prompt your for the password you retrieved:
openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -in server.key -nocrypt -out pkcs8.key
Enable Logstash to read the new key, plus the CA and certificate we generated earlier:
chmod +r pkcs8.key ca.crt server.crt
Define an index template
When the Event Handler plugin sends audit events to Logstash, Logstash needs to know how to parse these events to forward them to Elasticsearch. You can define this logic using an index template, which Elasticsearch uses to construct an index for data it receives.
Create a file called audit-events.json
with the following content:
{
"index_patterns": ["audit-events-*"],
"template": {
"settings": {},
"mappings": {
"dynamic":"true"
}
}
}
This index template modifies any index with the pattern audit-events-*
.
Because it includes the "dynamic": "true"
setting, it instructs Elasticsearch
to define index fields dynamically based on the events it receives. This is
useful for Teleport audit events, which use a variety of fields depending on
the event type.
Define a Logstash pipeline
On the host where you are running Logstash, create a configuration file that
defines a Logstash pipeline. This pipeline will receive logs from port 9601
and forward them to Elasticsearch.
On the host running Logstash, create a file called
/etc/logstash/conf.d/teleport-audit.conf
with the following content:
input {
http {
port => 9601
ssl => true
ssl_certificate => "/home/server.crt"
ssl_key => "/home/pkcs8.key"
ssl_certificate_authorities => [
"/home/ca.crt"
]
ssl_verify_mode => "force_peer"
}
}
output {
elasticsearch {
user => "teleport"
password => "ELASTICSEARCH_PASSPHRASE"
template_name => "audit-events"
template => "/home/audit-events.json"
index => "audit-events-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}"
template_overwrite => true
}
}
In the input.http
section, update ssl_certificate
and
ssl_certificate_authorities
to include the locations of the server certificate
and certificate authority files that the teleport-event-handler configure
command generated earlier.
Logstash will authenticate client certificates against the CA file and present a signed certificate to the Teleport Event Handler plugin.
Edit the ssl_key
field to include the path to the pkcs8.key
file we
generated earlier.
In the output.elasticsearch
section, edit the following fields depending on
whether you are using Elastic Cloud or your own Elastic Stack deployment:
Assign cloud_auth
to a string with the content teleport:PASSWORD
, replacing
PASSWORD
with the password you assigned to your teleport
user earlier.
Visit https://cloud.elastic.co/deployments
, find the "Cloud ID" field, copy
the content, and add it as the value of cloud_id
in your Logstash pipeline
configuration. The elasticsearch
section should resemble the following:
elasticsearch {
cloud_id => "CLOUD_ID"
cloud_auth => "teleport:PASSWORD"
template_name => "audit-events"
template => "/home/audit-events.json"
index => "audit-events-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}"
template_overwrite => true
}
Assign hosts
to a string indicating the hostname of your Elasticsearch host.
Assign user
to teleport
and password
to the passphrase you created for
your teleport
user earlier.
The elasticsearch
section should resemble the following:
elasticsearch {
hosts => "elasticsearch.example.com"
user => "teleport"
password => "PASSWORD"
template_name => "audit-events"
template => "/home/audit-events.json"
index => "audit-events-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}"
template_overwrite => true
}
Finally, modify template
to point to the path to the audit-events.json
file
you created earlier.
Because the index template we will create with this file applies to indices
with the prefix audit-events-*
, and we have configured our Logstash pipeline
to create an index with the title "audit-events-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}
, Elasticsearch
will automatically index fields from Teleport audit events.
Disable the Elastic Common Schema for your pipeline
The Elastic Common Schema (ECS) is a standard set of fields that Elastic Stack uses to parse and visualize data. Since we are configuring Elasticsearch to index all fields from your Teleport audit logs dynamically, we will disable the ECS for your Logstash pipeline.
On the host where you are running Logstash, edit /etc/logstash/pipelines.yml
to add the following entry:
- pipeline.id: teleport-audit-logs
path.config: "/etc/logstash/conf.d/teleport-audit.conf"
pipeline.ecs_compatibility: disabled
This disables the ECS for your Teleport audit log pipeline.
If your pipelines.yml
file defines an existing pipeline that includes
teleport-audit.conf
, e.g., by using a wildcard value in path.config
, adjust
the existing pipeline definition so it no longer applies to
teleport-audit.conf
.
Run the Logstash pipeline
Restart Logstash:
sudo systemctl restart logstash
Make sure your Logstash pipeline started successfully by running the following command to tail Logstash's logs:
sudo journalctl -u logstash -f
When your Logstash pipeline initializes its http
input and starts running, you
should see a log similar to this:
Sep 15 18:27:13 myhost logstash[289107]: [2022-09-15T18:27:13,491][INFO ][logstash.inputs.http][main][33bdff0416b6a2b643e6f4ab3381a90c62b3aa05017770f4eb9416d797681024] Starting http input listener {:address=>"0.0.0.0:9601", :ssl=>"true"}
These logs indicate that your Logstash pipeline has connected to Elasticsearch and installed a new index template:
Sep 12 19:49:06 myhost logstash[33762]: [2022-09-12T19:49:06,309][INFO ][logstash.outputs.elasticsearch][main] Elasticsearch version determined (8.4.1) {:es_version=>8}
Sep 12 19:50:00 myhost logstash[33762]: [2022-09-12T19:50:00,993][INFO ][logstash.outputs.elasticsearch][main] Installing Elasticsearch template {:name=>"audit-events"}
If Logstash fails to initialize the pipeline, it may continue to attempt to contact Elasticsearch. In that case, you will see repeated logs like the one below:
Sep 12 19:43:04 myhost logstash[33762]: [2022-09-12T19:43:04,519][WARN ][logstash.outputs.elasticsearch][main] Attempted to resurrect connection to dead ES instance, but got an error {:url=>"http://teleport:[email protected]:9200/", :exception=>LogStash::Outputs::ElasticSearch::HttpClient::Pool::HostUnreachableError, :message=>"Elasticsearch Unreachable: [http://127.0.0.1:9200/][Manticore::ClientProtocolException] 127.0.0.1:9200 failed to respond"}
Diagnosing the problem
To diagnose the cause of errors initializing your Logstash pipeline, search your
Logstash journalctl
logs for the following, which indicate that the pipeline is
starting. The relevant error logs should come shortly after these:
Sep 12 18:15:52 myhost logstash[27906]: [2022-09-12T18:15:52,146][INFO][logstash.javapipeline][main] Starting pipeline {:pipeline_id=>"main","pipeline.workers"=>2, "pipeline.batch.size"=>125, "pipeline.batch.delay"=>50,"pipeline.max_inflight"=>250,"pipeline.sources"=>["/etc/logstash/conf.d/teleport-audit.conf"],:thread=>"#<Thread:0x1c1a3ee5 run>"}
Sep 12 18:15:52 myhost logstash[27906]: [2022-09-12T18:15:52,912][INFO][logstash.javapipeline][main] Pipeline Java execution initialization time {"seconds"=>0.76}
Disabling Elasticsearch TLS
This guide assumes that you have already configured Elasticsearch and Logstash to communicate with one another via TLS.
If your Elastic Stack deployment is in a sandboxed or low-security environment
(e.g., a demo environment), and your journalctl
logs for Logstash show that
Elasticsearch is unreachable, you can disable TLS for communication between
Logstash and Elasticsearch.
Edit the file /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml
to set
xpack.security.http.ssl.enabled
to false
, then restart Elasticsearch.
Step 3/4. Run the Event Handler plugin
Configure the Teleport Event Handler
In this section, you will configure the Teleport Event Handler for your environment.
Earlier, we generated a file called teleport-event-handler.toml
to configure
the Fluentd event handler. This file includes setting similar to the following:
storage = "./storage"
timeout = "10s"
batch = 20
namespace = "default"
# The window size configures the duration of the time window for the event handler
# to request events from Teleport. By default, this is set to 24 hours.
# Reduce the window size if the events backend cannot manage the event volume
# for the default window size.
# The window size should be specified as a duration string, parsed by Go's time.ParseDuration.
window-size = "24h"
[forward.fluentd]
ca = "/home/bob/event-handler/ca.crt"
cert = "/home/bob/event-handler/client.crt"
key = "/home/bob/event-handler/client.key"
url = "https://fluentd.example.com:8888/test.log"
session-url = "https://fluentd.example.com:8888/session"
[teleport]
addr = "example.teleport.com:443"
identity = "identity"
Modify the configuration to replace fluentd.example.com
with the domain name
of your Fluentd deployment.
Use the following template to create teleport-plugin-event-handler-values.yaml
:
eventHandler:
storagePath: "./storage"
timeout: "10s"
batch: 20
namespace: "default"
# The window size configures the duration of the time window for the event handler
# to request events from Teleport. By default, this is set to 24 hours.
# Reduce the window size if the events backend cannot manage the event volume
# for the default window size.
# The window size should be specified as a duration string, parsed by Go's time.ParseDuration.
windowSize: "24h"
teleport:
address: "example.teleport.com:443"
identitySecretName: teleport-event-handler-identity
identitySecretPath: identity
fluentd:
url: "https://fluentd.fluentd.svc.cluster.local/events.log"
sessionUrl: "https://fluentd.fluentd.svc.cluster.local/session.log"
certificate:
secretName: "teleport-event-handler-client-tls"
caPath: "ca.crt"
certPath: "client.crt"
keyPath: "client.key"
persistentVolumeClaim:
enabled: true
Update the configuration file as follows.
Change forward.fluentd.url
to the scheme, host and port you configured for
your Logstash http
input earlier, https://localhost:9601
. Change
forward.fluentd.session-url
to the same value with the root URL path:
https://localhost:9601/
.
Change teleport.addr
to the host and port of your Teleport Proxy Service, or
the Auth Service if you have configured the Event Handler to connect to it
directly, e.g., mytenant.teleport.sh:443
.
addr
: Include the hostname and HTTPS port of your Teleport Proxy Service
or Teleport Enterprise Cloud account (e.g., teleport.example.com:443
or
mytenant.teleport.sh:443
).
identity
: Fill this in with the path to the identity file you exported
earlier.
client_key
, client_crt
, root_cas
: Comment these out, since we
are not using them in this configuration.
address
: Include the hostname and HTTPS port of your Teleport Proxy Service
or Teleport Enterprise Cloud tenant (e.g., teleport.example.com:443
or
mytenant.teleport.sh:443
).
identitySecretName
: Fill in the identitySecretName
field with the name
of the Kubernetes secret you created earlier.
identitySecretPath
: Fill in the identitySecretPath
field with the path
of the identity file within the Kubernetes secret. If you have followed the
instructions above, this will be identity
.
If you are providing credentials to the Event Handler using a tbot
binary that
runs on a Linux server, make sure the value of identity
in the Event Handler
configuration is the same as the path of the identity file you configured tbot
to generate, /opt/machine-id/identity
.
Start the Teleport Event Handler
Start the Teleport Teleport Event Handler by following the instructions below.
Copy the teleport-event-handler.toml
file to /etc
on your Linux server.
Update the settings within the toml
file to match your environment. Make sure to
use absolute paths on settings such as identity
and storage
. Files
and directories in use should only be accessible to the system user executing
the teleport-event-handler
service such as /var/lib/teleport-event-handler
.
Next, create a systemd service definition at the path
/usr/lib/systemd/system/teleport-event-handler.service
with the following
content:
[Unit]
Description=Teleport Event Handler
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/teleport-event-handler start --config=/etc/teleport-event-handler.toml --teleport-refresh-enabled=true
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/teleport-event-handler.pid
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
If you are not using Machine ID to provide short-lived credentials to the Event
Handler, you can remove the --teleport-refresh-enabled true
flag.
Enable and start the plugin:
sudo systemctl enable teleport-event-handlersudo systemctl start teleport-event-handler
You can configure when you would like the Teleport Event Handler to begin
exporting events when you run the start
command. This example will start
exporting from May 5th, 2021:
teleport-event-handler start --config /etc/teleport-event-handler.toml --start-time "2021-05-05T00:00:00Z"
You can only determine the start time once, when first running the Teleport
Event Handler. If you want to change the time frame later, remove the plugin
state directory that you specified in the storage
field of the handler's
configuration file.
Once the Teleport Event Handler starts, you will see notifications about scanned and forwarded events:
sudo journalctl -u teleport-event-handlerDEBU Event sent id:f19cf375-4da6-4338-bfdc-e38334c60fd1 index:0 ts:2022-09-2118:51:04.849 +0000 UTC type:cert.create event-handler/app.go:140...
Run the following command on your workstation:
helm install teleport-plugin-event-handler teleport/teleport-plugin-event-handler \ --values teleport-plugin-event-handler-values.yaml \ --version 16.4.10
Navigate to the directory where you ran the configure
command earlier and
execute the following command:
docker run --network host -v `pwd`:/opt/teleport-plugin -w /opt/teleport-plugin public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-event-handler:16.4.10 start --config=teleport-event-handler.toml
This command joins the Event Handler container to the preset host
network,
which uses the Docker host networking mode and removes network isolation, so the
Event Handler can communicate with the Fluentd container on localhost.
Step 4/4. Create a data view in Kibana
Make it possible to explore your Teleport audit events in Kibana by creating a data view. In the Elastic Stack UI, find the hamburger menu on the upper left of the screen, then click "Management" > "Data Views". Click "Create data view".
For the "Name" field, use "Teleport Audit Events". In "Index pattern", use
audit-events-*
to select all indices created by our Logstash pipeline. In
"Timestamp field", choose time
, which Teleport adds to its audit events.
To use your data view, find the search box at the top of the Elastic Stack UI and enter "Discover". On the upper left of the screen, click the dropdown menu and select "Teleport Audit Events". You can now search and filter your Teleport audit events in order to get a better understanding how users are interacting with your Teleport cluster.
For example, we can click the event
field on the left sidebar and visualize
the event types for your Teleport audit events over time:
Troubleshooting connection issues
If the Teleport Event Handler is displaying error logs while connecting to your Teleport Cluster, ensure that:
- The certificate the Teleport Event Handler is using to connect to your
Teleport cluster is not past its expiration date. This is the value of the
--ttl
flag in thetctl auth sign
command, which is 12 hours by default. - Ensure that in your Teleport Event Handler configuration file
(
teleport-event-handler.toml
), you have provided the correct host and port for the Teleport Proxy Service or Auth Service.
Next steps
Now that you are exporting your audit events to the Elastic Stack, consult our audit event reference so you can plan visualizations and alerts.
While this guide uses the tctl auth sign
command to issue credentials for the
Teleport Event Handler, production clusters should use Machine ID for safer,
more reliable renewals. Read our guide
to getting started with Machine ID.