Audits

CAS uses its own Inspektr framework for auditing purposes and statistics. This framework used to be a separate project and lived outside the codebase previously and has since been merged entirely into the CAS codebase. The Inspektr components allow for non-intrusive auditing and logging of the coarse-grained execution paths e.g. Spring-managed beans method executions by using annotations and Spring-managed @Aspect-style aspects.

CAS server auto-configures all the relevant Inspektr components. All the available configuration options that are injected to Inspektr classes are available to deployers via relevant CAS properties. Note that the audit record management functionality of CAS supports handling multiple audit record destinations at the same time. In other words, you may choose to route audit records to both a database and a REST endpoint as well as any number of logger-based destinations all at the same time.

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Required in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting may be needed to activate or affect the behavior of the CAS feature and generally should be reviewed, possibly owned and adjusted. If the setting is assigned a default value, you do not need to strictly put the setting in your copy of the configuration, but should review it nonetheless to make sure it matches your deployment expectations.

The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Optional in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting is not immediately necessary in the end-user CAS configuration, because a default value is assigned or the activation of the feature is not conditionally controlled by the setting value. In other words, you should only include this field in your configuration if you need to modify the default value or if you need to turn on the feature controlled by the setting.

  • cas.audit.engine.abbreviation-length=100
  • Abbreviate fields and entries in the audit logs where possible by the given length. This typically is applied to long service URLs that are captured in audit logs. Negative/Zero values disable the abbreviation altogether.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.alternate-client-addr-header-name=X-Forwarded-For
  • Request header to use to identify the client address.

    If the application is sitting behind a load balancer, the client address typically ends up being the load balancer address itself. A common example for a header here would be X-Forwarded-For to glean the client address from the request, assuming the load balancer is configured correctly to pass that header along.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.alternate-server-addr-header-name=
  • Request header to use identify the server address.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.audit-format=DEFAULT
  • The audit format to use in the logs. Available values are as follows:

    • DEFAULT: Default audit format.
    • JSON: Output audit logs as JSON strings where necessary/possible.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.enabled=true
  • Whether auditing functionality should be enabled.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.excluded-actions=
  • Indicate a list of supported audit actions that should be excluded, filtered and ignored by CAS audit managers. Each supported action can be treated as a regular expression to match against built-in CAS actions.

    This settings supports regular expression patterns. [?].

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.http-request-headers=
  • Collection of HTTP headers that could be extracted from the request and tracked by the underlying audit engine and storage. By default, all request headers are tracked and stored.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.ignore-audit-failures=false
  • Indicates whether catastrophic audit failures should be logged or whether errors should bubble up and thrown back.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.include-validation-assertion=false
  • Whether ticket validation events in the audit log should include information about the assertion that is validated; things such as the principal id and attributes released.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.number-of-days-in-history=30
  • Retrieve audit records from storage, starting from now and going back the indicated number of days in history.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.supported-actions=
  • Indicate a list of supported audit actions that should be recognized, processed and recorded by CAS audit managers. Each supported action can be treated as a regular expression to match against built-in CAS actions.

    This settings supports regular expression patterns. [?].

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.audit.engine.use-server-host-address=false
  • Determines whether a local DNS lookup should be made to query for the CAS server address.

    By default, the server is address is determined from the request. Aside from special headers, this option allows one to query DNS to look up the server address of the CAS server processing requests.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.audit.AuditEngineProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

    Configuration Metadata

    The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

    Be Selective

    This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

    YAGNI

    Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

    Naming Convention

    Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc.

    :information_source: Note

    When possible, properties should be stored in lower-case kebab format, such as cas.property-name=value. The only possible exception to this rule is when naming actuator endpoints; The name of the actuator endpoints (i.e. ssoSessions) MUST remain in camelCase mode.

    Settings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

    Validation

    Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

    Indexed Settings

    CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

    Actuator Endpoints

    The following endpoints are provided by CAS:

     Provide a report of the audit log. Each filter other than `interval` can accept a regular expression to match against.

     Provides information about the application’s audit events.


    Storage

    Audits can be managed via the following strategies.

    Storage Description
    File System See this guide.
    JPA See this guide.
    MongoDb See this guide.
    Redis See this guide.
    DynamoDb See this guide.
    REST See this guide.
    Custom See this guide.

    Audit Events

    The following events are tracked and recorded in the audit log:

    Name
    MULTIFACTOR_AUTHENTICATION_BYPASS
    AUTHENTICATION_EVENT
    AUTHENTICATION
    SERVICE_TICKET
    PROXY_TICKET
    TICKET_GRANTING_TICKET
    PROXY_GRANTING_TICKET
    SERVICE_TICKET_VALIDATE
    PROTOCOL_SPECIFICATION_VALIDATE
    REST_API_SERVICE_TICKET
    REST_API_TICKET_GRANTING_TICKET
    EVALUATE_RISKY_AUTHENTICATION
    MITIGATE_RISKY_AUTHENTICATION
    TRUSTED_AUTHENTICATION
    SURROGATE_AUTHENTICATION_ELIGIBILITY_SELECTION
    SURROGATE_AUTHENTICATION_ELIGIBILITY_VERIFICATION
    SERVICE_ACCESS_ENFORCEMENT
    SAVE_SERVICE
    DELETE_SERVICE
    DELEGATED_CLIENT
    SAVE_CONSENT
    VERIFY_CONSENT
    SAML2_RESPONSE
    SAML2_REQUEST
    SAML2_METADATA_RESOLUTION
    OIDC_CIBA_RESPONSE
    OAUTH2_ACCESS_TOKEN_RESPONSE
    OAUTH2_USER_PROFILE
    OAUTH2_AUTHORIZATION_RESPONSE
    OAUTH2_ACCESS_TOKEN_REQUEST
    OIDC_ID_TOKEN
    AUP_VERIFY
    AUP_SUBMIT
    CHANGE_PASSWORD
    REQUEST_CHANGE_PASSWORD
    REQUEST_FORGOT_USERNAME
    ACCOUNT_REGISTRATION
    LOGOUT