Ship logs from OSSEC

Filebeat configuration

Before you begin, you’ll need:

• Filebeat 7 or Filebeat 6
• Root access
• Port 5015 open

Configure OSSEC to output JSON alerts

In the OSSEC configuration file (/var/ossec/etc/ossec.conf), find the <global> tag. Add the <jsonout_output> property and set to yes.

<global>
  <jsonout_output>yes</jsonout_output>
</global>

Restart OSSEC.

sudo /var/ossec/bin/ossec-control restart

Download the Logz.io public certificate to your credentials server

For HTTPS shipping, download the Logz.io public certificate to your certificate authority folder.

sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/logzio/public-certificates/master/AAACertificateServices.crt --create-dirs -o /etc/pki/tls/certs/COMODORSADomainValidationSecureServerCA.crt

Add OSSEC as an input

In the Filebeat configuration file (/etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml), add OSSEC to the filebeat.inputs section.

Replace <<LOG-SHIPPING-TOKEN>> with the token of the account you want to ship to.

# ...
filebeat.inputs:
- type: log

  paths:
  - /var/ossec/logs/alerts/alerts.json

  fields:
    logzio_codec: json

    # Your Logz.io account token. You can find your token at
    #  https://app.logz.io/#/dashboard/settings/manage-accounts
    token: <<LOG-SHIPPING-TOKEN>>
    type: ossec
  fields_under_root: true
  encoding: utf-8
  ignore_older: 3h

If you’re running Filebeat 7, paste this code block. Otherwise, you can leave it out.

# ... For Filebeat 7 only ...
filebeat.registry.path: /var/lib/filebeat
processors:
- rename:
    fields:
    - from: "agent"
      to: "filebeat_agent"
    ignore_missing: true
- rename:
    fields:
    - from: "log.file.path"
      to: "source"
    ignore_missing: true

If you’re running Filebeat 6, paste this code block.

# ... For Filebeat 6 only ...
registry_file: /var/lib/filebeat/registry

The above assumes the following defaults:

• Log locations (JSON format) - /var/ossec/logs/alerts/alerts.json
• Log locations (plain text format) - /var/ossec/logs/alerts/alerts.log

Set Logz.io as the output

If Logz.io is not an output, add it now. Remove all other outputs.

Replace <<LISTENER-HOST>> with the host for your region. For example, listener.logz.io if your account is hosted on AWS US East, or listener-nl.logz.io if hosted on Azure West Europe.

# ...
output.logstash:
  hosts: ["<<LISTENER-HOST>>:5015"]
  ssl:
    certificate_authorities: ['/etc/pki/tls/certs/COMODORSADomainValidationSecureServerCA.crt']

Start Filebeat

Start or restart Filebeat for the changes to take effect.

Check Logz.io for your logs

Give your logs some time to get from your system to ours, and then open Kibana.

You can search for type:ossec to filter for your logs. Your logs should be already parsed thanks to the Logz.io preconfigured parsing pipeline.

If you still don’t see your logs, see log shipping troubleshooting.