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InTrust 11.5.1 - Setting Up Gathering of Syslog Data

Setting Up Gathering of Syslog Data

You can use the InTrust Deployment Manager console to collect and manage Syslog data that is received by InTrust Server. To enable Syslog data capture, you need to set up a Syslog collection, as follows:

  • Specify the InTrust server that should listen for Syslog messages
  • Specify the devices you want to audit
  • Specify the repository where you want to store the collected Syslog data

You can add, delete and edit collections at any time.

The first time you run InTrust Deployment Manager, you are directed to the welcome page, where you are prompted to create a collection. Take the opportunity to create your Syslog collection.

You can create more collections at any time. For that, right-click Collections and select New Syslog Collection, and then follow the wizard steps.

Common Tasks for Syslog Collections

To add a Syslog collection

  1. In the InTrust Deployment Manager console, go to the Collections view.
  2. Right-click Collections and select New Syslog Collection.
  3. In the New Syslog Collection wizard, specify a name and a description for the collection.
  4. On the Set Up Collection step, specify the InTrust server from which you want to get Syslog audit data and repository. You can collect Syslog data from all devices that send Syslog messages to the InTrust server or specify certain devices by selecting one of the following options:
    1. All Syslog data received by InTrust server
    2. Syslog data only from devices you specify on the next step
  5. If you select the Syslog data only from devices you specify on the next step option, add the devices you want on the next Specify Syslog Devices step. For that click the Add button and select Devices. In the Specify Syslog Devices dialog box, you can add devices from the list or specify the IP address (DNS name) of the certain device.

    Also you can upload a text file that contain a list of device IPs, for that click Add and select the Import from file option. A list file uses the plain text format. Each IP address must be a separate line in the file.

To add devices to a collection

Use any of the following methods:

  • In the wizard that opens when you edit a Syslog collection, change the devices list on the Specify Syslog Devices step as described in the previous procedure.
  • Select the devices you need in the Syslog devices not in a collection search folder in the navigation pane and click Add to collection, and then select the collection you need.

Caution: You cannot add a device from the Syslog devices not in a collection search folder to a collection if this collection and this device are related to different InTrust servers.

To delete Syslog devices from a collection

  1. Right-click the Syslog collection and select Edit Collection.
  2. In the wizard that opens, go to the Specify Syslog Devices step.
  3. In the list of devices, select the devices you do not need, and click Remove.

To start a new repository

You can create a repository when you create a new Syslog collection or edit an existing collection, on the Set Up Collection step of the wizard. For finer-grained management of repositories, use the Storage view (for details, see Managing Repositories).

Passing Messages On

If both Syslog listening and forwarding are enabled for a repository at once, then incoming Syslog messages are forwarded unchanged. This happens independently of writing the messages to the repository.

Analyzing Syslog Collections

There are two predefined search folders for Syslog devices: Syslog devices by collection and Syslog devices not in a collection. Use them to locate the devices you need; for example, if you cannot find your device in any existing Syslog collection, it is probably available in the Syslog devices not in a collection search folder.

For all Syslog devices contained in the Syslog devices not in a collection search folder, the Received field shows the the time when the InTrust server last received an event from the device. For devices that are included in collections, the corresponding field is called Timestamp, and it contains the time when a Syslog message was last generated by the device (or, if this cannot be determined, the time when the InTrust server last received an event from the device).

A device can have the Collecting or Not Collecting status. If the InTrust server does not receive events from the device for a week, the device changes status to Not Collecting.

When a Syslog collection is selected, the right pane shows a table with information about the collection members. The table supports multi-level grouping of devices, so that you can organize them in tree-like views using any criteria. For example, to quickly find out which devices are currently not collecting any data, you can group computers by source status, then by device name.

To use multi-level grouping, drag table column names from the devices list to the area above the list. The device list changes accordingly.

 

Message Parsing Specifics

InTrust parses the Syslog messages it captures to store a useful representation of them in the repository. Only UDP v4 is used for receiving messages, and they can use either ASCII or UTF-8.

Messages are expected to conform to either RFC 3164 or RFC 5424. The fields of an event entry in the repository are filled in from the fields of a Syslog message.

A message is parsed until the end or until a mismatch occurs. The parser breaks down the message into as many insertion strings as it can. No matter how many fields InTrust is able to parse successfully—all of them, just the first three or none at all—the entire message text is saved in the Description field. This enables you to find the message in Repository Viewer (by using the Any field parameter) or IT Security Search even if the fields are not mapped properly.

RFC 3164 Specifics

The following pattern is defined in RFC 3164:

<PRI>TIMESTAMP HOSTNAME TAG: MSG

An example of a valid message is as follows:

<34>Oct 14 22:14:15 mymachine su: 'su root' failed for lonvick on /dev/pts/8

The PRI field indicates the facility and severity. For details, see Treatment of Facility and Severity Information.

A message has the following parts:

Field

Details

PRI

Indicates the facility and severity. For details, see Treatment of Facility and Severity Information.

TIMESTAMP

See Treatment of Timestamps (RFC 3164).

HOSTNAME

The name of the host as returned by the hostname command. If it is unknown, the host puts its own IP address in this field.

TAG

This is a piece of data that can help classify the message. It is often followed by the process ID in square brackets. If the process ID is not used, it is followed by a colon.

MSG

The body of the message.

Treatment of Timestamps (RFC 3164)

If the timestamp cannot be parsed, the Time event field stores a part of the time that the event was written to the repository (in the InTrust server's time zone). Note that this field is supposed to contain local times. The GMT timestamp is derived from the parsed value. The message contains no time zone information, so it is important that the Syslog device and the InTrust server should best be located in the same time zone; otherwise, the local and GMT timestamps will be wrong.

The RFC 3164 format does not specify the year in the timestamp. However, when capturing messages, InTrust must supply the year to form a valid event date. Normally, this only matters for a fraction of a second at midnight on January 1st, because the year can change while a message is in transit.

In rare cases, messages are accumulated and need to be submitted after a delay. For example, some applications that can send Syslog will hold events until Syslog forwarding is configured. When these stored messages cross a calendar year, they can end up with an incorrect timestamp that appears to be in the future when in reality they are from the past.

When InTrust receives a Syslog message without the year, it assumes the message has the current year value. However, it can decide to change the year. If this timestamp appears to be more than six months in the future (same year), InTrust changes it to the previous year. For example, in March 2018 you get messages from November. There's no same-year date six months before March, and November 2018 is more than six months ahead, so the resulting date is in November 2017.

RFC 5424 Specifics

The following pattern is defined in RFC 5424 (the header is bolded):

<PRI>VERSION TIMESTAMP HOSTNAME APP-NAME PROCID MSGID STRUCTURED-DATA MSG

A message has the following parts:

Field

Details

PRI

Indicates the facility and severity. For details, see Treatment of Facility and Severity Information.

VERSION

Syslog version. The presence of a digit after the PRI field is how InTrust can tell this is an RFC 5424-compliant message. However, it doesn't matter which digit it is.

TIMESTAMP

See Treatment of Timestamps (RFC 5424).

HOSTNAME

This can be an FQDN, IPv4 address, IPv6 address or conventional hostname. It can also be omitted with “-”.

Examples of valid host names:

  • Machinename
  • Myhost.domain.com
  • 10.30.44.135
  • fe80::5d3b:41f:38d2:a1b1%13

APP-NAME

This field identifies the application that sent the message. It can be omitted with “-”. InTrust does not process this data.

PROCID

This field is often used to provide the process name or process ID associated with a Syslog system. It can be omitted with “-”. InTrust does not process this data.

MSGID

This field should identify the type of message. For example, a firewall might use the MSGID "TCPIN" for incoming TCP traffic and the MSGID "TCPOUT" for outgoing TCP traffic. It can be omitted with “-”. InTrust does not process this data.

STRUCTURED-DATA

This is a collection of arbitrary key-value pairs. It can be omitted with “-”. InTrust does not process this data.

Examples of valid messages:

  • <165>1 2015-05-11T22:14:15.003Z SUPERHOST1 myproc 8710 - - %% It's time to make the do-nuts.
  • <165>1 2003-10-11T22:14:15.003Z mymachine.domain.com evntslog - ID47 [exampleSDID@32473 iut="3" eventSource="Application" eventID="1011"]
    Message with structured data in the UTC time zone
  • <140>1 2003-10-11T22:14:15.003+3:00 10.30.44.245 evntslog - ID47
    Message with a non-UTC time zone and IP address instead of host name

For an in-depth description of the format, see Section 6 of RFC 5424.

Treatment of Timestamps (RFC 5424)

The timestamp in a message can contain such details as the time zone and milliseconds. Millisecond information is lost when a message is converted to an event entry. It is also possible that the timestamp is omitted altogether, replaced by “-”.

The following are examples of valid timestamps:

2015-05-12T19:20:50.52-04:00
2015-05-11T22:14:15.003Z
2015-05-24T05:14:15.000003-07:00
-

The following timestamps are malformed:

2015-08-24T05:14:15.000000003-07:00
Too many decimal places (there should be no more than six).

08-24-2015T05:14:15-07:00
The order of units in the date is wrong.

2015/08/24T05:14:15-07:00
You cannot use separators other than “–“ and “:” in the time part.

If the timestamp cannot be parsed or it is omitted, InTrust substitutes the current time during event generation (in the InTrust server's time zone). The parsed (or substituted) timestamp goes to the Date and Time fields of the event. Note that messages are supposed to contain local times.

The GMT timestamp is derived from the resulting value, as follows:

  • If the time zone is specified, it is used for offsetting the GMT timestamp.
  • A message must have either time zone information or local offset information; if neither is available, the timestamp cannot be parsed.

Mapping of Event Fields

When InTrust generates an event entry based on a Syslog message, it uses the rules outlined in the table below. It shows what happens to the following example message:

  • RFC 3164-compliant format
    <34>Oct 14 22:14:15 mymachine su: 'su root' failed for lonvick on /dev/pts/8
  • RFC 5424-compliant format
    <34>1 2014-10-14T22:14:15+03:00 mymachine su - ID47 - 'su root' failed for lonvick on /dev/pts/8
Event field Value In the example above
Log Syslog Syslog
Event Type

Severity value, derived from the PRI field. For details, see Treatment of Facility and Severity Information.

There are more severities than event types, and they are mapped as follows:

  • 0–3: error
  • 4: warning
  • 5–7: information
error
Source Syslog Device Syslog Device
Category Facility value, derived from the PRI field. security
Event ID 0 0
Date The date the event occurred or was put in the repository. For details, see Treatment of Timestamps (RFC 3164) or Treatment of Timestamps (RFC 5424). 10/14/2014
Time

For details, see Treatment of Timestamps (RFC 3164) or Treatment of Timestamps (RFC 5424).

22:14:15
User Not used.  
Computer

The HOSTNAME field, if it can be parsed. This is the host where the event occurred.

If the host name cannot be parsed or is omitted, then InTrust substitutes the IP address of the host that the message came from.

mymachine
Description The entire message, restored from the insertion strings it was broken down into.

<34>Oct 14 22:14:15 mymachine su: 'su root' failed for lonvick on /dev/pts/8

<34>1 2014-10-14T22:14:15+03:00 mymachine su - ID47 - 'su root' failed for lonvick on /dev/pts/8

Insertion String #1

The host that sent the message; not necessarily the same host that the event occurred on.

mymachine

Treatment of Facility and Severity Information

In both RFC 3164 and RFC 5424, the PRI field indicates the facility and severity. The following table shows how PRI values are interpreted:

Severity →
Facility ↓
emergency alert critical error warning notice info debug
kernel 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
user 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
mail 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
system 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
security 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
syslog 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47
lpd 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55
nntp 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63
uucp 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71
time 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79
security 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87
ftpd 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95
ntpd 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103
logaudit 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111
logalert 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119
clock 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127
local0 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135
local1 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143
local2 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151
local3 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159
local4 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167
local5 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175
local6 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183
local7 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

Treatment of Named Fields

Syslog messages can contain pieces of information that are semantically key–value pairs. There is no agreed-upon notation for such items, so the syntax may vary from provider to provider. InTrust attempts to analyze incoming messages to spot key–value information.

During message parsing, InTrust first tries to detect a pattern that indicates the presence of keys. The pattern for a key is like this: separator followed by single word followed by assignment marker. These three elements are distinguished as follows:

  • The separator is white space, a comma or a semicolon.
  • The word is alphanumeric without spaces in the middle and doesn't start with a number or underscore.
  • The assignment marker is a colon or equals sign. It may or may not contain white space to the left or right of it. As long as the use of white space is consistent, the assignment marker will be spotted.

If a combination of these features occurs repeatedly in a message, then InTrust considers it a pattern and treats the matching words as keys and the substrings to the right of them as values.

InTrust puts the discovered key–value pairs in the named strings of event records.

IMPORTANT:

  • Sometimes a Syslog message contains a multi-value field expressed as multiple occurrences of the same key with different values. InTrust repository records cannot have multi-value fields, so in such cases the resulting value will be a concatenation of all the string values for the key.
  • If a substring looks like a key–value pattern but is enclosed in quotation marks, it is not split into fields and can be treated as part of the value for some key.

Tags

Messages from some Syslog providers include a piece of information that is traditionally referred to as a tag. It isn't usually marked in any way, and its position is defined by a set of rules. For example, in a message like "<54>Dec 31 23:51:36 sm-w2k12-001 SymantecServer: sm-w2k12-001,Local: 10.30.38.109,Local: 514..." the tag is SymantecServer.

InTrust detects such tags and puts them in the Tag field. If they match the key–value pattern, it also forms named fields from them.

Example 1

<134> id=firewall sn=18B1690729A8 mgmtip=192.168.168.168 time=\"2016-08-19 00:21 : 40 UTC\" fw=10.205.123.15 m=96 n=24789 i=60 lic=0 pt=8080.8443 usestandbysa=0 dyn=n.e ai=1 fwlan=192.168.168.168 conns=18

Here is how the fields are extracted:

The parser decides that a white space means a separator, and an equals sign without white space on either side is the assignment marker. Therefore, the following fields are discovered:

Facility

local0

Severity

info

Where

10.30.35.174

Ai

1

Conns

18

Dyn

n.e

Fw

10.205.123.15

Fwlan

192.168.168.168

I

60

Id

firewall

Lic

0

M

96

Mgmtip

192.168.168.168

N

24789

Pt

8080.8443

Sn

18B1690729A8

Usestandbysa

0

When

9/5/2018 5:18:32 PM

Example 2

<134> tk_url=http://example.com:80/whatever.png,tk_malicious_entity=,tk_file_name=,tk_entity_name=,tk_action=,tk_scan_type=WebReputation,tk_blocked_by=policy,tk_rule_name=IJVIRUS,tk_opp_id=0,tk_group_name=None,tk_category=Web Reputation - Very Low,tk_uid=0000002836-626130ec1beb9bfdaab2,tk_filter_action=3

Here is how the fields are extracted:

A comma is recognized as the separator, and an equals sign without white space on either side is the assignment marker. Some fields (such as tk_action and tk_malicious_entity) are detected and receive empty values. The following non-empty fields are discovered:

Facility

local0

Severity

info

Where

10.30.35.174

Tk Blocked By policy
Tk Category Web Reputation - Very Low
Tk Filter Action 3
Tk Group Name None
Tk Opp Id

0

Tk Rule Name

IJVIRUS

Tk Scan Type WebReputation
Tk Uid

0000002836-626130ec1beb9bfdaab2

Tk Url

http://example.com:80/whatever.png

When 9/5/2018 5:18:24 PM
Example 3

<54>Dec 31 23:51:36 sm-w2k12-001 SymantecServer: sm-w2k12-001,Local: 10.30.38.109,Local: 514,Local: 000C29B01D8B,Remote: 10.30.44.167,Remote: ,Remote: 58800,Remote: 0003BAF4AAD9,UDP,Inbound,Begin: 2017-12-31 23:57:38,End: 2017-12-31 23:57:39,Occurrences: 3,Application: ,Rule: Block all other IP traffic and log,Location: Default,User: Administrator,Domain: SM-W2K12-001,Action: Blocked

Here is how the fields are extracted:

Here a colon followed by white space is assumed to be the assignment marker and the separator is a comma. The Local and Remote fields occur multiple times, so both of them get concatenated values. The resulting named strings are as follows:

Facility

lpd

Severity

info

Where

sm-w2k12-001

Action

Blocked

Domain

sm-w2k12-001

Location

Default

Rule

Block all other IP traffic and log

Begin

2017-12-31 23:57:38

End

2017-12-31 23:57:39

Local

10.30.38.109, 514, 000C29B01D8B

Occurrences

3

Remote

10.30.44.167, , 58800, 0003BAF4AAD9,UDP,Inbound

Symantecserver

sm-w2k12-001

User

Administrator

When

12/31/2018 11:51:36 PM

Example 4

<54>Oct 01 13:12:44 sm-w2k12-001 SymantecServer: sm-w2k12-001,2Action: Blocked,Local: 10.30.38.109,Local: 514,Local: 000C29B01D8B,Remote: 10.30.44.167,Remote: ,Remote: 58800,Remote: 0003BAF4AAD9,UDP,Inbound,Begin: 2017-12-31 23:57:38,End: 2017-12-31 23:57:39,Application: ,Rule: Block all other IP traffic and log,Location: Default,User: Administrator,Domain: SM-W2K12-001

In this example, see what happens to the substring 2Action that could be a key if it didn't start with a digit:

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