TPCiC 2021: ElasticSearch Exploration in Your Terminal

You've seen the pretty graphs. Visuals are great for signaling there is a problem somewhere in your system. How do you, a command line guru, go from pretty graphs to root cause analysis? Most likely you'll be reaching for paradigms from the command line: composability and a flexible, compact syntax to ask your questions. I'd like to talk more about integrating ElasticSearch-based dashboards back to the command line workflows I love.

This talk is an overview of a tool I developed while working at Booking.com to drastically reduce the time and complexity of performing incident reponse against rich, structured data in ElasticSearch. It was developed with the help of the security and fraud teams to perform ad-hoc queries critical for incident response. The tool served the team well and it's been under active development ever since. It continues to grow in capabilities aimed to make adhoc analysis simple, easy, and accessible to hardened command line jockeys and command line newbies.

Join me to learn how to bring the logging data you love back to your terminal!

Transcript

1. ELASTICSEARCH DATA EXPLORATION IN YOUR TERMINAL Things you never knew you needed until it was too late. With your host, Brad Lhotsky
2. WHY? @reyjrar
3. WE HAVE KIBANA It’s an Elastic Product too! @reyjrar
4. WE HAVE GRAFANA Such pretty, much datasources! @reyjrar
5. AND NOW WE HAVE LOKI OR WHATEVER Flip between logs and graphs, oh my. @reyjrar
6. WHY DRAG THE TERMINAL INTO THIS? @reyjrar
7. MICE SLOW ME DOWN If you prefer a browser, cool. @reyjrar
8. MY BROWSER IS NOT AN IDE ➤ Which browser? ➤ Are you using privacy extensions? ➤ What happens when I hit “Backspace” ➤ Don’t get me started on “gestures” ➤ Bloaty and slow ➤ Prone to distraction @reyjrar
9. THE CLI IS A WORKSPACE ➤ Which shell? ➤ Tab Autocomplete ➤ ReadLine ➤ dot fi les ➤ Access to a plethora of interoperable tools ➤ OK, I could MUD from my terminal ➤ Otherwise, fairly purpose built @reyjrar
10. MY TERMINAL IS WHERE I WORK @reyjrar
11. GUIDING LIGHTS Things that mean something to me
12. “ There are a fi nite number of key strokes before you die, use them wisely. - A Wise Programmer
13. UNIX PHILOSOPHY ➤ Do One Thing Well ➤ Assume output will be used as input and vice versa ➤ Favor the creation of tools or scripts, even for seemingly one-o ff jobs
14. PERL ➤ Easy things easy, hard things possible ➤ Sloppy and unpredictable uses just like natural languages ➤ Grow with you ➤ DWIM ➤ TIMTOWDI ➤ The CPAN
15. EXPLORATION being places you weren't intended to be
16. I SAW THE POWER OF ELASTICSEARCH EARLY @reyjrar
17. BUT IT WASN’T VERY CLI OR OPS FRIENDLY @reyjrar
18. App::ElasticSearch::Utilities https://github.com/reyjrar/es-utils https://metacpan.org/pod/App::ElasticSearch::Utilities SO I DID A PERL @reyjrar
19. ES-UTILS ➤ Monitoring ➤ Maintenance ➤ Status and Informational Tools ➤ Built as a Reusable Perl functional library ➤ ES Version Agnostic ➤ Assumes index-%Y.%m.%d index names ➤ And then came.., ➤ es-search.pl @reyjrar
20. OPTIONAL: INSTALL PERLBREW # Install perlbrew curl -L https://install.perlbrew.pl \ | bash # Setup perlbrew perlbrew install -j8 -n 5.34.0 perlbrew switch 5.34.0 perlbrew install-cpanm @reyjrar
21. INSTALLATION cpanm App::ElasticSearch::Utilities @reyjrar
22. ES-SEARCH.PL Bringing ElasticSearch to your terminal since 2012 @reyjrar
23. GETTING STARTED: RTFM es-search.pl --help es-search.pl --manual @reyjrar
24. GETTING STARTED: CONNECTING # Defaults es-search.pl --host localhost --port 9200 # Connect to es-node01 es-search.pl --host es-node01 @reyjrar
25. GETTING STARTED: CONNECT PREFERENCES cat ~/.es-utils.yml --- host: es-gateway.corp.company.com port: 443 proto: https http-username: bob password-exec: ~/bin/get-es-password.sh @reyjrar
26. SOME HELPFUL NOTES ➤ Searches are constrained by the calendar date in the index name ➤ Searches use “index base names” via --base logstash ➤ Use --days 7 for opening scope to 7 days ➤ Searches will stop once they receive --size 20 results ➤ Use --all to get all results across full timespan ➤ Sort order is descending, override with --asc ➤ Target a speci fi c index or alias with --index logstash-2019.10.21 @reyjrar
27. GETTING STARTED: INDEX SELECTION # List index basenames $ es-search.pl --bases Bases available for search: access security syslog # Bases: 3 from a combined 61 indices. @reyjrar
28. GETTING STARTED: SHOW ME MONEY DATA es-search.pl --base syslog --fields @reyjrar
30. GETTING STARTED: SHOW ME MONEY DATA es-search.pl --base syslog --size 1 @reyjrar
32. GETTING STARTED: SET A DEFAULT "BASE" cat ~/.es-utils.yml --- host: es-gateway.corp.company.com base: log days: 1 @reyjrar
33. GETTING STARTED: TIMESTAMP DETECTION # Specify timestamp es-search.pl --base log \ --timestamp timestamp cat ~/.es-utils.yml --- base: log timestamp: timestamp @reyjrar
34. GETTING STARTED: TIMESTAMP PREFERENCES cat ~/.es-utils.yml --- base: log # Global default timestamp field timestamp: timestamp # Per base settings meta: logstash: timestamp: '@timestamp' @reyjrar
36. GETTING STARTED: SHOW ME MONEY DATA MORE LIKE LOGS # Show just selected fields es-search.pl --show hostname,program,message @reyjrar
38. GETTING STARTED: SHOW ME MATCHING DOCS # Show sshd logs es-search.pl program:sshd \ --show hostname,program,message @reyjrar
40. GETTING STARTED: MULTIPLE SEARCH PARAMETERS # Multiple parameters, AND'd es-search.pl program:sshd \ src_ip:181.206.20.11 \ --show hostname,program,message @reyjrar
42. OR MULTIPLE SEARCH PARAMETERS # Join dangling params with OR es-search.pl --or program:sshd \ src_ip:181.206.20.11 \ --show hostname,program,message # Join with OR explicitly es-search.pl program:sshd OR \ src_ip:181.206.20.11 \ --show hostname,program,message @reyjrar
44. GETTING STARTED: I WANT TO USE JQ # Make output pipe friendly to jq es-search.pl program:sshd --exists src_ip \ --jq \ | jq -r .src_ip | sort | uniq -c @reyjrar
46. EVEN MORE OPTIMIZATIONS Short cuts to save key strokes
47. QUERY STRING EXTENSIONS: BARE WORDS # and, or, not uppercased es-search.pl not program:sshd @reyjrar
49. QUERY STRING EXTENSIONS: IP # Use CIDR Notation for IPs es-search.pl src_ip:102.0.0.0/8 \ --show hostname,program,src_ip,src_geoip \ --size 1 @reyjrar
51. QUERY STRING EXTENSIONS: RANGE # Range and range combos es-search.pl dst_port:'<1024' es-search.pl status:'<500,>=400' es-search.pl crit:'>5' \ --show hostname,program,crit,name,src_ip @reyjrar
53. QUERY STRING EXTENSIONS: TERMS PROMOTION # Don't stress the Lucene escapes es-search.pl =exe:'/usr/bin/yum update -y' @reyjrar
55. QUERY STRING EXTENSIONS: PREFIX # String prefixes es-search.pl _prefix_:exe:/usr --show exe @reyjrar
57. QUERY STRING EXTENSIONS: TERMS IN A FILE # Build terms from a TSV file, last column es-search.pl src_ip:badguys.dat # Build terms from a TSV file, first column es-search.pl src_ip:badguys.dat[0] # Build terms from a CSV file, last column es-search.pl src_ip:badguys.csv @reyjrar
59. QUERY STRING EXTENSIONS: TERMS IN A JSON DATA SET # Build terms from an NDJSON file .ip es-search.pl src_ip:threatfeed.json[ip] # Build terms from an NDJSON file nested field es-search.pl src_ip:threatfeed.json[actor.ip] @reyjrar
60. CAN HAZ AGGREGATIONS i thought you'd never ask! @reyjrar
61. AGGREGATION CAVEATS ➤ Supported during "facets" and ES 0.17 ➤ Early versions of ES, up to v2.x were splodey ➤ Some limitations which I'm slowly rolling back ➤ per day ➤ Top aggregation must be a bucket ➤ Limited to 2 levels deep ➤ Well, 3 in a certain instance @reyjrar
62. AGGREGATIONS: TOP THING # Top 20 programs es-search.pl --top program # Top 50 programs es-search.pl --top program --size 50 es-search.pl --top program --limit 50 es-search.pl --top program -n 50 @reyjrar
64. AGGREGATIONS: TOP THING PER HOUR # Top programs with a src_ip ever 8 hours es-search.pl --top program _exists_:src_ip \ --interval 8h @reyjrar
66. AGGREGATIONS: TOP THING WITH ANOTHER THING # Top action with the top 3 countries es-search.pl --top action \ --with src_geoip.country # Top action with the top 10 countries es-search.pl --top action \ --with src_geoip.country:10 @reyjrar
69. AGGREGATIONS: TOP THING BY SOMETHING OTHER THAN DOC COUNT # Top src_ip by distinct dst countries es-search.pl --top src_ip \ --by cardinality:dst_geoip.country # Top dst_ip by the total traffic es-search.pl --top dst_ip \ --by sum:out_bytes @reyjrar
72. AGGREGATIONS: WHERE'S MY DATA GOING # Top src_ip by the total traffic # With top dst_ip es-search.pl --top src_ip \ --by sum:out_bytes \ --with dst_ip:1 @reyjrar
74. AGGREGATIONS: STATISTICS ANYONE? # Top program by average parse time # with a statistical summary es-search.pl --top program \ --by avg:total_time \ --with stats:total_time @reyjrar
76. AGGREGATIONS: PERCENTILES, TOO # Top programs by average parse time # With median, 90, and 99th percentile es-search.pl --top program \ --by avg:total_time \ --with percentiles:total_time:50,90,99 @reyjrar
78. AGGREGATIONS: I GOT YOUR HISTOGRAMS # Top 20 uri by average render time # with histogram of 100ms es-search.pl --top program \ --by avg:total_time \ --with histogram:total_time:0.01 @reyjrar
80. AGGREGATIONS: I'M ALL ABOUT SIGNIFICANCE # Top 20 significant uri for search es-search.pl --top significant_terms:uri \ render_ms:>1000 src_country:US # Top 20 significant uri for search, # Background is only US es-search.pl --top significant_terms:uri \ render_ms:>1000 src_country:US \ --bg-filter src_country:US @reyjrar
81. ONE MORE THING Well, maybe more than one more thing.. @reyjrar
82. BUILT WITH CLI::HELPERS ➤ General purpose, functional library for developing command line utilities in Perl ➤ Handles input ➤ Provides output customization including color support, 
 --color ➤ Allow output tagged as data to be redirected into a fi le, 
 --data-file=output.dat ➤ NoPaste support via App::NoPaste and --no-paste @reyjrar
83. NOTES ON APP::NOPASTE ➤ CLI::Helpers will only paste to a service fl agged as "public" if you specify --no-paste- public ➤ Subclass an App::NoPaste::Service object for your internal paste service, it's pretty simple ➤ Easily share things with colleagues directly from the command line @reyjrar
84. PUTTING SOME THINGS TOGETHER # Let's say we have a list of bad ip es-search.pl --top src_ip \ _prefix_:path:\/admin \ status:<400 \ src_ip:threatfeed.json[ip] \ --data-file=insidethehouse.dat @reyjrar
85. PUTTING SOME THINGS TOGETHER # Dump a full log of what they've done es-search.pl src_ip:insidethehouse.dat --show src_ip,src_user,uri,out_bytes \ --all # Share with your colleagues es-search.pl src_ip:insidethehouse.dat --show src_ip,src_user,uri,out_bytes \ --all --no-paste @reyjrar
86. PERL LIBRARY USAGE For those times when you want a custom fi t.. @reyjrar
87. STEAL THIS CODE @reyjrar ➤ Modules make it easy for you to interact with ES ➤ App::ElasticSearch::Utilities::QueryString provides all the fun query extenions ➤ App::ElasticSearch::Query provides a simple interface to execute queries ➤ All of these draw on the con fi g fi le and command line switches of App::ElasticSearch::Utilities
88. ILL FATED ATTEMPT AT LIVE DEMO IN 3. 2. 1.
89. FUTURE PLANS ➤ Arbitrary levels of nested aggregations ➤ JSON output for aggregations ➤ Better support for nested documents ➤ Arbitrary data joins at query time: rdns, whois, db lookups, etc. ➤ <your idea here> @reyjrar
90. Thank you! brad.lhotsky@gmail.com https://twitter.com/reyjrar https://github.com/reyjrar https://speakerdeck.com/reyjrar https://www.craigslist.org/about/craigslist_app @reyjrar