Suricata manual output configuration

mkcharlie

@bmeeks it seems to be the same problem indeed: the original output is overwritten by the custom config.

Is there currently a way to achieve the following config using the GUI?

outputs:
  - eve-log:
      enabled: yes
      filetype: regular
      filename: eve.json
      redis:
        server: 127.0.0.1
        port: 6379
        mode: list
        key: "suricata"
      identity: "suricata"
      facility: local1
      level: notice
      xff:
        enabled: no
        mode: extra-data
        deployment: reverse
        header: X-Forwarded-For
      types:
        - alert:
            payload: yes              # enable dumping payload in Base64
            payload-buffer-size: 4kb  # max size of payload buffer to output in eve-log
            payload-printable: yes    # enable dumping payload in printable (lossy) format
            packet: yes               # enable dumping of packet (without stream segments)
            http-body: yes            # enable dumping of http body in Base64
            http-body-printable: yes  # enable dumping of http body in printable format
            metadata: yes             # enable inclusion of app layer metadata with alert
            tagged-packets: yes       # enable logging of tagged packets for rules using the 'tag' keyword

  - eve-log:
      enabled: yes
      filetype: unix_stream
      filename: /var/run/suricata-stats.sock
      types:
        - alert:
            payload: no
            payload-printable: no
            packet: no
            http-body: no
            metadata: no

bmeeks

@mkcharlie:
Sort of, is the best answer. You can't do it directly within the GUI using just tools available there. It will require editing a PHP source code file. Your edit would stay until the next time you either upgraded the Suricata package or removed and reinstalled it.

One major caveat with this method: this change will be reflected on ALL of your Suricata interfaces as the file you modify for this change is used to build the suricata.yaml file for every configured Suricata interface.

Here is what you can do. You will need direct access to the firewall file system. My favorite tool for doing this is WinSCP installed on a Windows box, then connect to the firewall from WinSCP using scp:

Locate the file /usr/local/pkg/suricata/suricata_yaml_template.inc.
Make a copy of it for backup in the event you want to restore default behavior or something gets severely messed up.
Double-click the file in WinSCP to open it in the built-in editor.
This file is a template the PHP code uses to create the actual suricata.yaml file for the interface. Be careful not to disturb or change any of the phrases with "$" in front. Those are PHP variables used when writing the actual YAML file.
Scroll down in the file and find the - eve-log: sections. There are two of them.
You can add your third EVE log section under the second one. Here is an example:

- eve-log:
    enabled: {$enable_eve_log}
    filetype: {$eve_output_type}
    filename: eve.json
    redis: {$eve_redis_output}
    identity: "suricata"
    facility: {$eve_systemlog_facility}
    level: {$eve_systemlog_priority}
    xff:
      enabled: {$eve_xff_enabled}
      mode: {$eve_xff_mode}
      deployment: {$eve_xff_deployment}
      header: {$eve_xff_header}
    types: {$eve_out_types}

- eve-log:
    enabled: {$enable_telegraf_eve}
    filetype: unix_stream
    filename: {$telegraf_eve_sockname}
    types:
      - stats:
          threads: yes

- eve-log:
    enabled: yes
    filetype: unix_stream
    filename: /var/run/suricata-stats.sock
    types:
      - alert:
          payload: no
          payload-printable: no
          packet: no
          http-body: no
          metadata: no

Save your edit and that should do it for you if what you want is the EVE log output to a Unix socket.

mkcharlie

@bmeeks thanks! I can try that. Just, wouldn’t it be easier then to just copy the whole output section to the advanced pass through configuration? That would survive upgrades right?

bmeeks

@mkcharlie said in Suricata manual output configuration:

@bmeeks thanks! I can try that. Just, wouldn’t it be easier then to just copy the whole output section to the advanced pass through configuration? That would survive upgrades right?

I'm not sure putting everything in the passthrough section would work, but you can certainly try it. You would need to copy it from the working suricata.yaml file, though. That code in that template file I referenced earlier is read by the PHP code and then used to spit out a different text file that becomes the YAML config for the interface. So you paste anything with a $ sign in front of it in the passthrough section, that will blow up as it will not get translated. At runtime, as the PHP code is creating the YAML file, it puts content from the config.xml of the firewall into those $variables, and that content is what gets written to the final YAML file.

That template file is used in a heredoc call within the PHP code. Here is a link that explains what that is: https://andy-carter.com/blog/what-are-php-heredoc-nowdoc.

mkcharlie

@bmeeks I can copy the full output to the pass-through, but that does not seem to solve the issue. The config looks fine though, so now I'm wondering if there is another cause for this issue.

mkcharlie

Update: had to restart, seems to work. I'll do some more testing.

bmeeks

@mkcharlie said in Suricata manual output configuration:

Update: had to restart, seems to work. I'll do some more testing.

Nothing in Suricata is dynamic. Changes in the configuration require a restart of the service so the daemon reads the suricata.yaml file again. The only thing you can do "dynamically" is update the rules, then send a special SIGHUP command to the daemon so it will reload the in-memory rules. But any changes to the suricata.yaml require a full restart as that file is only processed during startup.

mkcharlie

@bmeeks clear, all seems to work well. I suppose this solution survives updates. Thanks for the help!

bmeeks

@mkcharlie said in Suricata manual output configuration:

@bmeeks clear, all seems to work well. I suppose this solution survives updates. Thanks for the help!

If everything is being passed in the Advanced Passthrough box, then yes it will survive any package or pfSense updates because that data lives as a field in config.xml, the file that holds all the firewall and package configuration information.

What would not survive an update is if you modified the PHP source file as I was describing previously.

bmeeks

I will repeat here for clarity something I've mentioned in some other Suricata posts.

The Suricata package consists of two unique and separate components. One is a GUI front-end written in PHP. That GUI is what you interact with. It is used to store and manage configuration information for the Suricata interfaces. When you click Save after making a configuration change, the GUI PHP code consolidates all the config parameters and writes them to the suricata.yaml file for the interface.

The other piece of the package is the Suricata executable binary that runs as a service. This piece comes from the upstream Suricata developers. That binary is distributed to run on my different operating systems, but it is purely a command-line interface that uses a combination of the suricata.yaml config file and arguments passed on the command line to control its operation. The GUI part of Suricata on pfSense just generates that YAML file and then starts the binary piece with the appropriate command-line arguments.

I mention this as a lot of folks seem to misunderstand the distinction between the GUI part they see and binary part they do not. But the binary is where all the real work happens.