User Guide

Configuration

Authorization

NetEye Log Analytics

The NetEye Log Analytics module is an analytics and visualization platform designed to work with Elasticsearch. You can use it to search, view, and interact with data stored in Elasticsearch indices, then easily perform advanced data analysis and visualize your data in a variety of charts, tables, and maps.

To support the configuration of datasources, NetEye comes with a preconfigured Elasticsearch Data Source called Elasticsearch-Logstash, which points to the Logstash indices present on Elasticsearch. This Data Source can be used to build Grafana dashboards, similarly to what is done in the ITOA module.

This Elasticsearch-Logstash data source uses the grafana user’s TLS certificates (generated during NetEye installation) to authenticate X-Pack Security. The grafana user by default has no permissions on any Elasticsearch index, but you can add necessary permissions from within X-Pack Security, just by mapping its role to the user grafana.

You can also change the configuration of the Elasticsearch-Logstash data source should you need to personalize it, but be aware that if you change its name, a new data source named Elasticsearch-Logstash source will be regenerated the next time neteye_secure_install is run.

Configuring access Roles

The permissions and roles must be configured as described in the Authentication section.

Note

Kibana Users who are managed by NetEye will be overwritten at each login.

If you modify such a user using the Kibana admin panel, those changes will be lost!

User Management

Elasticsearch user management is based on three main entities:

  • User: The authenticated user is defined by a username and password and should be assigned to a role. The users will be automatically created during the NetEye login.

  • Role mapping: in NetEye this is used for granting access to all those users that are authenticated via certificates. You can check roles in Elastic in the dedicated Elasticsearch Access Control section.

  • Role: A named set of permissions that translate to privileges on resources. A more detailed description of how the user authorization works in Elasticsearch can be found at the following link Elasticsearch provides some built-in roles you can explicitly assign to users. You can always refer to the official documentation for delving into the topic.

A complete guide on how to create new roles within Elasticsearch can be found on Elasticsearch official documentation about Defining roles.

Each NetEye Role can be mapped to one or more Kibana roles.

If a user belongs to more than one NetEye Role with different Kibana roles, the same mapping will be reflected within Kibana.

The Kibana module adds a kibana/roles field for each role (i.e., a comma-separated list of kibana roles which must be correctly defined in Kibana) and also a new role neteye_kibana_sso, which allows to carry out operations on tokens of Elasticsearch Token Service.

All the users with Administrative Access role in NetEye or belonging to a NetEye role that set Full module access for Kibana, will be by default mapped with all the following built-in Kibana roles:

  • kibana_admin

  • superuser

With the introduction of X-Pack security in Elasticsearch, additional roles are available to allow communication with other modules: they are described in Elasticsearch Access Control.

Elasticsearch Access Control

Elasticsearch Access Control is organised in the following three sections, in which are defined roles, users and role mappings. Each section explains which roles can be assigned to a user and their mapping, which allows to communicate with other modules like neteye, kibana, logstash, filebeat, and tornado.

Warning

Default roles, users and role mappings will be owerwritten every time neteye_secure_install is executed, therefore the user should not overwrite them but instead create its own roles, users and role mappings.

Elasticsearch Roles

Each of these roles enables a user to access the authenticated endpoint.

  • logstash_neteye : This role will enable access for logstash-* and *beat-* indices with all privileges.

  • filebeat_neteye : This role will enable access for filebeat-* indices with all privileges.

  • tornado_neteye : This role will enable access for tornado-* indices with “create_index”, “create”, “write”, “read” privileges.

  • neteye_es_check : This role allows the communication of NetEye with Elasticsearch for monitoring purposes via NetEyeElasticCheck certificate.

  • neteye_kibana_sso : This role allows to perform operations on tokens that are generated by the Elasticsearch Token Service.

  • ebp_user_write_only_neteye : This role allow to create and write any index but does not allow read or other operation. It is intended to write data through the El Proxy.

  • elastic_blockchain_proxy_neteye : This role allows only to read “ES_BLOCKCHAIN.iteration” and “ES_BLOCKCHAIN.hash” fields on any index in order to allow the El Proxy retrieve information required to handle the blockchain.

Elasticsearch User

Each user has a fixed set of privileges.

  • kibana_root : This is the root user of kibana and is mapped with kibana_admin, and superuser built-in roles.

  • ebp_user : This is the default El Proxy user used in the ebp_persistent pipeline and is mapped with ebp_user_write_only_neteye built-in role.

Note

Starting from NetEye 4.13, the Elastic Logstash user pre-configured in NetEye will be deprecated and only authenticated via certificates and not via basic authentication. Hence, we strongly suggest to remove the user manually using the Kibana GUI (Log Analytics / Management / Users).

For more details on built-in roles, please refer to the official Elasticsearch guide.

Elasticsearch Roles Mapping

Role mappings define which roles are assigned to each user. Each mapping has rules that identify users and a list of roles that are granted to those users.

  • filebeat_neteye : This role mapping allows a user filebeat mapped with beats_system (built-in role) and filebeat_neteye role to communicate between filebeat and elasticsearch.

  • neteye_es_check : This role mapping allows the communication between neteye and elasticsearch via NetEyeElasticCheck certificate.

  • tornado : This role mapping is used for the Tornado Elasticsearch executor to allow a user tornado to write events according to tornado_neteye role.

  • logstash : This role mapping allows a user logstash mapped with beats_admin, logstash_admin, logstash_system (built-in roles) and logstash_neteye role to communicate between logstash and neteye.

  • elastic_blockchain_proxy_neteye : This role mapping allows the communication between El Proxy and Elasticsearch via NeteyeElasticBlockchainProxy

Debug Elasticsearch Access Control

If you need some extended information about the Elasticsearch access control, for example for troubleshooting, you can add the following lines to the configuration file of Elasticsearch log facility (i.e.``/neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/log4j2.properties``) for each node in the cluster:

# elasticsearch debug
logger.authc.name = org.elasticsearch.xpack.security.authc
logger.authc.level = DEBUG

Then, Elasticsearch must be restarted on each node and the Elasticsearch log /neteye/local/elasticsearch/log/neteye.log will then contain advanced debug information, useful to understand your problem.

El Proxy Configuration

The El Proxy is carried out thanks to CLI commands that allow you to use the functionality provided. Running the executable without any arguments returns a list of all available commands and global options that apply to every command.

Available commands:

  • acknowledge : Acknowledges a corruption in a blockchain.

  • export-logs : Exports the signed logs from ElasticSearch to a local file.

  • serve : Starts the El Proxy server ready for processing incoming requests.

  • verify : Verify the validity of a blockchain.

  • verify-cpu-bench : Benchmark the underlying hardware for verification.

The El Proxy configuration is partly based on configuration files and partly based on command line parameters. The location of configuration files in the file system is determined at startup based on the provided CLI options. In addition, each command can have specific CLI arguments required.

Global command line parameters:

  • config-dir: (Optional) The filesystem folder from which the configuration is read. The default path is /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/conf/.

  • static-config-dir: (Optional) The filesystem folder from which the static configuration (i.e. configuration files that the final user cannot modify) is read. The default path is /usr/share/elastic-blockchain-proxy.

Available command line parameters for the acknowledge command only:

  • key-file: The path to the file that contains the iteration 0 signature key

  • corruption-id: The CorruptionId produced by the verify command to be acknowledged

  • description: (Optional) A description of the blockchain corruption. It will be prompted if not provided

  • reason: (Optional) The reason why the corruption happened. It will be prompted if not provided

  • elasticsearch-authentication-method: (Optional) The method used to authenticate to Elasticsearch. This can be:

    • none: (Default) the command does not authenticate to Elasticsearch

    • basicauth: Username and password are used to authenticate. If this method is specified, the following parameter is required (and a password will be prompted during the execution):

      • elasticsearch-username: the name Elasticsearch user used to perform authentication

    • pemcertificatepath: PKI user authentication is used. If this method is specified, the following parameters are required:

      • elasticsearch-client-cert path to the client certificate. A client certificate suitable for the acknowledge command is present under /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/conf/certs/ElasticBlockchainProxyAcknowledge.crt.pem

      • elasticsearch-client-private-key path to the private key of the client certificate. A client private key suitable for the acknowledge command is present under /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/conf/certs/private/ElasticBlockchainProxyAcknowledge.key.pem

      • elasticsearch-ca-cert path to the CA certificate to be trusted during the requests to Elasticsearch

For example, if you want to acknowledge the corruption with corruption-id abc123, you can execute the following command:

elastic_blockchain_proxy acknowledge --key-file /path/to/secret/key --corruption-id 'abc123' --elasticsearch-authentication-method 'pemcertificatepath' --elasticsearch-client-cert '/neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/conf/certs/ElasticBlockchainProxyAcknowledge.crt.pem' --elasticsearch-client-private-key '/neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/conf/certs/private/ElasticBlockchainProxyAcknowledge.key.pem'

Available command line parameters for the export-logs command only:

  • output-file: The output file path where the exported logs are written

  • index-name: The name of the target Elasticsearch index to be used

  • format: (Optional) The output file format. This can be:

  • from-date: (Optional) An inclusive ‘From’ date limit in ISO 8601 format

  • to-date: (Optional) An exclusive ‘To’ date limit in ISO 8601 format

  • batch-size: (Optional) The size of a each read/write operation. Default is 500.

  • elasticsearch-authentication-method: (Optional) The method used to authenticate to Elasticsearch. This can be:

    • none: (Default) the command does not authenticate to Elasticsearch

    • basicauth: Username and password are used to authenticate. If this method is specified,

      the following parameter is required (and a password will be prompted during the execution):

      • elasticsearch-username: the name Elasticsearch user used to perform authentication

    • pemcertificatepath: PKI user authentication is used. If this method is specified, the following parameters are required:

      • elasticsearch-client-cert path to the client certificate

      • elasticsearch-client-private-key path to the private key of the client certificate

      • elasticsearch-ca-cert path to the CA certificate to be trusted during the requests to Elasticsearch

Available command line parameters for the verify command only:

  • index-name: The name of the target Elasticsearch index to be used

  • key-file: The path to the file that contains the iteration 0 signature key

  • batch-size: (Optional) The size of each read/verify operation. Default is 500.

  • concurrent-batches: (Optional) The number of concurrent threads verifying the blockchain. Default is 2.

  • from-iteration: (Optional) The inclusive iteration number from which the verification has to be performed. Default is 0.

  • elasticsearch-authentication-method: (Optional) The method used to authenticate to Elasticsearch. This can be:

    • none: (Default) the command does not authenticate to Elasticsearch

    • basicauth: Username and password are used to authenticate. If this method is specified, the following parameter is required (and a password will be prompted during the execution):

      • elasticsearch-username: the name Elasticsearch user used to perform authentication

    • pemcertificatepath: PKI user authentication is used. If this method is specified, the following parameters are required:

      • elasticsearch-client-cert path to the client certificate

      • elasticsearch-client-private-key path to the private key of the client certificate

      • elasticsearch-ca-cert path to the CA certificate to be trusted during the requests to Elasticsearch

For example, given a blockchain which refers to:

  • module: elproxysigned

  • customer: mycustomer

  • retention: 6_months

  • blockchain_tag: 0

You can verify the blockchain with the command:

elastic_blockchain_proxy verify --index-name '*-*-elproxysigned-mycustomer-6_months-0-*' --key-file /path/to/secret/key --elasticsearch-authentication-method 'pemcertificatepath' --elasticsearch-client-cert '/neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/certs/admin.crt.pem' --elasticsearch-client-private-key '/neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/certs/private/admin.key.pem'

Warning

To verify blockchains built before the upgrade to NetEye 4.18 (blockchains which do not include the fields retention and blockchain_tag in the name of the indices), please use instead an index-name a like the following:

elastic_blockchain_proxy verify --index-name '*-*-elproxysigned-mycustomer-*,-*-*-elproxysigned-mycustomer-*-*-*' --key-file /path/to/secret/key

Available command line parameters for the verify-cpu-bench command only:

  • batch-size: (Optional) The size of each read/verify operation. Default is 1000.

  • n-logs: (Optional) The number of logs to verify. Default is 1,000,000.

  • log-size: (Optional) The size of each log in KB. Default is 1KB.

  • concurrent-batches: (Optional) The number of concurrent threads for the benchmark. Default is 2.

You can check, how much data throughput your server can handle, based on the number of threads with the following command:

elastic_blockchain_proxy verify-cpu-bench

Besides these parameters, additional configuration entries are available in the $config-dir/elastic_blockchain_proxy.toml file and in the $config-dir/elastic_blockchain_proxy_fields.toml file.

The $config-dir/elastic_blockchain_proxy.toml file contains the following configuration entries:

  • logger:

    • level: The Logger level filter; valid values are trace, debug, info, warn, and error. The logger level filter can specify a list of comma separated per-module specific levels, for example: warn,elastic_blockchain_proxy=debug

  • failure_max_retries: A predefined maximum amount of retry attempts. A value of 0 means that no retries will be attempted.

  • failure_sleep_ms_between_retries: A fixed amount of milliseconds to sleep between each retry attempt

  • data_dir: The path to the folder that contains the key.json file. If the file is not present, EL PROXY will generate one when needed.

  • data_backup_dir: The path where the EL PROXY creates a backup copy of the automatically generated keys. for security reasons, the user is in charge of moving these copies to a protected place as soon as possible.

  • dlq_dir: The path where the Dead Letter Queue with the failed logs is saved.

  • message_queue_size: The size of the in-memory queue where messages will be stored before while waiting for being processed

  • web_server:

    • address: The address where the El Proxy Web Server will listen for HTTP requests

    • tls: TLS options to enable HTTPS (See the Enabling TLS section below)

  • elasticsearch:

    • url: The URL of the ElasticSearch server

    • timeout_secs: the timeout in seconds for a connection to Elasticsearch

    • ca_certificate_path: path to CA certificate needed to verify the identity of the Elasticsearch server

    • auth: The authentication method to connect to the ElasticSearch server (See the Elasticsearch authentication section below)

The $config-dir/elastic_blockchain_proxy_fields.toml file contains the following configuration entries:

  • include_fields: List of fields of the log that will be included in the signature process. Every field not included in this list will be ignored. The dot symbol is used as expander processor; for example, the field “name1.name2” refers to the “name2” nested field inside “name1”.

Secure Communication

When installed on NetEye, the El Proxy automatically starts in secure mode using TLS and also authentication with Elasticsearch is protected by certificates. More precise information for advanced users, who can check the location of the configuration files or modify the setup can be found by checking section El Proxy Security.

Handling Logs in Dead Letter Queue

Logs which could not be indexed in Elasticsearch are written in the Dead Letter Queue (DLQ) of the El Proxy.

Since events written in the DLQ are not part of the secured blockchain indices, the NetEye Administrator needs to explicitly acknowledge the presence of the events in the DLQ.

As soon as any log ends up in the DLQ, the Icinga2 service logmanager-blockchain-creation-neteyelocal will enter in CRITICAL state, indicating that some log could not be indexed in the blockchain.

To acknowledge the presence of logs in the DLQ the NetEye admin must:

  1. Ensure that the logs in the DLQ do not contain any sign of malicious activities.

    To do so, please inspect the content of the DLQ log files /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/data/dlq/<customer>/<filename>, where <customer> is the name of the customer who generated the log, and <filename> is the name of the log file.

  2. Move all the DLQ log files /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/data/dlq/<customer>/<filename> in the path /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/data/archive/<customer>/<filename>

    Hint

    To move all the DLQ files in the archive folder you can execute the following CLI commands:

    mkdir /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/data/archive/
mv /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/data/dlq/* /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/data/archive/

Acknowledging corruptions of a blockchain

The correct state of a blockchain can be checked by executing the verify command, which provides, at the end of its execution, a report about the correctness of the inspected subject. If everything is fine, the verification process will complete successfully, otherwise, the execution report will contain a list of all errors encountered. For example:

--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
Verify command execution completed.
Blockchain verification process completed with 2 errors.
--------------------------------------------------------
Errors detail:
--------------------------------------------------------
Error 0 detail:
- Error type: Missing logs
- Missing logs from iteration 2 (inclusive) to iteration 4 (inclusive)
- CorruptionId: eyJmcm9tX2l0ZXJhdGlvbiI6MiwidG9faXRlcmF0aW9uIjo0LCJwcmV2aW91c19oYXNoIjoiZGFkNGEwMzMyYTQ1OGZiMzU4OTlmYWQxOTIzYzliNGE1MjZmNzFmZmNmMmU5ZjkxMTExN2I1MTMyMzBkMmFjYyIsImFja25vd2xlZGdlX2Jsb2NrY2hhaW5faWQiOiJhY2tub3dsZWRnZS1lbHByb3h5c2lnbmVkLW5ldGV5ZS1vbmVfd2Vlay0wIn0=
--------------------------------------------------------
Error 1 detail:
- Error type: Wrong Log Hash
- Failed iteration_id: 16
- Expected hash: 34f5bd40d5042ba289d4c5032c75a426306a57e41c0703df4c7698df104f75ed
- Found hash   : 593bcd654fd80091105a21f548c1e6a8dd07c80380e72ceeeb1a3e7b126d26bb
- CorruptionId: eyJmcm9tX2l0ZXJhdGlvbiI6MTYsInRvX2l0ZXJhdGlvbiI6MTYsInByZXZpb3VzX2hhc2giOiIwNTE0YmY3YTBmNmRmNmNhMjg1YTIwYTM2OGFiNTA5M2I5NjgxMWZkZWFmMmQ1YThhYjFkOTYwYzgyNDRiNzJlIiwiYWNrbm93bGVkZ2VfYmxvY2tjaGFpbl9pZCI6ImFja25vd2xlZGdlLWVscHJveHlzaWduZWQtbmV0ZXllLW9uZV93ZWVrLTAifQ==
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Each error found is provided with a CorruptionId that uniquely identifies it. The CorruptionId is a base64 encoded JSON that contains data to identify a specific corruption of a blockchain.

If required, an admin can fix a corruption by acknowledging it through the acknowledge command. This command will create an acknoledgement for a specific CorruptionId so that, when the verify is again executed, the linked error in the blockchain will be considered as resolved.

For example, we can acknowledge the first error reported in the above example with:

elastic_blockchain_proxy acknowledge --key-file /path/to/secret/key --corruption-id=eyJmcm9tX2l0ZXJhdGlvbiI6MiwidG9faXRlcmF0aW9uIjo0LCJwcmV2aW91c19oYXNoIjoiZGFkNGEwMzMyYTQ1OGZiMzU4OTlmYWQxOTIzYzliNGE1MjZmNzFmZmNmMmU5ZjkxMTExN2I1MTMyMzBkMmFjYyIsImFja25vd2xlZGdlX2Jsb2NrY2hhaW5faWQiOiJhY2tub3dsZWRnZS1lbHByb3h5c2lnbmVkLW5ldGV5ZS1vbmVfd2Vlay0wIn0=

The acknowledgement data is persisted in a dedicated Elasticsearch index whose name is generate from the name of the index to which the corruption belong. For example, if the corrupted index name is *-*-elproxysigned-neteye-one_week-0-*, then the name of the acknowledge blockchain will be acknowledge-elproxysigned-neteye-one_week-0.

How to setup the automatic verification of blockchains

This chapter illustrates the best practices for the setup of a secure and automatic verification of the El Proxy blockchains. We will setup an environment where the verification of a specific blockchain is performed every day. Moreover we will describe how we can notify the failure (and the success) of the blockchain verification in Icinga 2 via Tornado Webhook Collectors and Tornado rules.

This guide is organized as follows: we first introduce the Prerequisites, then we describe the Client and NetEye setup. Finally we provide a few commands for Testing the configuration.

In the remainder we will use the following naming convention:

  • <tenant>: The tenant (also referred to as “customer” in the previous chapters) of the blockchain that needs to be verified

  • <retention>: the retention of the blockchain to be verified

  • <tag>: the tag of the blockchain to be verified

  • <webhook_token>: a secret string chosen as token for the Tornado Webhook Collector

  • <webhook_collector_host>: the FQDN of the host where your Tornado Webhook Collector will run. It may be the NetEye Master or a NetEye Satellite FQDN.

Note

While following this guide and executing commands, remember to always substitute the placeholders <…> with their real value.

Prerequisites

  • You have the file containing the initial key of the blockchain to be verified

  • The verification automatism needs to be set up on a machine which is external to the NetEye installation which is accessible only by you. The external machine must run a CentOS 7 distribution and needs to reach:

    • The NetEye Master on port 9200 for contacting Elasticsearch.

    • The <webhook_collector_host> on port 443 to connect to the Tornado Webhook Collector.

Client Setup

  1. Add the FQDN of the NetEye Master in the /etc/hosts file of the external machine

  2. Install the client to verify blockchain from the external machine

    1. Create a new repository definition by creating the file /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-NetEye.repo

    2. Set its content to:

      #NetEye packages
[neteye]
name=CentOS7-x86_64 - NetEye
baseurl=https://repo.wuerth-phoenix.com/centos7-x86_64/RPMS.neteye-$YUM0
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-NETEYE
enabled=0
priority=1

    3. Copy the GPG Key to verify NetEye RPMs:

      • From the NetEye Master or a NetEye Satellite copy the file /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-NETEYE and save it in /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-NETEYE

    4. Install the RPM elastic-blockchain-proxy by executing:

    export YUM0=<neteye_version>
yum clean metadata --enablerepo=neteye
yum install elastic-blockchain-proxy --enablerepo=neteye

    Note

    Set <neteye_version> to the version of NetEye in use. For example set export YUM0=4.22

  3. Point the El Proxy verification client to the Elasticsearch of the NetEye Master

    1. Edit the file /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/conf/elastic_blockchain_proxy.toml and set the entry url under the section elasticsearch to the NetEye Master FQDN. For example set:

    [elasticsearch]
#ElasticSearch URL
url = "https://<neteye_master_fqdn>:9200"

  4. Move the initial signature key file of the blockchain to be verified in a secure path in the Filesystem of the external machine.

    If not moved previously, you can find the initial signature key on NetEye, in the path: /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/data/keys_backup/<tenant>/elproxysigned-<tenant>-<retention>-<tag>_key.json

    Move initial signature key file on the external machine in the path: /root/elastic-blockchain-proxy/keys/elproxysigned-<tenant>-<retention>-<tag>.json

  5. For security reasons restrict the permissions on the signature key file:

    chown root:root /root/elastic-blockchain-proxy/keys/elproxysigned-<tenant>-<retention>-<tag>.json
chmod 400 /root/elastic-blockchain-proxy/keys/elproxysigned-<tenant>-<retention>-<tag>.json

  6. Get the Elasticsearch client certificates needed to verify the blockchain of your <tenant>:

    1. Access one of the NetEye satellites of the NetEye Tenant <tenant> (in case of the master tenant, access the NetEye Master machine)

      Note

      If for any reason the tenant of the blockchain does not correspond to any of the NetEye tenants, you need to create new client certificates for a new user along with its Role from Kibana and its Role Mapping. The role should grant read permission to the indices *-elproxysigned-<tenant>-* and the role mapping should assign the aforementioned role to a user named as the CN of the certificate.

    2. Check for the presence of the client certificates

      • If you are on a NetEye Satellite check for the presence of:

        • /neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/certs/ebp_verify.crt.pem

        • /neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/certs/private/ebp_verify.key.pem

      • If you are on the NetEye Master check for the presence of:

        • /neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/certs/neteye_ebp_verify_master.crt.pem

        • /neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/certs/private/neteye_ebp_verify_master.key.pem

    3. Copy the certificates on the external machine, in the paths:

      • /root/elastic-blockchain-proxy/certs/ebp_verify.crt.pem

      • /root/elastic-blockchain-proxy/certs/private/ebp_verify.key.pem

  7. Install the NetEye CA on the external machine:

    1. The NetEye CA certificate file can be found in /neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/certs/root-ca.crt on the NetEye Master or on one of the NetEye Satellites

    2. Copy the NetEye CA in the El Proxy certs directory of the external machine:

      mkdir -p /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/conf/certs/
scp root@<neteye_master/neteye_satellite>:/neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/certs/root-ca.crt /neteye/shared/elastic-blockchain-proxy/conf/certs/

  8. Create a systemd timer which will trigger the blockchain verification process:

    1. Create the file /etc/systemd/system/elproxy_verify_<tenant>_<retention>_<tag>.timer

    2. Set the file content to:

      [Unit]
Description=Trigger the verification of El Proxy blockchain

[Timer]
OnCalendar=daily
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

  9. Create a script containing the code to execute the verification and send the result to a Webhook Collector

    1. Create the file /usr/local/bin/elproxy_verify_blockchain_and_send_result

    2. Make it executable

      chmod 750 /usr/local/bin/elproxy_verify_blockchain_and_send_result

    3. Set its content to:

      #!/bin/sh

TENANT="$1"
RETENTION="$2"
TAG="$3"
WEBHOOK_COLLECTOR_HOST="$4"
WEBHOOK_TOKEN="$5"

/usr/bin/elastic_blockchain_proxy verify --key-file "/root/elastic-blockchain-proxy/keys/elproxysigned-${TENANT}-${RETENTION}-${TAG}_key.json" --index-name "*-*-elproxysigned-$TENANT-$RETENTION-$TAG-*" --elasticsearch-authentication-method pemcertificatepath --elasticsearch-client-cert /root/elastic-blockchain-proxy/certs/ebp_verify.crt.pem --elasticsearch-client-private-key /root/elastic-blockchain-proxy/certs/private/ebp_verify.key.pem
/usr/bin/curl "https://$WEBHOOK_COLLECTOR_HOST/tornado/webhook/event/elproxy_verification?token=$WEBHOOK_TOKEN" -d "{\"exit_status\": \"$?\"}"

      Note

      To successfully verify the HTTPS server certificate of the <webhook_collector_host> the external machine needs to trust at system level the server certificate CA. To find the CA in use on the <webhook_collector_host> you can refer to NetEye Master HTTPS configuration or NetEye Satellite HTTPS configuration, depending on the <webhook_collector_host> node type.

      Please feel free to adapt the script to your necessities.

  10. Create a systemd service which will actually handle the blockchain verification

    1. Create the file /etc/systemd/system/elproxy_verify_<tenant>_<retention>_<tag>.service

    2. Set the file content to:

      [Unit]
Description=Verify El Proxy blockchain
Wants=elproxy_verify_<tenant>_<retention>_<tag>.timer

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/elproxy_verify_blockchain_and_send_result "<tenant>" "<retention>" "<tag>" "<webhook_collector_host>" "<webhook_token>"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

  11. Reload the systemd configuration:

    systemctl daemon-reload

  12. Enable the systemd timer:

    systemctl enable elproxy_verify_<tenant>_<retention>_<tag>.timer

NetEye Setup

  1. Configure a Tornado Webhook Collector (executable) on either the NetEye Master, or a NetEye Satellite. This Webhook Collector will take care of receiving the El Proxy blockchain verification result from the external machine and forward it to Tornado, which will set an Icinga 2 status.

    1. On the node where the Tornado Webhook Collector is running, create the file /neteye/shared/tornado_webhook_collector/conf/webhooks/elproxy_verification.json

    2. Set its content to:

      {
  "id": "elproxy_verification",
  "token": "<webhook_token>",
  "collector_config": {
    "event_type": "elproxy_verification",
    "payload": {
      "data": "${@}"
    }
  }
}

    3. Restart the Tornado Webhook Collector service to load the webhook

  2. Configure a Rule in Tornado to set a status in Icinga 2

    1. Via NetEye Tornado GUI, create a Rule that matches the Events with type elproxy_verification and executes an Action of type SMART_MONITORING_CHECK_RESULT, where we set as check_result -> exit_status the value event.payload.data.exit_status. Configure the rest of the Rule as you prefer.

Testing the configuration

Now everything should be configured correctly. To test your configuration you can:

  1. Force the verification service to start with:

    systemctl start elproxy_verify_<tenant>_<retention>_<tag>.service

  2. Inspect the logs of the verification service with:

    journalctl -u elproxy_verify_<tenant>_<retention>_<tag>.service -f

Agents configuration

Installation and Configuration of Beat Agents

Before being able to take fully advantage of the Beat feature, agents must be installed on the monitored hosts, along with the necessary certificates. On the hosts, any kind of Beat can be installed; for example, the Winlogbeat is available from the official download page; installation instructions are available as well. The agent configuration is stored in the YAML configuration file winlogbeat.yml. A description of the options available in the Beat’s configuration file can be found in the official documentation.

Note

You need to install a Beat whose version is compatible with the Elastic version installed on NetEye, which is 7.15. To find out which version of Beat you can install, please check the compatibility matrix

Relevant to the configuration are the following options:

  • ignore_older, which indicates how many hours/days it should gather data from. By default, indeed, the Beat collects all the data it finds, meaning it can act retroactively. This is the default option if not specified, so make sure to properly configure this option, to not overload the initial import of data and to avoid potential problems like crash of Logstash and ES disk space. ​

  • index: ”winlogbeat”, which is needed to match NetEye’s templates and ILM.

Filebeat Netflow module specific configuration

In NetEye, Filebeat is shipped with the NetFlow Module included. The module can be configured without directly modifying the configuration file, avoiding so rpmnew files and the reactivation of the module during future updates, since it is enabled by default. This can be accomplished by setting the following three environment variables in the /neteye/shared/filebeat/conf/sysconfig/filebeat-user-customization environment file:

  • NETFLOW_ENABLED: which can be used to enable or disable the listening of logs on the specified host and port. Default: true

  • NETFLOW_HOST: The host to which the module will listen on. Default: 0.0.0.0 (all hosts)

  • NETFLOW_PORT: The port to listen on. Default: 2055

After changing the value of any of the aforementioned variables, a restart of the filebeat service must be performed by running:

neteye# systemctl restart filebeat

Warning

If the module is deactivated using the filebeat modules disable command and not using the associated environment variable, Filebeat will rename the configuration file and, at the next update, the module will be re-installed and re-activated.

Use of SSL certificates

Server certificates of Logstash allowing communication with Beats must be stored in the /neteye/shared/logstash/conf/certs/ directory, with names logstash-server.crt.pem and private/logstash-server.key. Additionally, also the root-ca.crt certificate must be available in the same directory.

The structure mentioned above for the certificates must be organised as:

certs/
   ├── logstash-server.crt.pem
   ├── root-ca.crt
   └── private/
          └── logstash-server.key

The certificates are stored under the logstash configuration directory, because it is indeed Logstash that listens for incoming Beat data flows.

As a consequence, all Beat clients must use a client certificate to send output data to Logstash. Please refer to the Elastic official documentation, for example the Filebeat SSL configuration is available here.

An example of Filebeat to Logstash SSL communication configuration is the following:

#--------- Logstash output ------------------------------------
    output.logstash:
      # The Logstash hosts
      hosts: ["yourNetEyeDomain.example:5044"]

      # List of root certificates for HTTPS server verifications
      ssl.certificate_authorities: ["/root/beat/root-ca.crt"]

      # Certificate for SSL client authentication
      ssl.certificate: "/root/beat/logstash-client.crt.pem"

      # Client Certificate Key
      ssl.key: "/root/beat/private/logstash-client.key.pem"

Self-signed certificates

Note

For production systems, you should upload your own certificates on NetEye. Moreover, you should use your own certificates also for all Beat clients. Self-signed certificates must never be used on production systems, but only for testing and demo purposes.

Self-signed certificates (logstash-server.crt.pem and private/logstash-server.key) and the Root CA (root-ca.crt) are shipped with NetEye for Logstash. Self-signed certificates for Beat clients can be generated from the CLI as follows:

you can run the script usr/share/neteye/scripts/security/generate_client_certs.sh using three suitable parameters:

  • The client name

  • The common name (CN) and information for the other certificate’s field

  • The output directory

An example of command line is the following:

/bin/bash /usr/share/neteye/scripts/security/generate_client_certs.sh \
    logstash-client \
    "/CN=logstash-client/OU=client/O=client/L=Bolzano/ST=Bolzano/C=IT" \
    "/root/beat/"

Inputs configuration

To set customer-specific filebeat inputs you can add a file with .yml extension in the directory /neteye/shared/filebeat/conf/inputs.d/. Configuration will be read and applied from .yml files only: any file with different extension will be ignored. To maintain a custom configuration saved but disabled, you should rename the file with a different extension, for example mqtt.yml can be disabled by renaming it to mqtt.yml.disable.

A sample configuration can be found in file /neteye/shared/filebeat/conf/inputs.d/mqtt.yml.sample.

Event Processing

Logstash Configuration

We have added an Elastic Stack template which allows us to manage the Logstash configuration within the NetEye environment.

Please note that Elastic merges all templates using a priority order scheme so that when the values of multiple templates conflict, Elastic will determine which value to use based on the “order” field in the template. The higher the value, the higher the priority.

Furthermore, please note how all pipelines configuration files, located in the /neteye/shared/logstash/conf/conf.*.d folders, are set as config files, which prevents them from being silently overwritten by future updates. As mentioned also in the .rpmsave and .rpmnew migration guide, config files will instead lead to an rpmnew file if they were modified both on the system and by the update, enabling so the user to control their migration.

Autoexpand Replicas

We created a Logstash template to configure the Logstash replica that applies to both single instances and clusters. The new indices matching the pattern logstash-* will automatically configure the replica with the range 0-1 using the index.auto_expand_replicas setting.

The name of this template is neteye_logstash_replicas, with a priority order of 100. You can view the full template with the following command:

GET _template/neteye_logstash_replicas

Enabling El Proxy

The El Proxy receives streams of log files from Logstash, signs them in real time into a blockchain, and forwards them to Elasticsearch. For more information, please check section El Proxy

To make the use of the El Proxy easier, different default pipelines, called input_beats, auditbeat, filebeat, winlogbeat and ebp_persistent pipelines have been provided. The input_beats pipeline redirects logs to main or to the beat specific pipelines (auditbeat, filebeat, winlogbeat). If the El Proxy is enabled for a specific host and the log matches the conditions specified in the beat specific pipelines, logs will also be redirected to ebp_persistent pipeline.

NetEye Logstash El Proxy architecture

Fig. 163 NetEye Logstash El Proxy architecture

Specifically, the ebp_persistent pipeline enables disk persistency, extracts client certificate details and redirects data to the El Proxy.

Please note that you need to have enough space in /neteye/shared/logstash/data/ for disk persistency. The ebp_persistent pipeline is configured with three parameters:

  • queue.type: specify if the queue is in memory or disk-persisted. If set to persisted the queue will be disk-persisted.

  • path.queue: the path where the events will be persisted, by default /neteye/shared/logstash/data/ebp

  • queue.max_bytes: the maximum amount of data the queue can write, by default 512mb. Exceeding this limit may lead to a loss of events.

You can check and adjust the parameters for the queue in the file /neteye/shared/logstash/conf/pipelines.yml.

The user can customize the ebp_persistent pipeline by adding custom Logstash filters in the form of .filters files in the directory /neteye/shared/logstash/conf/conf.ebp.d. Please note that the user must neither add .input or .output files nor modify existing configuration files.

Warning

Enabling the El Proxy via the variable EBP_ENABLED in the file /neteye/shared/logstash/conf/sysconfig/logstash-user-customization is not anymore supported. Please enable it per host as described below.

El Proxy can be enabled per host via Icinga Director. A Host Template, called logmanager-blockchain-host is made available for this purpose.

To enable El Proxy on a host (we’ll call the host ACME), we strongly suggest to first create a dedicated host template, which imports logmanager-blockchain-host. Then, configure the host ACME to inherit from this host template.

You can refer to Sections Host Templates and to Adding a Host for further information about how to manage host templates and hosts in the Icinga Director.

As soon as you use the new dedicated template, the following fields are shown in the Host Configuration Panel under Custom properties:

  • Enable Logging: specify if logging for the current host must be enabled. If set to Yes log collection is enabled.

  • Blockchain Enable: it appears only if Enable Logging is enabled. Specify if the log signature must be enabled for the current host. If set to Yes, El Proxy is enabled for the host.

  • Blockchain Retention: it becomes available only if Blockchain Enable is enabled. The retention policy specified for the logs of the current host (default value is 2 years or 730 days). Refer to Section El Proxy Templates and Retention for further information on retention policies.

Note

Enable Logging works in combination with Blockchain Enable, both properties must be set to Yes to fully enable the log collection and the log signing.

Log and Blockchain properties of a hosts are regularly checked by the logmanager-director-es-index-neteyelocal service, which automatically stores them in Elasticsearch where they can be queried and accessed when needed.

For additional information about El Proxy refer to section El Proxy.

By default, El Proxy uses the common name (CN) specified in the Beats certificate as the customer name. If the CN is not available, El Proxy uses a default customer name as a fallback. The user can configure a custom default customer name by setting the variable EBP_DEFAULT_CUSTOMER in the file /neteye/shared/logstash/conf/sysconfig/logstash-user-customization, as follows:

EBP_DEFAULT_CUSTOMER="mycustomer"

If the variable EBP_DEFAULT_CUSTOMER is not set, El Proxy will use the value “neteye” as default customer. You must restart Logstash for the changes to take effect.

For additional information about El Proxy refer to El Proxy

El Proxy Templates and Retention

We have added a template called elastic_blockchain_proxy to define static and dynamic mapping for El Proxy objects EBP_METADATA and ES_BLOCKCHAIN. The user must not change the mapping of El Proxy related fields.

Several ILM (Index Lifecycle Management) policies are provided by default and should cover most of the use cases. Policies come alongside with index templates and are applied by default to indices matching the pattern *-elproxysigned-*-retention_name-*.

Do not change default templates or ILM policies because they will be automatically overwritten.

Default retention policies are:

  • 3_months : delete index after 90 days from creation

  • 6_months : delete index after 180 days from creation

  • 1_year : delete index after 365 days from creation

  • 2_years : delete index after 730 days from creation

  • default : delete index after 730 days from creation

  • infinite : do not delete the index

To specify which ILM policy to use you can set the field EBP_METADATA.retention in a logstash filter. For example, if you want to set a 6 months policy for authentication logs you can create a new filter in the directory /neteye/shared/logstash/conf/conf.ebp.d called 1_f10000_auth_retention.filter which contains the following condition:

filter {
  if "authentication" in [event][category] {
    mutate {
      replace => {"[EBP_METADATA][retention]" => "6_months" }
    }
  }
}

If the index pattern does not match any valid retention policy name a 2-years ILM policy will be applied.

Changing the retention policy for an existing blockchain results in the creation of a new blockchain: a new key will be generated and must be saved in a safe place. All new logs will be saved in the new blockchain while the old blockchain will not receive any new log. For the verification process you need to use the appropriate key for each blockchain.

The retention policy change is not retroactive: the old blockchain will maintain the original retention period.

To create a custom retention policy you have to:

  • Create a new ILM policy

  • Create a new index template to apply the new ILM policy e.g.:

    {
  "order": 150,
    "index_patterns": [
      "*-elproxysigned-*-my_retention-*"
    ],
    "settings": {
      "index": {
        "lifecycle": {
          "name": "my_ilm_policy"
        }
      }
    }
}

You must never change the deletion period with a shorter one otherwise you will have missing logs in the middle of the blockchain and this will cause the verification to fail.

Sending custom logs to El Proxy

By default only Beats events are sent to El Proxy, if enabled. NetEye, however, provides an output also in the main pipeline to redirect events to the El Proxy.

Events are sent to El Proxy when field [EBP_METADATA][event][module] is set to elproxysigned.

For example, to send all syslog logs to the El Proxy, you can use a filter similar to the following

filter {
if [type] == "syslog" {
  if [EBP_METADATA][event][module] {
    mutate {
      replace => {"[EBP_METADATA][event][module]" => "elproxysigned"}
    }
  } else {
      mutate {
        add_field => {"[EBP_METADATA][event][module]" => "elproxysigned"}
      }
    }
  }
}

All logs passed through the ebp_persistent pipeline will be disk-persisted.

Backup & Restore

Elasticsearch Backup and Restore

Elasticsearch provides snapshot functionality which is great for backups because they can be restored relatively quickly.

The main features of Elasticsearch snapshots are:

  • They are incremental

  • They can store either individual indices or an entire cluster

  • They can be stored in a remote repository such as a shared file system

The destination for snapshots must be a shared file system mounted on each Elasticsearch node.

Deleting a snapshot only changes those files that are associated with the deleted snapshot and are not used by any other snapshots. If the deleted snapshot operation is executed while the snapshot is being created, the snapshot process will be aborted and all files created as part of the snapshot process will be removed.

For further details see the Official Elasticsearch snapshot documentation.

Requirements

The snapshot module requires the initialization of a repository which contains a reference to a repository path contained in the Elasticsearch configuration file:

/neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/elasticsearch.yml

This repository, and consequently the destination path for the snapshot, must be initialized manually.

A shared folder must be mounted on each Elasticsearch node at the following path:

/data/backup/elasticsearch

Note

In a cluster environment, all nodes running Elasticsearch must have the same shared folder mounted.

Backup strategy

The standard behavior of the Elasticsearch snapshot module is to create incremental backups. You may however want to have full backups in addition to incremental backups. Considering that a full backup is not natively supported, the recommended procedure is to create a new repository for each full backup you need.

Note that in an Elasticsearch cluster installation, all commands must be executed on the Elasticsearch master node. The master node can be retrieved with the following command:

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -M

The following subsections describe the common operations needed to initialize a repository, and to execute, delete and restore snapshots.

Initialize the default repository

The initialization uses the following default mount path:

/data/backup/elasticsearch

In a cluster environment it is mandatory to mount the path on a shared file system for each node:

# The default neteye_log_backup repository will be used
/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -I
Initialize a new repository, or one different from the default

If the new repository uses a custom folder, its path must be added to the Elasticsearch configuration file. In particular, the option “path.repo” in the configuration file:

/neteye/local/elasticsearch/conf/elasticsearch.yml

must be an array containing all destination paths for the snapshot. For instance:

path.repo: ["/data/backup/elasticsearch", "/data/full_backup/"]

Note that if you change the Elasticsearch configuration file, you must restart it:

systemctl restart elasticsearch

You can create a new repository with the name “my_repo” and a custom backup path with this script (if the -r option is not specified, the default neteye_log_backup will be used):

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -r "my_repo" -i /data/full_backup/
Take a snapshot

When using a default name: snapshot-Year-Month-Day-Hour:Minute:Second

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -s

When using a custom name (in this example, “test-snapshot”):

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -S test-snapshot
Delete a snapshot

You can delete one or more snapshots with a regex. In the example here, only the snapshot with the name “test-snapshot” will be removed:

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -d "test-snapshot"

You can also delete any snapshots that are older than the specified period using the format YY.MM.DD.HH.MM (e.g., 0.1.1.0.0 means 31 days). For more details, see the description of unit.

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -c 0.1.1.0.0

These two options can be combined, for instance to delete all snapshots that contain “test” in the name and that are older than 1 minute:

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -d test -C 0.0.0.0.1
Create a full snapshot

A new repository (see the previous section) or an empty repository must be used.

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-backup -r "my_full_backup" -s

Restoring a snapshot

Restoring a snapshot requires a configuration file that describes the process. Please see the official guide for more details. We have provided three example configurations in the following folder::

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/conf

These can be invoked with the following script:

/usr/share/neteye/backup/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-restore -c <absolute-config-file-path>

Restore the last snapshot

Restore all indices in the most recent snapshot.

actions:
  1:
    action: restore
    options:
      # May be changed according to your setup
      repository: neteye_log_backup
      # If the name is blank, the most recent snapshot by age will be selected
      name:
      # If the indices are blank, all indices in the snapshot will be restored
      indices:
      include_aliases: False
      ignore_unavailable: False
      include_global_state: False
      partial: False
      wait_for_completion: True
      filters:
      filtertype: none
Restore some indices

Restore indices with the name provided in indices in the most recent snapshot with state SUCCESS. The indices option supports multiple indices syntax.

In the following example, all the indices starting with “test-” will be restored.

actions:
  1:
    action: restore
    description:
    options:
      # May be changed according to your setup
      repository: neteye_log_backup
      # If the name is blank, the most recent snapshot by age will be selected
      name:
      indices: [test-*]
      include_aliases: False
      ignore_unavailable: False
      include_global_state: False
      partial: False
      filters:
      filtertype: state
      state: SUCCESS
Restore Snapshot Renaming

Restore all indices in the most recent snapshot by: - Finding any indices being restored that match the rename_pattern. - Changing the name as described in rename_replacement.

The following example will restore all indices which start with “index_”, but rename it to “restored_index_”. E.g., If you have “index_1”, this will restore “index_1”, but rename it to “restored_index_1”. For additional information, see the documentation.

actions:
  1:
    action: restore
    options:
      # May be changed according to your setup
      repository: neteye_log_backup
      # If the name is blank, the most recent snapshot by age will be selected
      name:
      # If the indices are blank, all indices in the snapshot will be restored
      indices:
      include_aliases: False
      ignore_unavailable: False
      include_global_state: False
      partial: False
      "rename_pattern": "index_(.*)"
      "rename_replacement": "restored_index_$1"
      extra_settings:
      wait_for_completion: True
    filters:
      filtertype: none