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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [6.8] ›Secure a cluster ›Configuring security in Elasticsearch

Auditing Security Settings

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Auditing Security Settings

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All of these settings can be added to the elasticsearch.yml configuration file. For more information, see Auditing security events.

General Auditing Settings

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xpack.security.audit.enabled
Set to true to enable auditing on the node. The default value is false.
xpack.security.audit.outputs

Specifies where audit logs are output. For example: [ index, logfile ]. The default value is logfile, which puts the auditing events in a dedicated file named <clustername>_audit.log on each node.

You can also specify index, which puts the auditing events in an Elasticsearch index that is prefixed with .security_audit_log. The index can reside on the same cluster or a separate cluster. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. The outputs setting will be removed in 7.0 as there will only be one supported output type (logfile). Users who wish to store their audit information in an Elasticsearch index should write to the log file output, and a use a file ingestion component to index it into Elasticsearch.

For backwards compatibility reasons, if you use the logfile output type, a <clustername>_access.log file is also created. It contains the same information, but it uses the older (pre-6.5.0) formatting style. If the backwards compatible format is not required, it should be disabled. To do that, change its logger level to off in the log4j2.properties file. For more information, see Configuring logging levels.

If the index is unavailable, it is possible for auditing events to be lost. The index output type should therefore be used in conjunction with the logfile output type and the latter should be the official record of events. This unreliability is an important reason for why the index output type was deprecated in 6.7.0 and will be removed in 7.0.

Audited Event Settings

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The events and some other information about what gets logged can be controlled by using the following settings:

xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.include
Specifies which events to include in the auditing output. The default value is: access_denied, access_granted, anonymous_access_denied, authentication_failed, connection_denied, tampered_request, run_as_denied, run_as_granted.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.exclude
Excludes the specified events from the output. By default, no events are excluded.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.emit_request_body

Specifies whether to include the request body from REST requests on certain event types such as authentication_failed. The default value is false.

No filtering is performed when auditing, so sensitive data may be audited in plain text when including the request body in audit events.

Local Node Info Settings

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xpack.security.audit.logfile.emit_node_name
Specifies whether to include the node name as a field in each audit event. The default value is true.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.emit_node_host_address
Specifies whether to include the node’s IP address as a field in each audit event. The default value is false.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.emit_node_host_name
Specifies whether to include the node’s host name as a field in each audit event. The default value is false.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.emit_node_id
Specifies whether to include the node id as a field in each audit event. This is available for the new format only. That is to say, this information does not exist in the <clustername>_access.log file. Unlike node name, whose value might change if the administrator changes the setting in the config file, the node id will persist across cluster restarts and the administrator cannot change it. The default value is true.

Audit Logfile Event Ignore Policies

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These settings affect the ignore policies that enable fine-grained control over which audit events are printed to the log file. All of the settings with the same policy name combine to form a single policy. If an event matches all of the conditions for a specific policy, it is ignored and not printed.

xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.ignore_filters.<policy_name>.users
A list of user names or wildcards. The specified policy will not print audit events for users matching these values.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.ignore_filters.<policy_name>.realms
A list of authentication realm names or wildcards. The specified policy will not print audit events for users in these realms.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.ignore_filters.<policy_name>.roles
A list of role names or wildcards. The specified policy will not print audit events for users that have these roles. If the user has several roles, some of which are not covered by the policy, the policy will not cover this event.
xpack.security.audit.logfile.events.ignore_filters.<policy_name>.indices
A list of index names or wildcards. The specified policy will not print audit events when all the indices in the event match these values. If the event concerns several indices, some of which are not covered by the policy, the policy will not cover this event.

Audit Log Indexing Configuration Settings

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[6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. xpack.security.audit.index settings namespace refers to the index audit output type which is deprecated and will be removed in 7.0

xpack.security.audit.index.bulk_size
Controls how many audit events are batched into a single write. The default value is 1000. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.flush_interval
Controls how often buffered events are flushed to the index. The default value is 1s. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.rollover
Controls how often to roll over to a new index: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. The default value is daily. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.events.include
Specifies the audit events to be indexed. The default value is anonymous_access_denied, authentication_failed, realm_authentication_failed, access_granted, access_denied, tampered_request, connection_granted, connection_denied, run_as_granted, run_as_denied. See Audit event types for the complete list. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.events.exclude
Excludes the specified auditing events from indexing. By default, no events are excluded. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.events.emit_request_body
Specifies whether to include the request body from REST requests on certain event types such as authentication_failed. The default value is false. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.settings

Specifies settings for the indices that the events are stored in. For example, the following configuration sets the number of shards and replicas to 1 for the audit indices: [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. 

xpack.security.audit.index.settings:
  index:
    number_of_shards: 1
    number_of_replicas: 1

These settings apply to the local audit indices, as well as to the remote audit indices, but only if the remote cluster does not have security features enabled or the Elasticsearch versions are different. If the remote cluster has security features enabled and the versions coincide, the settings for the audit indices there will take precedence, even if they are unspecified (i.e. left to defaults).

Remote Audit Log Indexing Configuration Settings

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[6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. xpack.security.audit.index settings namespace refers to the index audit output type which is deprecated and will be removed in 7.0

To index audit events to a remote Elasticsearch cluster, you configure the following xpack.security.audit.index.client settings:

xpack.security.audit.index.client.hosts
Specifies a comma-separated list of host:port pairs. These hosts should be nodes in the remote cluster. If you are using default values for the transport.port setting, you can omit the port value. Otherwise, it must match the transport.port setting. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.client.cluster.name
Specifies the name of the remote cluster. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.
xpack.security.audit.index.client.xpack.security.user
Specifies the username:password pair that is used to authenticate with the remote cluster. This user must have authority to create the .security-audit index on the remote cluster. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.

If the remote Elasticsearch cluster has Transport Layer Security (TLS/SSL) enabled, you must set the following setting to true:

xpack.security.audit.index.client.xpack.security.transport.ssl.enabled
Used to enable or disable TLS/SSL for the transport client that forwards audit logs to the remote cluster. The default is false. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0.

You must also specify the information necessary to access certificates. See Auditing TLS/SSL Settings.

You can pass additional settings to the remote client by specifying them in the xpack.security.audit.index.client namespace. [6.7.0] Deprecated in 6.7.0. For example, you can add transport settings and advanced TCP settings in that namespace. To allow the remote client to discover all of the nodes in the remote cluster you can specify the client.transport.sniff setting:

xpack.security.audit.index.client.transport.sniff: true
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