Fail2ban

Ship your Fail2ban logs using Filebeat to your Logit.io Stack

Follow the steps below to send your observability data to Logit.io

Logs

Configure Fail2ban to ship logs via Filebeat to your Logit.io stacks via Logstash.

Install Integration

Please click on the Install Integration button to configure your stack for this source.

Install Filebeat

To get started you will need to install filebeat. To do this you have two main options:

Choose the filebeat (opens in a new tab) ZIP file (Windows ZIP x86_64) or
Choose the Microsoft Software Installer MSI (opens in a new tab) file (Windows MSI x86_64 (beta))

To successfully install filebeat and set up the required Windows service you will need to have administrator access.

If you have chosen to download the zip file:

Extract the contents of the zip file into C:\Program Files.
Rename the extracted folder to filebeat
Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator).
From the PowerShell prompt, run the following commands to install filebeat as a Windows service:

cd 'C:\Program Files\filebeat'

.\install-service-filebeat.ps1

If script execution is disabled on your system, you need to set the execution policy for the current session to allow the script to run. For example:

PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\install-service-filebeat.ps1

For more information about Powershell execution policies see here (opens in a new tab).

If you have chosen to download the filebeat.msi file:

double-click on it and the relevant files will be downloaded.

At the end of the installation process you'll be given the option to open the folder where filebeat has been installed.

Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator).
From the PowerShell prompt, change directory to the location where filebeat was installed and run the following command to install filebeat as a Windows service:

.\install-service-filebeat.ps1

If script execution is disabled on your system, you need to set the execution policy for the current session to allow the script to run. For example:

PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\install-service-filebeat.ps1

For more information about Powershell execution policies see here (opens in a new tab).

Configure Filebeat.yml

The configuration file below is pre-configured to send data to your Logit.io Stack.

Copy the configuration file below and overwrite the contents of the Filebeat configuration file typically located at /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml

####################### Logit.io Filebeat Configuration #########################
# ============================== Filebeat inputs ===============================
filebeat.inputs:
- type: filestream
  enabled: true
  paths:
  - "/var/log/fail2ban.log"
  
  fields:
    type: "fail2ban"
  fields_under_root: true
  encoding: utf-8
  ignore_older: 12h
 
# ================================== Outputs ===================================
output.logstash:
  hosts: ["@logstash.host:@logstash.sslPort"]
  loadbalance: true
  ssl.enabled: true

Validate Configuration

In the directory where Filebeat is installed, run the following command to validate the installation:

.\@beatname.exe test config -c @beatname.yml

If the yml file is invalid, @beatname will print a description of the error. For example, if the output.logstash section was missing, @beatname would print no outputs are defined, please define one under the output section

Start Filebeat

To start Filebeat, run in Powershell:

Start-Service filebeat

Launch Logit.io to view your logs

Data should now have been sent to your Stack.

View My Data

If you don't see take a look at How to diagnose no data in Stack below for how to diagnose common issues.

How to diagnose no data in Stack

If you don't see data appearing in your stack after following this integration, take a look at the troubleshooting guide for steps to diagnose and resolve the problem or contact our support team and we'll be happy to assist.

Metrics

Configure Telegraf to ship Fail2ban metrics to your Logit.io stacks via Logstash.

Install Integration

Please click on the Install Integration button to configure your stack for this source.

Install Telegraf

This integration allows you to configure a Telegraf agent to send your metrics to Logit.io.

Choose the installation method for your operating system:

When you paste the command below into Powershell it will download the Telegraf zip file. Once that is complete, press Enter again and the zip file will be extracted into C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf\telegraf-1.34.1.

wget https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.34.1_windows_amd64.zip -UseBasicParsing -OutFile telegraf-1.34.1_windows_amd64.zip 
Expand-Archive .\telegraf-1.34.1_windows_amd64.zip -DestinationPath 'C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf'

or in Powershell 7 use:

# Download the Telegraf ZIP file
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.34.1_windows_amd64.zip" `
                -OutFile "telegraf-1.34.1_windows_amd64.zip" `
                -UseBasicParsing
 
# Extract the contents of the ZIP file
Expand-Archive -Path ".\telegraf-1.34.1_windows_amd64.zip" `
            -DestinationPath "C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf"

Configure the Telegraf input plugin

The configuration file below is pre-configured to scrape the system metrics from your hosts, add the following code to the configuration file /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf from the previous step.

# Read metrics from fail2ban.
[[inputs.fail2ban]]
  ## Use sudo to run fail2ban-client
  use_sudo = false

Read more about how to configure data scraping and configuration options for Fail2ban (opens in a new tab)

Configure The Output plugin

Once you have generated the configuration file, you need to set up the output plug-in to allow Telegraf to transmit your data to Logit.io in Prometheus format. This can be accomplished by incorporating the following code into your configuration file:

[[inputs.tail]]
  name_override = "nginxlog"
  files = ["<Nginx installation directory>/logs/access.log"]
  from_beginning = true
  pipe = false
  data_format = "grok"
  grok_patterns = ["%{COMBINED_LOG_FORMAT}"]
 
[[outputs.http]]
  url = "https://@metricsUsername:@metricsPassword@@metrics_id-vm.logit.io:@vmAgentPort/api/v1/write"
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"
 
  [outputs.http.headers]
    Content-Type = "application/x-protobuf"
    Content-Encoding = "snappy"

Remember to replace <Nginx installation directory> with the directory where your Nginx is located.

Start Telegraf

From the location where Telegraf was installed (C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf\telegraf-1.34.1) run the program providing the chosen configuration file as a parameter:

.\telegraf.exe --config telegraf.conf

Once Telegraf is running you should see output similar to the following, which confirms the inputs, output and basic configuration the application has been started with:

Powershell Telegraf information

View your metrics

Data should now have been sent to your Stack.

View My Data

If you don't see take a look at How to diagnose no data in Stack below for how to diagnose common issues.

How to diagnose no data in Stack

Fail2ban Overview

Fail2ban is an open-source security monitoring solution that provides real-time threat detection, integrity monitoring, and compliance management capabilities. To effectively monitor and analyze security events, it's crucial to have a reliable and efficient log management solution. Fail2ban leverages the Elastic Stack, including Elasticsearch, Logstash, and OpenSearch, to provide a centralized platform for collecting, processing, and visualizing security-related data.

Organizations can use Filebeat, an open-source log shipper, to send data from Fail2ban to Logstash for processing and analysis. By configuring Filebeat to monitor the Fail2ban logs directory, any new logs can be automatically sent to Logstash, where they can be processed and analyzed in real-time for threat detection and response.

Filebeat ensures that logs are securely transferred to Logstash, where they can be filtered, transformed, and enhanced using various plugins and modules. Logstash can also perform correlation and analysis on the data to identify patterns and anomalies that may indicate security threats.

Using Fail2ban with Filebeat and Logstash provides organizations with a powerful security monitoring solution that can detect and respond to security incidents in real-time, while also maintaining compliance with industry regulations and standards. By leveraging Logit.io, organizations can collect and analyze data from various sources, gain valuable insights into their security posture, and make informed decisions to improve their overall security stance.

If you need any further assistance with migrating your log data to OpenSearch we're here to help you get started. Feel free to get in contact with our support team by sending us a message via live chat and we'll be happy to assist.

etcd Falco