localfile

This configuration section is used to configure the collection of log data from files, Windows events, and from the output of commands.

Options

location

Option to get the location of a log or a group of logs. strftime format strings may be used for log file names.

For instance, a log file named file.log-2019-07-30 can be referenced with file.log-%Y-%m-%d (assuming today is July 30th, 2019).

Wildcards can be used on Linux and Windows systems, if the log file doesn't exist at ossec-logcollector start time, such log will be re-scanned after logcollector.vcheck_files seconds.

The location field is also valid to filter by channel in case of using an eventchannel supporting Windows.

In the following example we can see two configurations showing a channel filtering for firewall and Sysmon events.

<localfile>
    <location>Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational</location>
    <log_format>eventchannel</log_format>
</localfile>

<localfile>
    <location>Microsoft-Windows-Windows Firewall With Advanced Security/Firewall</location>
    <log_format>eventchannel</log_format>
</localfile>

Below we have some Windows wildcard examples.

<localfile>
    <location>C:\Users\wazuh\myapp\*</location>
    <log_format>syslog</log_format>
</localfile>

<localfile>
    <location>C:\xampp\apache\logs\*.log</location>
    <log_format>syslog</log_format>
</localfile>

<localfile>
    <location>C:\logs\file-%Y-%m-%d.log</location>
    <log_format>syslog</log_format>
</localfile>

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

Any log file or wildcard

Note

  • strftime format strings and wildcards cannot be used on the same entry.

  • On Windows systems, only character * is supported as a wildcard. For instance *ANY_STRING*, will match all files that have ANY_STRING inside its name, another example is *.log this will match any log file.

  • The maximum amount of files monitored at same time is limited to 200.

command

Given a command output, it will be read as one or more log messages depending on command or full_command is used.

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

Any command line, optionally including arguments

alias

Change a command name in the log message.

For example <alias>usb-check</alias> would replace:

ossec: output: 'reg QUERY HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR':

with:

ossec: output: 'usb-check':

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

any string

frequency

Prevents a command from being executed in less time than the specified time (in seconds). This options can be used with command and full_command.

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

any positive number of seconds

only-future-events

Set it to no to collect events generated since Wazuh agent was stopped.

By default, when Wazuh starts it will only read all log content from a given Windows Event Channel since the agent started.

This feature is only compatible with eventchannel log format.

Default value

yes

Allowed values

yes or no

query

Filter eventchannel events that Wazuh will process by using an XPATH query following the event schema.

Example:

<localfile>
  <location>Security</location>
  <log_format>eventchannel</log_format>
  <query>Event[System/EventID = 4624 and (EventData/Data[@Name='LogonType'] = 2 or EventData/Data[@Name='LogonType'] = 10)]</query>
</localfile>

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

Any XPATH query following the event schema

label

New in version 3.0.0.

Used to add custom data in JSON events. Set log_format to json to use it.

Labels can be nested in JSON alerts by separating the "key" terms by a period.

Here is an example of how to identify the source of each log entry when monitoring several files simultaneously:

<localfile>
  <location>/var/log/myapp/log.json</location>
  <log_format>json</log_format>
  <label key="@source">myapp</label>
  <label key="agent.type">webserver</label>
</localfile>

This is a sample JSON object from the log file:

{
  "event": {
    "type": "write",
    "destination": "sample.txt"
  },
  "agent": {
    "name": "web01"
  }
}

The additional fields configured above would appear in the resulting event as below:

{
  "event": {
    "type": "write",
    "destination": "sample.txt"
  },
  "agent": {
    "name": "web01",
    "type": "webserver"
  },
  "@source": "myapp"
}

Note

If a label key already exists in the log data, the configured field value will not be included. It is recommended that a unique label key is defined by using a symbol prior to the key name as in @source.

target

New in version 3.3.0.

Target specifies the name of the socket where the output will be redirected. The socket must be defined previously.

Default value

agent

Allowed values

any defined socket

log_format

Set the format of the log to be read. field is required

Note

For most of the text log files that only have one entry per line, syslog may be used.

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

syslog

Used for plain text files in a syslog-like format.

json

Used for single-line JSON files and allows for customized labels to be added to JSON events.

See also the tag label for more information.

New in version 3.0.0.

snort-full

Used for Snort’s full-output format.

squid

Used for squid logs.

eventlog

Used for the classic Microsoft Windows event log format.

eventchannel

Used for Microsoft Windows event logs, returns the events in JSON format.

Monitors every channel specified at the configuration file and shows every field included in it.

This can be used to monitor standard “Windows” event logs and "Application and Services" logs.

audit

Used for events from Auditd.

This format chains consecutive logs with the same ID into a single event.

mysql_log

Used for MySQL logs, however, this value does not support multi-line logs.

postgresql_log

Used for PostgreSQL logs, however, this value does not support multi-line logs.

nmapg

Used for monitoring files conforming to the grep-able output from nmap.

iis

Used for iis (Windows Web Server) logs.

command

Used to read the output from the command (as run by root) specified by the command tag.

Each line of output is treated as a separate log.

full_command

Used to read the output from the command (as run by root) specified by the command tag.

The entire output will be treated as a single log item.

djb-multilog

Used to read files in the format produced by the multi-log service logger in daemon tools.

multi-line

Used to monitor applications that log multiple lines per event.

The number of lines must be consistent in order to use this value.

The number of lines in each log entry must be specified following the multi-line: value.

Each line will be combined with the previous lines until all lines are gathered which means there

may be multiple timestamps in the final event.

The format for this value is: <log_format>multi-line: NUMBER</log_format>

Warning

The eventchannel log format cannot be used on Windows agents prior to the Vista OS as they do not produce this type of log.

Warning

Agents will ignore command and full_command log sources unless they have logcollector.remote_commands=1 set in their /var/ossec/etc/internal_options.conf or /var/ossec/etc/local_internal_options.conf file. This is a security precaution to prevent the Wazuh manager from running arbitrary commands on agents in their root security context.

Sample of Multi-line log message in original log file:

Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line one
Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line two
Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line four
Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line three
Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line five

Sample Log message as analyzed by ossec-analysisd:

Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line one Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line two Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line three Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line four Aug 9 14:22:47 hostname log line five

out_format

New in version 3.3.0.

This option allows formatting logs from Logcollector using field substitution.

The list of available parameters is:

Parameter

Description

log

Message from the log.

json_escaped_log

Message from the log, escaping JSON reserver characters.

base64_log

Message from the log, encoded in base64.

output

Output from a command. Alias of log.

location

Path to the source log file.

command

Command line or alias defined for the command. Alias of location.

timestamp

Current timestamp (when the log is sent), in RFC3164 format.

timestamp <format>

Custom timestamp, in strftime string format.

hostname

System's host name.

host_ip

Host's primary IP address.

Attributes:

target

This option selects a defined target to apply the output format.

Allowed values

Any target defined in the option <target>.

Default value

Select all targets defined in the <localfile> stanza.

ignore_binaries

This specifies to ignore binary files, testing if the file is UTF8 or ASCII.

If this is set to yes and the file is, for example, a binary file, it will be discarded.

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

yes or no

<localfile>
    <log_format>syslog</log_format>
    <location>/var/logs/*</location>
    <ignore_binaries>yes</ignore_binaries>
</localfile>

Note

On Windows agents, it will also check if the file is encoded with UCS-2 LE BOM or UCS-2 BE BOM.

age

This specifies to read-only files that have been modified before the specified age.

For example, if the age is set to 1 day, all files that have not been modified since 1 day will be ignored.

<localfile>
    <log_format>syslog</log_format>
    <location>/var/logs/*</location>
    <age>1d</age>
</localfile>

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

A positive number that should contain a suffix character indicating a time unit, such as, s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours), d (days).

exclude

This indicates the location of a wild-carded group of logs to be excluded.

For example, we may want to read all the files from a directory, but exclude those files whose name starts with an e.

<localfile>
    <log_format>syslog</log_format>
    <location>/var/logs/*</location>
    <exclude>/var/logs/e*</exclude>
</localfile>

Default value

n/a

Allowed values

Any log file or wildcard

reconnect_time

New in version 3.12.0.

Defines the interval of reconnection attempts when the Windows Event Channel service is down.

Default value

5s

Allowed values

A positive number that should contain a suffix character indicating a time unit, such as, s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours), d (days), w (weeks)

Note

This option only applies when the log_format is eventchannel.

Configuration examples

Linux configuration:

<!-- For monitoring log files -->
<localfile>
  <log_format>syslog</log_format>
  <location>/var/log/syslog</location>
</localfile>

<!-- For monitoring command output -->
<localfile>
  <log_format>command</log_format>
  <command>df -P</command>
  <frequency>360</frequency>
</localfile>

<!-- To use a custom target or format -->
<localfile>
  <log_format>syslog</log_format>
  <location>/var/log/auth.log</location>
  <target>agent,custom_socket</target>
  <out_format target="custom_socket">$(timestamp %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S): $(log)</out_format>
</localfile>

Windows configuration:

<!-- For monitoring Windows eventchannel -->
<localfile>
  <location>Security</location>
  <log_format>eventchannel</log_format>
  <only-future-events>yes</only-future-events>
  <query>Event/System[EventID != 5145 and EventID != 5156]</query>
  <reconnect_time>10s</reconnect_time>
</localfile>