Audit Logging¶

Audit logging in Cassandra logs every incoming CQL command request, Authentication (successful as well as unsuccessful login) to C* node. Currently, there are two implementations provided, the custom logger can be implemented and injected with the class name as a parameter in cassandra.yaml.

BinAuditLogger An efficient way to log events to file in a binary format.
FileAuditLogger Logs events to audit/audit.log file using slf4j logger.

Recommendation BinAuditLogger is a community recommended logger considering the performance

What does it capture¶

Audit logging captures following events

Successful as well as unsuccessful login attempts.
All database commands executed via Native protocol (CQL) 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 time stamp and all other attributes (see below). Actual values bound for prepared statement execution will not show up in the audit log.

What does it log¶

Each audit log implementation has access to the following attributes, and for the default text based logger these fields are concatenated with | s 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 cassandra.yaml. If you want to try Auditlog on one node, it can also be enabled and configured using nodetool.

cassandra.yaml configurations for AuditLog¶

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¶

enableauditlog: Enables AuditLog with yaml defaults. yaml configurations can be overridden using options via nodetool command.

nodetool enableauditlog

Options¶

--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¶

disableauditlog: Disables AuditLog.

nodetool disableuditlog

NodeTool command to reload AuditLog filters¶

enableauditlog: NodeTool enableauditlog command can be used to reload auditlog filters when called with default or previous loggername and updated filters

E.g.,

nodetool enableauditlog --loggername <Default/ existing loggerName> --included-keyspaces <New Filter values>

View the contents of AuditLog Files¶

auditlogviewer is the new tool introduced to help view the contents of 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 on the console

auditlogviewer /logs/cassandra/audit

Sample output¶

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 cassandra.yaml under audit_logging_options section. BinAuditLogger can be futher configued using its advanced options in cassandra.yaml.

Adcanced 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 true so 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, apart from setting the class name in cassandra.yaml, following configuration is needed to have 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>