Teleport's Event Handler plugin receives audit logs 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 the Teleport Event Handler plugin to send your Teleport audit logs to Splunk. In this setup, the Teleport Event Handler plugin forwards audit logs from Teleport to Splunk's Universal Forwarder, which stores them in Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise for visualization and alerting.
Prerequisites
-
A running Teleport cluster, including the Auth Service and Proxy Service. For details on how to set this up, see our Enterprise Getting Started guide.
-
The
tctl
admin tool andtsh
client tool version >= 11.3.1, which you can download by visiting the customer portal.tctl versionTeleport v11.3.1 go1.19
tsh versionTeleport v11.3.1 go1.19
-
A Teleport Cloud account, which includes a running Auth Service and Proxy Service. If you do not have a Teleport Cloud account, visit the sign up page to begin your free trial.
-
The
tctl
admin tool andtsh
client tool version >= 11.2.1. To download these tools, visit the Downloads page.tctl versionTeleport v11.2.1 go1.19
tsh versionTeleport v11.2.1 go1.19
-
Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise v9.0.1 or above.
-
A Linux host where you will run the Teleport Event Handler plugin and Splunk Universal Forwarder. The Universal Forwarder must be installed on the host.
If you run the Teleport Event Handler and Universal Forwarder on the same host, there is no need to open a port on the host for ingesting logs. However, if you run the Universal Forwarder on a separate host from the Teleport Event Handler, you will need to open a port on the Universal Forwarder host to traffic from the Teleport Event Handler. This guide assumes that the Universal Forwarder is listening on port
9061
. -
On Splunk Enterprise, port
8088
should be open to traffic from the host running the Teleport Event Handler and Universal Forwarder.
To connect to Teleport, log in to your cluster using tsh
, then use tctl
remotely:
tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com [email protected]tctl statusCluster teleport.example.com
Version 11.3.1
CA pin sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
You can run subsequent tctl
commands in this guide on your local machine.
For full privileges, you can also run tctl
commands on your Auth Service host.
To connect to Teleport, log in to your cluster using tsh
, then use tctl
remotely:
tsh login --proxy=myinstance.teleport.sh [email protected]tctl statusCluster myinstance.teleport.sh
Version 11.2.1
CA pin sha256:sha-hash-here
You must run subsequent tctl
commands in this guide on your local machine.
Step 1/4. Set up the Teleport Event Handler plugin
The Event Handler plugin is a binary that runs independently of your Teleport cluster. It authenticates to your Teleport cluster and your Splunk Universal Forwarder using mutual TLS. In this section, you will install the Teleport Event Handler plugin on the Linux host where you are running your Universal Forwarder and generate credentials that the plugin will use for authentication.
Install the Teleport Event Handler plugin
Follow the instructions for your environment to install the Teleport Event Handler plugin on your Universal Forwarder host:
Version
On the host where you are running the Universal Forwarder, execute the following commands:
curl -L -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-event-handler-v11.3.1-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gztar -zxvf teleport-event-handler-v11.3.1-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
Move the teleport-event-handler
binary to /usr/local/bin
.
On the host where you are running the Universal Forwarder, execute the following command:
docker pull public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-event-handler:11.3.1
You must have Docker installed on your Universal Forwarder host.
Log in to the host and execute the following commands to build the plugin:
git clone https://github.com/gravitational/teleport-plugins.git --depth 1cd teleport-plugins/event-handler/build.assetsmake build
You can find the compiled binary within your clone of the teleport-plugins
repo, with the file path, event-handler/build/teleport-event-handler
. Move
this to /usr/local/bin
.
You will need Go >= 1.19 installed.
Run the following commands on your Universal Forwarder host:
git clone https://github.com/gravitational/teleport-plugins.git --depth 1cd teleport-plugins/event-handlergo 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
On the host where you are running the Universal Forwarder and the Teleport Event Handler plugin, execute the following command to generate a sample configuration that we will edit later:
teleport-event-handler configure .
The teleport-event-handler configure
command generates several files that you
will refer to when generating credentials for the Teleport Event Handler plugin
and configuring the Universal Forwarder:
File(s) | Purpose |
---|---|
ca.crt | Self-signed CA certificate that the Teleport Event Handler plugin and the Universal Forwarder will use to validate one another's TLS certificates. |
server.crt and server.key | TLS certificate and key for the Universal Forwarder. |
client.crt and client.key | TLS certificate and key for the Teleport Event Handler plugin. |
teleport-event-handler-role.yaml | user and role resource definitions for the Teleport Event Handler plugin. |
fluent.conf | Fluentd configuration file. We will use parts of this to configure the Universal Forwarder. |
teleport-event-handler.toml | Starter configuration file for the Teleport Event Handler plugin. |
ca.key | Not used in this setup. |
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
Enable impersonation of the Teleport Event Handler plugin user
In order for the Teleport 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. We
will show you how to enable impersonation for your Teleport user so you can
retrieve credentials for the Teleport Event Handler.
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 -f teleport-event-handler-impersonator.yaml
Assign this role to your Teleport user by running the following commands,
depending on whether you authenticate as a local Teleport user or via the
github
, saml
, or oidc
authentication connectors:
Retrieve your local user's configuration resource:
tctl get users/$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') > myuser.yaml
This command requires jq
to be installed on your workstation, which you can do
via the jq
download page.
Edit myuser.yaml
, adding teleport-event-handler-impersonator
to the list of
existing roles.
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f myuser.yaml
Retrieve your github
configuration resource:
tctl get github/github > github.yaml
Edit github.yaml
, adding teleport-event-handler-impersonator
to the
teams_to_roles
section. The team you will map to this role will depend on how
you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the smallest team
possible within your organization. This team must also include your user.
Here is an example:
teams_to_roles:
- organization: octocats
team: admins
roles:
- access
+ - teleport-event-handler-impersonator
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f github.yaml
Retrieve your saml
configuration resource:
tctl get saml/mysaml > saml.yaml
Edit saml.yaml
, adding teleport-event-handler-impersonator
to the
attributes_to_roles
section. The attribute you will map to this role will
depend on how you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the
smallest group possible within your organization. This group must also include
your user.
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
Retrieve your oidc
configuration resource:
tctl get oidc/myoidc > oidc.yaml
Edit oidc.yaml
, adding teleport-event-handler-impersonator
to the
claims_to_roles
section. The claim you will map to this role will depend on
how you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the smallest
group possible within your organization. This group must also include your
user.
Here is an example:
claims_to_roles:
- name: "groups"
value: "my-group"
roles:
- access
+ - teleport-event-handler-impersonator
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f saml.yaml
Log out of your Teleport cluster and log in again to assume the new role.
Export the access plugin identity
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 for the plugin.
The format of the credentials depends on whether you have set up your Teleport cluster so clients and services connect to the Teleport Proxy Service or to the Teleport Auth Service instead.
The following tctl auth sign
command impersonates the teleport-event-handler
user, generates signed credentials, and writes an identity file to the local
directory. It uses the --ttl
flag to request a certificate with a lifetime of
10 days:
tctl auth sign --user=teleport-event-handler --out=auth.pem --ttl=240h
The Event Handler plugin listens for audit logs by connecting to the Teleport Auth Service's gRPC endpoint over TLS.
The identity file, auth.pem
, includes both TLS and SSH credentials. Your
Event Handler 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.
You will refer to this file later when configuring the plugin.
If your network allows your plugin to access the Auth Service directly, e.g., you are running the plugin on the Auth Service host, the plugin uses TLS credentials to connect to the Auth Service's gRPC endpoint and listen for audit events.
You can generate TLS credentials with the following command, which uses the
--ttl
flag to request a certificate with a lifetime of 10 days:
tctl auth sign --format=tls --user=teleport-event-handler --out=auth --ttl=240h
This command should result in three PEM-encoded files: auth.crt
,
auth.key
, and auth.cas
(certificate, private key, and CA certs
respectively). Later, you will configure the plugin to use these credentials to
connect to the Auth Service.
Move the credentials you generated to the host where you are running the Teleport Event Handler plugin.
Once the Teleport Event Handler's certificate expires, you will need to renew it
by running the tctl auth sign
command again.
Step 2/4. Configure the Universal Forwarder
In this step, you will configure the Universal Forwarder to receive audit logs
from the Teleport Event Handler plugin and forward them to Splunk. The Event
Handler sends audit logs as HTTP POST requests with the content type
application/json
.
We will assume that you assigned $SPLUNK_HOME
to /opt/splunkforwarder
when
installing the Universal Forwarder.
To find your $SPLUNK_HOME
, run the following command to see the location of
your Universal Forwarder service definition, which the init system systemd uses
to run the Universal Forwarder:
sudo systemctl status SplunkForwarder.service● SplunkForwarder.service - Systemd service file for Splunk, generated by 'splunk enable boot-start'
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/SplunkForwarder.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2022-10-07 15:57:37 UTC; 2h 18min ago
Main PID: 1772 (splunkd)
Tasks: 53 (limit: 2309)
Memory: 70.8M (limit: 1.8G)
CGroup: /system.slice/SplunkForwarder.service
├─1772 splunkd --under-systemd --systemd-delegate=yes -p 8089 _internal_launch_under_systemd
└─1810 [splunkd pid=1772] splunkd --under-systemd --systemd-delegate=yes -p 8089 _internal_launch_under_systemd [process-runner]
View the file at the path shown in the Loaded:
field. Your $SPLUNK_HOME
will include the filepath segments in ExecStart
before /bin
. In this case,
$SPLUNK_HOME
is /opt/splunkforwarder/
:
ExecStart=/opt/splunkforwarder/bin/splunk _internal_launch_under_systemd
Create an index for your audit logs
Create an index for your Teleport audit logs by visiting the home page of the
Splunk UI and navigating to Settings > Indexes. Click New Index.
Name your index teleport-audit-logs
and assign the Index Data Type field
to "Events".
The values of the remaining fields, Max raw data size and Searchable retention (days) depend on your organization's resources and practices for log management.
Click Save
Create a token for the Universal Forwarder
The Universal Forwarder authenticates client traffic using a token. To generate a token, visit the home page of the Splunk UI. Navigate to Settings > Data inputs In the Local inputs table, find the HTTP Event Collector row and click Add new
Enter a name you can use to recognize the token later so you can
manage it, e.g., Teleport Audit Events
. Click Next.
In the Input Settings view (above), next to the Source type field, click Select. In the Select Source Type dropdown menu, click Structured, then _json. Splunk will index incoming logs as JSON, which is the format the Event Handler uses to send logs to the Universal Forwarder.
In the Index section, select the teleport-audit-logs
index you created
earlier. Click Review then view the summary and click Submit. Copy the
Token Value field and keep it somewhere safe so you can use it later in this
guide.
Prepare a certificate file for the Universal Forwarder
The Universal Forwarder signs TLS certificates using a file that contains both
an X.509-format certificate and an RSA private key. To prepare this, run the
following commands on the Universal Forwarder host, where server.crt
and
server.key
are two of the files you generated earlier with the
teleport-event-handler configure
the command:
cp server.crt server.pemcat server.key >> server.pem
Allow the Universal Forwarder to access the certificate file:
sudo chown splunk:splunk server.pem
Configure the HTTP Event Collector
On your Universal Forwarder host, create a file at
/opt/splunkforwarder/etc/system/local/inputs.conf
with the following content:
[http]
port = 9061
disabled = false
serverCert = server.pem
sslPassword =
requireClientCert = true
[http://audit]
token =
index = teleport-audit-logs
allowQueryStringAuth = true
This configuration enables the HTTP input, which will listen on port 9061
and
receive logs from the Teleport Event Handler Plugin, assigning them to the
teleport-audit-logs
index.
Assign serverCert
to the path to the server.pem
file you generated earlier.
To assign sslPassword
, run the following command in the directory that
contains fluent.conf
:
cat fluent.conf | grep passphraseprivate_key_passphrase "ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff"
Copy the passphrase and paste it as the value of sslPassword
.
The token
field in the [http://audit]
section enables the Universal
Forwarder to collect logs from HTTP clients that present a token. Assign token
to the token you generated earlier.
allowQueryStringAuth
enables the Teleport Event Handler to include the token
in a query string, rather than the Authorization
HTTP header (the default).
This is necessary because the Teleport Event Handler does not currently support
custom HTTP headers.
Configure TLS
To configure secure communications between the Universal Forwarder and the
Teleport Event Handler, create a file called
/opt/splunkforwarder/etc/system/local/server.conf
with the following content
(if this file already exists, add the following field in the [sslConfig]
section):
[sslConfig]
sslRootCAPath =
Assign sslRootCAPath
to the path of the ca.crt
file you generated earlier.
Ensure that the Universal Forwarder can read the CA certificate:
sudo chmod +r ca.crt
Configure an output
Instruct the Universal Forwarder to send the logs it collects to Splunk.
Create a file at the path /opt/splunkforwarder/etc/system/local/outputs.conf
with the following content:
[tcpout]
sslVerifyServerCert = true
[httpout]
httpEventCollectorToken =
uri =
Fill in httpEventCollectorToken
with the token you generated earlier.
Assign uri
to the following, replacing MYHOST
with the hostname of your
Splunk instance and 8088
with the port you are using for your Splunk HTTP
Event Collector.
https://MYHOST:8088
The format of the URL to use will depend on your Splunk deployment. See the list of acceptable URL formats in the Splunk documentation.
Note that you must only include the scheme, host, and port of the URL. The Universal Forwarder will append the correct URL path of the Splunk ingestion API when forwarding logs.
Finally, restart the Universal Forwarder:
sudo systemctl restart SplunkForwarder
Step 3/4. Run the Teleport Event Handler plugin
Now that you have configured your Universal Forwarder to receive logs via HTTP and forward them to Splunk, you will ensure that the Teleport Event Handler plugin is configured to authenticate to the Universal Forwarder and your Teleport cluster, then run the Teleport Event Handler.
Complete the Teleport Event Handler configuration
Earlier, we generated a file called teleport-event-handler.toml
to configure
the Teleport Event Handler plugin. This file includes settings similar to the
following:
storage = "./storage"
timeout = "10s"
batch = 20
namespace = "default"
[forward.fluentd]
ca = "/home/ca.crt"
cert = "/home/client.crt"
key = "/home/client.key"
url = "https://localhost:9061/test.log"
[teleport]
addr = "example.teleport.com:443"
identity = "identity"
Update the configuration file as follows.
Change forward.fluentd.url
to the following:
url = "https://localhost:9061/services/collector/raw?token=MYTOKEN"
Ensure the URL includes the scheme, host and port of your Universal Forwarder's
HTTP input, plus the URL path that the Universal Forwarder uses for raw data
(/services/collector/raw
).
Replace MYTOKEN
with the token you generated earlier for the Splunk Universal
Forwarder. If you are running the Universal Forwarder and Event Handler on
separate hosts, replace localhost
with your Universal Forwarder's IP address
or domain name.
Change forward.fluentd.session-url
to the same value as forward.fluentd.url
,
but with the query parameter key &noop=
appended to the end:
session-url = "https://localhost:9061/services/collector/raw?token=MYTOKEN&noop="
For audit logs related to Teleport sessions, the Teleport Event Handler appends
routing information to the URL that our HTTP input configuration does not use.
Adding the noop
query parameter causes the Teleport Event Handler to append
the routing information as the parameter's value so the Universal Forwarder can
discard it.
Change teleport.addr
to the host and port of your Teleport Proxy Service, or
the Auth Service if you have configured the Teleport Event Handler to connect to
it directly, e.g., mytenant.teleport.sh:443
.
Assign teleport.identity
to a path to the identity file you exported earlier,
e.g., /home/auth.pem
.
Ensure that the Teleport Event Handler can read these credentials:
chmod +r auth.pem
Assign teleport.ca
, teleport.cert
, and teleport.key
to the paths of the
TLS credentials you generated earlier. Respectively, these are the certificate
authority, certificate, and private key.
Ensure that the Teleport Event Handler can read these credentials:
chmod +r auth.cas auth.crt auth.key
Start the Teleport Event Handler
Start the Teleport Teleport Event Handler as a daemon. To do so, 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=on-failure
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/teleport-event-handler start --config=/etc/teleport-event-handler.toml
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/teleport-event-handler.pid
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
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 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:2022-09-21
18:51:04.849 +0000 UTC type:cert.create event-handler/app.go:140
...
Step 4/4. Visualize your audit logs in Splunk
Since our setup forwards audit logs to Splunk in the structured JSON format, Splunk automatically indexes them, so fields will be available immediately for use in visualizations. You can use these fields to create dashboards that track the way users are interacting with your Teleport cluster.
For example, from the Splunk UI home page, navigate to Search & Reporting > Dashboards > Create New Dashboard. Enter "Teleport Audit Log Types" for the title of your dashboard and click Classic Dashboards. Click Create then, in the Edit Dashboard view, click Add Panel.
In the Add Panel sidebar, click New > Column Chart. For the Search String field, enter the following:
index="teleport-audit-logs" | timechart count by event
Once you click Add to Dashboard you will see a count of Teleport event types over time, which gives you a general sense of how users are interacting with Teleport:
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 logs to Splunk, consult our audit log reference so you can plan visualizations and alerts.
In this guide, we made use of impersonation to supply credentials to the Teleport Event Handler to communicate with your Teleport cluster. To learn more about impersonation, read our guide.
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.