Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Syslog Over TLS Data Feed Splitting via syslog-ng

By Tony Lee

There are times where you may only be able to send data to a single syslog receiver, but all is not lost. Fortunately, many syslog receivers can handle splitting the feed. In this article we will use syslog-ng to show the steps needed to split a syslog feed (possibly for the purpose of taking a single feed and sending it to two SIEMs).  As a bonus, we will give you the steps to also receive and split a TLS encrypted syslog feed.


Figure 1:  Unencrypted syslog feed splitting

Basic Requirements

Since we are not handling much volume in this example, we just need minimum requirements:

Our setup
  • Amazon EC2 instance
  • Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS (Red Hat is also possible, but requires different commands)
  • 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, 10GB HD

Basic Setup Steps

The syslog-ng package was not available out of the box for us so we had to run:

sudo apt update

Install and create a basic configuration file

sudo su -
apt install syslog-ng
mv syslog-ng.conf syslog-ng.bak
vim syslog-ng.conf

Note:  We used the same version found in the “Config version” field after running “syslog-ng --version”


@version: 3.13

source s_input { tcp(ip(0.0.0.0) port(10514)); };
destination d_siem{ udp("10.0.0.1" port(7514) template("$MSG") ); };
destination d_siem2{ tcp("10.0.0.2" port(7515) template("$MSG") ); };

log{
source(s_input);
destination(d_siem);
destination(d_siem2);
};


Configuration explanation:

  • template("$MSG") ensures that syslog-ng does not add another header to the message
  • Single input called s_input listening on all interfaces over TCP port 10514
  • Two destinations
1) d_siem sending to 10.0.0.1 on UDP 514
2) d_siem2 sending to 10.0.0.2 on TCP 515

Validate the configuration file
Use the following command to validate and troubleshoot syslog-ng configuration issues:

syslog-ng -s -f syslog-ng.conf


Start/restart the Service
Use the following command to check and restart the syslog-ng service:

service syslog-ng status
service syslog-ng restart


Validate the port is open
Use the following command to validate listening port is open:

netstat -an | grep :10514
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:10514           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN


Test the Splitting
Since we are splitting TCP syslog in our example, we can use a web browser to test it:

http://<Your_syslog-ng_server>:10514


Figure 2:  Showing port details

Seeing the results in on the final server on UDP 7514 and TCP 7514


Figure 3:  Confirmation that the UDP 7514 split is working


Figure 4:  Confirmation that the TCP 7515 split is working

Enabling Syslog over TLS on the Input

We mentioned that there would be a bonus, now let’s enable TLS.
Note: This should be a requirement if your data is traversing a public network such as the Internet.

Creating private Certificate Authority (CA)
If you don’t have your own CA or choose not to use a public CA, you will need to create a CA on your syslog-ng server to sign certificates

sudo su –
cd /root
mkdir CA
cd CA
mkdir certs crl newcerts private
echo "01" > serial
cp /dev/null index.txt
cp /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf .
vi openssl.cnf

Change from:
dir = ./demoCA
to:
dir = .

:wq to save and exit vi

Generate the CA certificate
openssl req -new -x509 -keyout private/cakey.pem -out cacert.pem -days 365 -config openssl.cnf

Creating Server Certificate Request
Whether you use the local CA or an external/public CA, you will need to generate a server certificate request.

openssl req -nodes -new -x509 -keyout serverkey.pem -out serverreq.pem -days 365 -config openssl.cnf
openssl x509 -x509toreq -in serverreq.pem -signkey serverkey.pem -out tmp.pem

Common name should be the IP address or FQDN of your server. Leave email field blank.

Signing Server Certificate with CA
Next you can either get the serverreq.pem signed by your external CA, or sign it locally with the next step:

openssl ca -config openssl.cnf -policy policy_anything -out servercert.pem -infiles tmp.pem
rm tmp.pem

Either way you should end up with servercert.pem and serverkey.pem files, which will be used as
the server certificate and key for TLS encryption.

Copying Certificates to Syslog Directory

mkdir /etc/syslog-ng/cert.d
mkdir /etc/syslog-ng/key.d
mkdir /etc/syslog-ng/ca.d (if using local Certificate Authority)
cp cacert.pem /etc/syslog-ng/ca.d/ (if using local Certificate Authority)
cp servercert.pem /etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/
cp serverkey.pem /etc/syslog-ng/key.d/
cd /etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/
chown root servercert.pem
chmod 600 servercert.pem
cd /etc/syslog-ng/key.d/
chown root serverkey.pem
chmod 600 serverkey.pem
cd /etc/syslog-ng/ca.d/ (if using local Certificate Authority)
chown root cacert.pem (if using local Certificate Authority)
chmod 600 cacert.pem (if using local Certificate Authority)

Modify syslog-ng configuration file to use TLS
vim syslog-ng.conf


@version: 3.13

source s_input { tcp(ip(0.0.0.0) port(10514) tls(key_file("/etc/syslog-ng/key.d/serverkey.pem") cert_file("/etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/servercert.pem") peer_verify(optional-untrusted)) ); };
destination d_siem{ udp("10.0.0.1" port(7514) template("$MSG") ); };
destination d_siem2{ tcp("10.0.0.2" port(7515) template("$MSG") ); };

log{
source(s_input);
destination(d_siem);
destination(d_siem2);
};


Validate the configuration file
Use the following command to validate and troubleshoot syslog-ng configuration issues:

syslog-ng -s -f syslog-ng.conf


Start/restart the Service
Use the following command to check and restart the syslog-ng service:

service syslog-ng status
service syslog-ng restart

Test the Splitting
Since we are splitting TCP over TLS syslog in our example, we can use a web browser to test it:
https://<Your_syslog-ng_server>:10514



Figure 5:  TLS enabled on the Input

Enabling Syslog over TLS on the Input & Output

Let’s go for the double bonus now and enable TLS on the Input and TCP Output
Note: This should be a requirement if your data is traversing multiple public networks such as the Internet.

Modify syslog-ng configuration file to use TLS

vim syslog-ng.conf


@version: 3.13

source s_input { tcp(ip(0.0.0.0) port(10514) tls(key_file("/etc/syslog-ng/key.d/serverkey.pem") cert_file("/etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/servercert.pem") peer_verify(optional-untrusted)) ); };
destination d_siem{ udp("10.0.0.1" port(7514) template("$MSG") ); };
destination d_siem2{ tcp("10.0.0.2" port(7515) tls(key_file("/etc/syslog-ng/key.d/serverkey.pem") cert_file("/etc/syslog-ng/cert.d/servercert.pem") peer_verify(optional-untrusted)) template("$MSG") ); };

log{
source(s_input);
destination(d_siem);
destination(d_siem2);
};


Validate the configuration file
Use the following command to validate and troubleshoot syslog-ng configuration issues:

syslog-ng -s -f syslog-ng.conf


Start/restart the Service
Use the following command to check and restart the syslog-ng service:

service syslog-ng status
service syslog-ng restart

Test the Splitting
Since we are splitting TCP over TLS syslog in our example, we can use a web browser to test it:
https://<Your_syslog-ng_server>:10514


Figure 6:  TLS enabled on input and TCP output
Note:  We cannot TLS encrypt the UDP data stream

Set Service to Autostart on Boot

If all is well, now we can set the service to autostart at boot – just in case we experience a reboot.

sudo update-rc.d syslog-ng defaults

Added Security

Hopefully the source and destination IP addresses are static and known. This allows us to further protect the syslog ports by adding one to one firewall rules. This can be performed at both the network and host layer.

Caching Capabilities

One other option is to add some caching capabilities on this server by adding another destination of a local file. With enough disk space, it could provide some time to collect logs from the syslog-ng server before they rolled in the case of a network issue between the syslog-ng server and the downstream host.

Conclusion

In this article we showed how we can set up an intermediary syslog-ng server to split a single feed into multiple feeds. As a bonus, we also showed how we could secure the syslog traffic by enabling TLS to wrap the data with encryption. We hope this article helps get you up and running quicker when you need to split and secure that next feed.

Thanks

Zack Link for the original write up using Red Hat Linux. Syslog-ng team for the great software and documentation (https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.16/mutual-authentication-using-tls#TOPIC-956369).

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