By: Pete Chen | Splunk Team Lead

Overview

Splunk installation is complete. Forwarders are sending data to the indexers, search heads successfully searching the indexers. The next major step is to add central authentication to Splunk. Simply put, you log into your computer, your email, and your corporate assets with a username and password. Add Splunk to the list of tools available to you with those credentials. This also saves the time and hassle of creating user profiles for everyone who needs access to Splunk. Before embarking on this step, it’s important to develop a strategy for permissions and rights. This should answer the question, “who has access to what information?”

LDAP Basics

LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. The most popular LDAP used by businesses is Microsoft’s Active Directory. The first step in working with LDAP is to determine the “base DN”. This is the name of the domain. Let’s use the domain “splunkrocks.local” as an example. In LDAP terms, it can be expressed as dc=splunkrocks,dc=local. Inside of the DN are the organizational units, OU’s. So an example of an organizational unit expressed is ou=users,dc=splunkrocks,dc=local.

Most technical services require some sort of authentication to access the information they provide. The credentials (username and password) needed to access the LDAP server is called the “BindDN”. When a connection is requested, the AD server will require a user with enough permissions to allow user and group information to be shared. In most business environments, the group managing Splunk will not be the same group managing the LDAP server. It’s best to ask for an LDAP administrator to type in the credentials during the setup process. The LDAP password is masked while it’s being typed and is hashed in the configuration file.

Keep in mind that connecting Splunk to the LDAP server doesn’t complete the task. It’s necessary to map LDAP groups to Splunk roles afterward.

Terms

LDAP: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

AD: Active Directory

DN: Distinguished Name

DC: Domain Component

CN: Common Name

OU: Organizational Unit

SN: Surname

Sample Directory Structure

Using our sample domain, Splunkrocks Local Domain (splunkrocks.local), let’s assume an organizational unit for Splunk is created called “splunk”. Inside this OU, there are two sub-organizational units, one for users, one for groups. In Splunk terms, these are users and roles.

Connecting Splunk to LDAP

From the main menu, go to Settings, and select Access Control.

Select Authentication Method

Select LDAP under External Authentication. Then click on Configure Splunk to use LDAP

In the LDAP Strategies page, there should not be any entries listed. At the top right corner of the page, click on New LDAP to add the Splunkrocks AD server as an LDAP source. Give the new LDAP connection a name.

The first section to configure is the LDAP Connection Settings. This section defines the LDAP server, the connection port, whether the connection is secure, and a user with permission to bind the Splunk server to the LDAP server.

The second section determines how Splunk finds the users within the AD server.

–        User base DN: Provide the path where Splunk can find the users in on the AD server.

–        User base filter: This can help reduce the number of users brought back into Splunk.

–        User name attribute: This is the attribute within the AD Server which contains the username. In most AD servers, this is “sAMAccountName”.

–        Real name attribute: This is the human-readable name. This is where “Ben Baker” is displayed” instead of “ben.baker”. In most AD servers, this is the “cn”, or Common Name.

–        Email attribute: this is the attribute in AD which contains the user’s email.

–        Group mapping attribute: If the LDAP server uses a group identifier for the users, this will be needed. It’s not required if distinguished names are used in the LDAP groups.

The second section determines how Splunk finds the groups within the AD server.

–        Group base DN: Provide the path where Splunk can find the groups in on the AD server.

–        Static group search filter: search filter to retrieve static groups.

–        Group name attribute: This is the attribute within the AD server which contains the group names. In most AD servers, this is simply “cn”, or Common Name.

–        Static member attribute: The group attribute with the group’s members contained. This is usually “member”.

The rest can be left blank for now. Click Save to continue. If all the settings are entered properly, the connection will be successful. A restart of Splunk will be necessary to enable the newly configured authentication method.  Remember, adding LDAP authentication is the first part of the process. To complete the setup, it’s also necessary to map Splunk roles to LDAP groups. Using the access and rights strategy mentioned above, create the necessary Splunk roles and LDAP groups. Then map the roles to the groups, and assign the necessary group or groups to each user. Developing this strategy and customizing roles is something we can help you do, based on your needs and best practices.

Want to learn more about connecting Splunk to LDAP? Contact us today!

By: Joe Wohar | Splunk Consultant

There are multiple apps that can be used to integrate Phantom with Splunk, each exists for a different reason. Some of the functionality overlaps. The intent of this post is to provide a guide to knowing which one to leverage based upon what environment you are working in and what use cases are driving your requirement.

Splunk App for Phantom

The Splunk App for Phantom is a Phantom app used to connect Phantom to Splunk. Phantom apps that are built by Splunk are installed in Phantom by default, so no installation is required, however, you’ll need to configure an asset for it. In the asset settings, you’ll need the IP/hostname of your Splunk instance as well as a Splunk user with sufficient access to the data you wish to search. The Splunk App for Phantom can do the following: post data to Splunk as events, update notable events, run SPL queries, and pull events from Splunk to Phantom. 

• To pull events from Splunk to Phantom, you’ll need to configure the asset settings and ingest settings in your configured asset. It is recommended that you create a new label in Phantom for the events you pull in from Splunk, which will make it easier to find the events in the Analyst Queue in Phantom.
• There are four included actions which can be used in playbooks:
  • get host events – retrieves events about a specific host from Splunk
  • post data – creates an event in your Splunk instance
  • run query – runs an SPL query in Splunk and returns the results of the search to Phantom
  • update event – updates specified notable events within your Splunk Enterprise Security instance

For specific details on using these actions, search for “splunk” on the Apps page in Phantom and click the Documentation link:

Phantom App for Splunk https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/3411/

The Phantom App for Splunk is a Splunkbase app that is installed in Splunk and connects Splunk to Phantom. The main function of this app is to send data from Splunk to Phantom. First, you’ll need to go through the Phantom Server Configuration page to connect Splunk to Phantom, which will require an automation user in Phantom. Then, to send events to Phantom, you’ll need to create a saved search in Splunk where the results of the search are the events you want ingested into Phantom. Open the Phantom App for Splunk and create a New Saved Search Export to start sending events over. There is also an option to create a Data Model Export, which follows the same set of steps used for exporting saved search results to Phantom:

This app also contains alert actions that can be used in Splunk Enterprise Security:

• Send to Phantom – sends the event(s) that triggered the alert to Phantom
• Run Playbook in Phantom – sends the event(s) that triggered the alert to Phantom and runs the specified playbook on them

For more information about the Phantom App for Splunk, review the following documents:

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/PhantomApp

https://my.phantom.us/4.6/docs/admin/splunk

Phantom Remote Search https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/4153/

The Phantom Remote Search app is used for multiple reasons. Phantom has an embedded Splunk Enterprise instance built into it, however, you can configure Phantom to use an external Splunk Enterprise instance instead via this app. To do this, you’ll need to install the Phantom Remote Search app onto your Splunk instance, which contains Splunk roles needed for creating two Splunk users required by Phantom. You’ll also need to setup an HTTP Event Collector (HEC) input for receiving Phantom data. After installing the app, creating the necessary users, and creating the HEC input, you can go over to Phantom and change the “Search Settings” in the “Administration Settings”:

Click the following link for a more detailed list of instructions:

https://my.phantom.us/4.6/docs/admin/administration#SearchSettings

This app is also very useful because once you have completed the setup, Phantom will start sending data about itself over to Splunk. This allows you to shift your Phantom reporting out of Phantom and into Splunk. If your Phantom instance is brand new with no events and no active playbooks, configure an asset or create a playbook to test whether or not Phantom data is being sent to Splunk.

Splunk App for Phantom Reporting https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/4399/

If you have already installed the Phantom Remote Search app onto your Splunk instance and configured your Search Settings in Phantom to use an external Splunk instance, you can install the Splunk App for Phantom Reporting onto your Splunk instance to gain insights into Phantom automation and containers:

Splunk Add-on for Phantom https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/4726/

The Splunk Add-on for Phantom is a Splunk add-on is designed for use with Splunk ITSI to monitor your Phantom instance, although ITSI is not a pre-requisite, it can also be used with Splunk Enterprise but it publishes metrics in a manner that is consistent with ITSI health metrics. It also expects installation of the Phantom Remote Search add-on. The Phantom Remote Search add-on defines indexes and roles used by Phantom when Phantom is configured to use an external Splunk instance for search data. The Phantom Remote Search add-on is required in order to use the Content Pack for Monitoring Phantom as a Service. If you do want to use Splunk ITSI to monitor Phantom, you can follow the documentation for that here:

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/ITSICP/current/Config/AboutPhantom

For more information about Phantom, register at https://my.phantom.us/ which will give you access to knowledge articles, documentation, playbooks, and the OVA for Phantom so you can try it out yourself!

Need more help? Contact us today!

By: Eric Howell | Splunk Consultant

Splunk provides Admins the opportunity to build a huge variety of customizations, visualizations, apps, and a near-infinitude of different options to finely tune your Splunk experience and have it best suit your needs. There is a use case and a solution for almost any task you can throw at Splunk. A use case that has been brought up frequently is to implement a “Right-Click Integration” to allow information from Splunk to be passed to another tool. Originally, this seemed a daunting task that could require the implementation of custom java script or a unique python script to solve for. Ultimately, the solution was much simpler and the logic is already found in Splunk – Workflow Actions!

Workflow actions allow for Splunk to perform a variety of tasks against available web resources for information found in ingested field/value pairs. They can be very easy to set up either through the UI or by deploying a workflow_actions.conf, as best depends on the size of your Splunk environment, and they offer quite a bit of additional functionality. Utilizing this functionality, your “Right-Click” integration may require an extra click, but it will be fully functional and should be fully serviceable.

Leveraging Workflow Actions to Pass Values and Fields

As discussed above, to set up a workflow action, an admin can leverage the WebUI on one of the Search Heads in an environment or deploy the workflow_actions.conf file as appropriate. This will allow a user to expand an event and pass a value from a field to an external source. In the examples below, we will use VirusTotal as an example.

WebUI Setup

For this example, we will be posting the value of a field to VirusTotal, allowing us to search their IOC database and verify if the value we are passing is a known, bad entity.

1. Navigate to the Settings Dropdown in the Splunk navigator (In the top right by default) and select Fields under Knowledge

2. Next, you will select “Add new” in the “Workflow actions” category

3. This next step encompasses what this workflow action will do. We begin with creating a Label for the action, which will be what users see when they move to access it. Note, you can leverage             tokens in this descriptor to input values dynamically, based on what is clicked. In the case here, it will show the specific value that is being presented to VirusTotal.

4. Then you will indicate, in a comma-separated list, the fields that this workflow action can apply to. Leaving this blank will appear in all field menus.

5. If needed, the next step will be to select which eventtypes this workflow_action is applicable for. For additional reading on eventtypes: Follow this Link

a. Eventtypes are categorizations of data input by the user or an admin. An example would be when a specific IP address is found in your web data (sourcetype=access_combined src_ip=127.0.0.1), and you want to apply specific categorization to data that meets that criteria so that it appears with a new field/value pair (e.g. eventtype=local_access)

6. Next you will choose if the action is available in the Event Menu, Fields Menu, or both. This selection is a dropdown. Additional reading available here: Follow this Link

a. Event Menu – Will allow for you to apply this workflow action on the whole event. When an event returned by your search is expanded, the “Event Actions” dropdown will hold any workflow action with “Event Menu” selected here.

b. Fields Menus – Similar to the above, on an expanded event, the workflow action can be accessed by clicking the dropdown under “Action” in the list of included fields to allow one to apply the workflow action directly to the value of a specific field.

7. Next is to choose the Action type – meaning whether the workflow action acts as a “link” to another web location or whether it will run another “search”

8. The next step is configuring the properties based on which of the above Action Types was chosen

a. Link Configuration – Allows you to specify a URI (also accepts tokens), decide whether to open the link in a new window, select whether you intend to utilize a POST or GET method, and which arguments to pass to the web site.

b. Search Configuration – Allows you to specify a search string (token-friendly), dictate which app to run the search in, determine a name of a view (page) for the search to open in, whether to run the search in the same window, and input a timeframe.

9. Next click Save

Your workflow action is ready to test. Here is an example of what you can see when looking in an event view with an expanded event.

Deploying a workflow_actions.conf

Like most other configuration files, workflow_actions.conf is easily deployed via the method of your choosing (manually, scripted, or through the use of the Deployer). Below is what will be generated by Splunk in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local when created through the web UI:

[VirusTotalPost]

display_location = both

label = Search VirusTotal for $@field_value$

link.method = post

link.uri = https://www.virustotal.com/en/search/

link.target = blank

link.postargs.1.key = query

link.postargs.1.value = $@field_value$

type = link

This same information is deployable in an app of your choosing to $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/ as appropriate for environments with clustered Search Heads or through other means of configuration management.

There are a wide variety of possible options with the stanza, and I recommend reviewing Splunk’s documentation regarding the specific .conf file here:

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Admin/Workflow_actionsconf

Leveraging your workflow_actions with older versions of Splunk Enterprise Security

If you are utilizing a version of the Splunk Enterprise Security app prior to 5.3, even if your workflow actions have global permissions, the app will not import configurations from others unless they follow a strict naming convention. If you want your workflow action to be accessible from the Incident Review dashboard, for example, you will need to make sure your app follows the one of these naming conventions:

• DA-ESS-*
• SA-*
• TA-*
• Splunk_SA_*
• Splunk_TA_*
• Splunk_DA-ESS_*

Want to learn more about right-click integrations in Splunk? Contact us today!