Audit Logging
Audit logging in Cassandra logs every incoming CQL command request,
as well as authentication (successful/unsuccessful login) to a Cassandra node.
Currently, there are two implementations provided.
The custom logger can be implemented and injected with the class name as a parameter in
the cassandra.yaml file.
-
BinAuditLogger: an efficient way to log events to file in a binary format (community-recommended logger for performance) -
FileAuditLogger: logs events toaudit/audit.logfile using slf4j logger
What does audit logging captures
Audit logging captures following events:
-
Successful as well as unsuccessful login attempts
-
All database commands executed via native CQL protocol attempted or successfully executed
Limitations
Executing prepared statements will log the query as provided by the client in the prepare call, along with the execution timestamp and all other attributes (see below). Actual values bound for prepared statement execution will not show up in the audit log.
What does audit logging logs
Each audit log implementation has access to the following attributes, and for the default text based logger these fields are concatenated with pipes to yield the final message.
-
user: User name(if available) -
host: Host IP, where the command is being executed -
source ip address: Source IP address from where the request initiated -
source port: Source port number from where the request initiated -
timestamp: unix time stamp -
type: Type of the request (SELECT, INSERT, etc.,) -
category- Category of the request (DDL, DML, etc.,) -
keyspace- Keyspace(If applicable) on which request is targeted to be executed -
scope- Table/Aggregate name/ function name/ trigger name etc., as applicable -
operation- CQL command being executed
How to configure
Auditlog can be configured using the cassandra.yaml file.
To use audit logging on one node, either edit that file or enable and configure using nodetool.
cassandra.yaml configurations for AuditLog
The following options are supported:
-
enabled: This option enables/ disables audit log -
logger: Class name of the logger/ custom logger. -
audit_logs_dir: Auditlogs directory location, if not set, default to cassandra.logdir.audit or cassandra.logdir
/audit/ -
included_keyspaces: Comma separated list of keyspaces to be included in audit log, default - includes all keyspaces -
excluded_keyspaces: Comma separated list of keyspaces to be excluded from audit log, default - excludes no keyspace except system, system_schema and system_virtual_schema -
included_categories: Comma separated list of Audit Log Categories to be included in audit log, default - includes all categories -
excluded_categories: Comma separated list of Audit Log Categories to be excluded from audit log, default - excludes no category -
included_users: Comma separated list of users to be included in audit log, default - includes all users -
excluded_users: Comma separated list of users to be excluded from audit log, default - excludes no user
List of available categories are: QUERY, DML, DDL, DCL, OTHER, AUTH, ERROR, PREPARE
NodeTool command to enable AuditLog
The nodetool enableauditlog command enables AuditLog with the cassandra.yaml file defaults.
Those defaults can be overridden using options with this nodetool command.
nodetool enableauditlogOptions
--excluded-categories-
Comma separated list of Audit Log Categories to be excluded for audit log. If not set the value from cassandra.yaml will be used
--excluded-keyspaces-
Comma separated list of keyspaces to be excluded for audit log. If not set the value from cassandra.yaml will be used. Please remeber that system, system_schema and system_virtual_schema are excluded by default, if you are overwriting this option via nodetool, remember to add these keyspaces back if you dont want them in audit logs
--excluded-users-
Comma separated list of users to be excluded for audit log. If not set the value from cassandra.yaml will be used
--included-categories-
Comma separated list of Audit Log Categories to be included for audit log. If not set the value from cassandra.yaml will be used
--included-keyspaces-
Comma separated list of keyspaces to be included for audit log. If not set the value from cassandra.yaml will be used
--included-users-
Comma separated list of users to be included for audit log. If not set the value from cassandra.yaml will be used
--logger-
Logger name to be used for AuditLogging. Default BinAuditLogger. If not set the value from cassandra.yaml will be used
NodeTool command to disable AuditLog
The nodetool disableauditlog command disables AuditLog.
nodetool disableuditlogNodeTool command to reload AuditLog filters
The nodetool enableauditlog command can be used to reload auditlog filters with either defaults or previous loggername and
updated filters:
nodetool enableauditlog --loggername <Default/ existing loggerName> --included-keyspaces <New Filter values>View the contents of AuditLog Files
The auditlogviewer is used to view the contents of the audit binlog file in human readable text format.
auditlogviewer <path1> [<path2>...<pathN>] [options]Options
-f,--follow-
- Upon reacahing the end of the log continue indefinitely
-
waiting for more records
-r,--roll_cycle-
- How often to roll the log file was rolled. May be
-
necessary for Chronicle to correctly parse file names. (MINUTELY, HOURLY, DAILY). Default HOURLY.
-h,--help-
display this help message
For example, to dump the contents of audit log files to the console:
auditlogviewer /logs/cassandra/auditresults in
LogMessage: user:anonymous|host:localhost/X.X.X.X|source:/X.X.X.X|port:60878|timestamp:1521158923615|type:USE_KS|category:DDL|ks:dev1|operation:USE "dev1"Configuring BinAuditLogger
To use BinAuditLogger as a logger in AuditLogging, set the logger to BinAuditLogger in the cassandra.yaml file
under the audit_logging_options section.
BinAuditLogger can be futher configued using its advanced options in cassandra.yaml.
Advanced Options for BinAuditLogger
block-
Indicates if the AuditLog should block if the it falls behind or should drop audit log records. Default is set to
trueso that AuditLog records wont be lost max_queue_weight-
Maximum weight of in memory queue for records waiting to be written to the audit log file before blocking or dropping the log records. Default is set to
256 * 1024 * 1024 max_log_size-
Maximum size of the rolled files to retain on disk before deleting the oldest file. Default is set to
16L * 1024L * 1024L * 1024L roll_cycle-
How often to roll Audit log segments so they can potentially be reclaimed. Available options are: MINUTELY, HOURLY, DAILY, LARGE_DAILY, XLARGE_DAILY, HUGE_DAILY.For more options, refer: net.openhft.chronicle.queue.RollCycles. Default is set to
"HOURLY"
Configuring FileAuditLogger
To use FileAuditLogger as a logger in AuditLogging, set the class name in the cassandra.yaml file and configure
the audit log events to flow through separate log file instead of system.log.
<!-- Audit Logging (FileAuditLogger) rolling file appender to audit.log -->
<appender name="AUDIT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
<file>${cassandra.logdir}/audit/audit.log</file>
<rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedRollingPolicy">
<!-- rollover daily -->
<fileNamePattern>${cassandra.logdir}/audit/audit.log.%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.%i.zip</fileNamePattern>
<!-- each file should be at most 50MB, keep 30 days worth of history, but at most 5GB -->
<maxFileSize>50MB</maxFileSize>
<maxHistory>30</maxHistory>
<totalSizeCap>5GB</totalSizeCap>
</rollingPolicy>
<encoder>
<pattern>%-5level [%thread] %date{ISO8601} %F:%L - %msg%n</pattern>
</encoder>
</appender>
<!-- Audit Logging additivity to redirect audt logging events to audit/audit.log -->
<logger name="org.apache.cassandra.audit" additivity="false" level="INFO">
<appender-ref ref="AUDIT"/>
</logger>