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Teleport
Export Teleport Audit Events with Datadog
Version preview- Older Versions
Datadog is a SAAS monitoring and security platform. In this guide, we'll explain how to forward Teleport audit events to Datadog using Fluentd.
The Teleport Event Handler is designed to communicate with Fluentd using mTLS to establish a secure channel. In this setup, the Event Handler sends events to Fluentd, which forwards them to Datadog using an API key to authenticate.
Prerequisites
-
A running Teleport cluster version 17.0.0-dev 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.
- A Datadog account.
- A server, virtual machine, Kubernetes cluster, or Docker environment to run the Event Handler. The instructions below assume a local Docker container for testing.
- Fluentd version v1.12.4 or greater. The Teleport Event Handler
will create a new
fluent.conf
file you can integrate into an existing Fluentd system, or use with a fresh setup.
The instructions below demonstrate a local test of the Event Handler plugin on your workstation. You will need to adjust paths, ports, and domains for other environments.
- To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with
tsh login
, then verify that you can runtctl
commands using your current credentials.tctl
is supported on macOS and Linux machines. For example:If you can connect to the cluster and run thetsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.comtctl statusCluster teleport.example.com
Version 17.0.0-dev
CA pin sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
tctl status
command, you can use your current credentials to run subsequenttctl
commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also runtctl
commands on the computer that hosts the Teleport Auth Service for full permissions.
Step 1/6. Install the Event Handler plugin
The Teleport event handler runs alongside the Fluentd forwarder, receives events from Teleport's events API, and forwards them to Fluentd.
curl -L -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-event-handler-v13.3.7-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gztar -zxvf teleport-event-handler-v13.3.7-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gzsudo ./teleport-event-handler/install
We currently only build the Event Handler plugin for amd64 machines. For ARM architecture, you can build from source.
curl -L -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-event-handler-v13.3.7-darwin-amd64-bin.tar.gztar -zxvf teleport-event-handler-v13.3.7-darwin-amd64-bin.tar.gzsudo ./teleport-event-handler/install
We currently only build the event handler plugin for amd64 machines. If your macOS machine uses Apple silicon, you will need to install Rosetta before you can run the event handler plugin. You can also build from source.
Ensure that you have Docker installed and running.
docker pull public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-event-handler:13.3.7
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 installed.
Run the following commands on your Universal Forwarder host:
git clone https://github.com/gravitational/teleport.git --depth 1cd teleport/integrations/event-handlergit checkout 13.3.7make 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
.
Step 2/6. Generate a plugin configuration
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:13.3.7 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.
You'll see the following output:
Teleport event handler 17.0.0-dev
[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.
Step 3/6. Create a user and role for reading audit events
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
Step 4/6. Create teleport-event-handler credentials
Enable impersonation of the Event Handler user
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
If you are using Machine ID to provide short-lived credentials to the Event Handler, add this role to the Machine ID bot user. Otherwise, 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.
-
Retrieve your
github
authentication connector:tctl get github/github --with-secrets > github.yamlNote that the
--with-secrets
flag adds the value ofspec.signing_key_pair.private_key
to thegithub.yaml
file. Because this key contains a sensitive value, you should remove the github.yaml file immediately after updating the resource. -
Edit
github.yaml
, 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:
tctl create -f github.yaml -
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 an identity file for the Event Handler plugin user
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/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 5/6. Install Fluentd output plugin for Datadog
In order for Fluentd to communicate with Datadog, it requires the Fluentd output
plugin for Datadog. Install
the plugin on your Fluentd host using either gem
or the td-agent
, if installed:
Using Gem
gem install fluent-plugin-datadogUsing td-agent
/usr/sbin/td-agent-gem install fluent-plugin-datadog
If you're running Fluentd in a local Docker container for testing, you can adjust the entrypoint to an interactive shell as the root user, so you can install the plugin before starting Fluentd:
docker run -u $(id -u root):$(id -g root) -p 8888:8888 -v $(pwd):/keys -v \$(pwd)/fluent.conf:/fluentd/etc/fluent.conf --entrypoint=/bin/sh -i --tty fluent/fluentd:edgeFrom the container shell:
gem install fluent-plugin-datadogfluentd -c /fluentd/etc/fluent.conf
Configure Fluentd for Datadog
From the Datadog web UI, generate an API key for Fluentd. From Organization Settings -> Access -> API Keys, click on + New Key:
Copy the API key, and use it to add a new <match>
block to fluent.conf
:
<match test.log>
@type datadog
@id awesome_agent
api_key abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this
host http-intake.logs.us5.datadoghq.com
# Optional parameters
dd_source teleport
</match>
- Add your API key to the
api_key
field. - Adjust the
host
value to match your Datadog site. See their Log Collection and Integrations guide to determine the correct value. dd_source
is an optional field you can use to filter these logs in the Datadog UI.- Adjust
ca_path
,cert_path
andprivate_key_path
to point to the credential files generated earlier. If you're testing locally, the Docker command above already mounted the current working directory tokeys/
in the container.
Restart Fluentd after saving the changes to fluent.conf
.
Step 6/6. Run the Teleport Event Handler plugin
Configure the 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
Next, modify the configuration file as follows:
addr
: 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
).
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.
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 13.3.7
The Logs view in Datadog should now report your Teleport cluster events:
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.
Next steps
- Read more about impersonation here.
- 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. - To see all of the options you can set in the values file for the
teleport-plugin-event-handler
Helm chart, consult our reference guide. - Review the Fluentd output plugin for Datadog README file to learn how to customize the log format entering Datadog.