Interfacing Technologies Corporation

Configuring auditing to track events

Keycloak includes a suite of auditing capabilities. You can record every login and administrator action and review those actions in the Admin Console. Keycloak also includes a Listener SPI that listens for events and can trigger actions. Examples of built-in listeners include log files and sending emails if an event occurs.

Auditing user events

You can record and view every event that affects users. Keycloak triggers login events for actions such as successful user login, a user entering an incorrect password, or a user account updating. By default, Keycloak does not store or display events in the Admin Console. Only the error events are logged to the Admin Console and the server’s log file.

Procedure
Use this procedure to start auditing user events.

  1. Click Realm settings in the menu.
  2. Click the Events tab.
  3. Click the User events settings tab.
  4. Toggle Save events to ON.

  1. Specify the length of time to store events in the Expiration field.
  2. Click Add saved types to see other events you can save.

  1. Click Add.

Click Clear user events when you want to delete all saved events.

Procedure
You can now view events.

  1. Click the Events tab in the menu.

  1. To filter events, click Search user event.

Event types

Login events:

Event Description
Login A user logs in.
Register A user registers.
Logout A user logs out.
Code to Token An application, or client, exchanges a code for a token.
Refresh Token An application, or client, refreshes a token.

Brute force protection:

Event Description
User disabled by permanent lockout Brute force protection disabled the user account permanently due to too many login failures.
User disabled by temporary lockout Brute force protection disabled the user account temporarily due to too many login failures.

Identity Brokering:

Event Description
Federated identity link override An existing Federated identity link was overridden
Federated identity link override error Error occurred when trying to override an existing Federated identity link

OAuth:

Event Description
OAuth2 extension grant OAuth2 grant was executed
OAuth2 extension grant error Error occurred during OAuth2 grant execution

Account events:

Event Description
Social Link A user account links to a social media provider.
Remove Social Link The link from a social media account to a user account severs.
Update Email An email address for an account changes.
Update Profile A profile for an account changes.
Send Password Reset Keycloak sends a password reset email.
Update Password (deprecated) The password for an account changes.
Update Credential The password or (time-based) one-time Password (OTP/TOTP) settings for an account changes.
Update TOTP (deprecated) The Time-based One-time Password (TOTP) settings for an account changes.
Remove TOTP (deprecated) Keycloak removes TOTP from an account.
Remove Credential Keycloak removes a credential from an account.
Send Verify Email Keycloak sends an email verification email.
Verify Email Keycloak verifies the email address for an account.

Each event has a corresponding error event.

Event listener

Event listeners listen for events and perform actions based on that event. Keycloak includes two built-in listeners, the Logging Event Listener and Email Event Listener.

The logging event listener

When the Logging Event Listener is enabled, this listener writes to a log file when an error event occurs.

An example log message from a Logging Event Listener:

11:36:09,965 WARN  [org.keycloak.events] (default task-51) type=LOGIN_ERROR, realmId=master,
                    clientId=myapp,
                    userId=19aeb848-96fc-44f6-b0a3-59a17570d374, ipAddress=127.0.0.1,
                    error=invalid_user_credentials, auth_method=openid-connect, auth_type=code,
                    redirect_uri=http://localhost:8180/myapp,
                    code_id=b669da14-cdbb-41d0-b055-0810a0334607, username=admin

You can use the Logging Event Listener to protect against hacker bot attacks:

  1. Parse the log file for the LOGIN_ERROR event.
  2. Extract the IP Address of the failed login event.
  3. Send the IP address to an intrusion prevention software framework tool.

The Logging Event Listener logs events to the org.keycloak.events log category. Keycloak does not include debug log events in server logs, by default.

To include debug log events in server logs:

  1. Change the log level for the org.keycloak.events category
  2. Change the log level used by the Logging Event listener.

To change the log level used by the Logging Event listener, add the following:

bin/kc.[sh|bat] start --spi-events-listener--jboss-logging--success-level=info --spi-events-listener--jboss-logging--error-level=error
The valid values for log levels are debug, info, warn, error, and fatal.

The Email Event Listener

The Email Event Listener sends a message to the user’s email address when an event occurs and supports the following events:

  • Login Error.
  • Update Password.
  • Update Time-based One-time Password (TOTP).
  • Remove One-time Password (OTP).
  • Update Credential.
  • Remove Credential.

Below are the optional events you can configure:

  • User disabled by permanent lockout.
  • User disabled by temporary lockout.

The following conditions need to be met for an email to be sent:

  • User has an email address.
  • User’s email address is marked as verified.

Prerequisites

  • Realm’s email settings configured.

Procedure
To enable the Email Listener:

  1. Click Realm settings in the menu.
  2. Click the Events tab.
  3. Click the Event listeners field.
  4. Select email.

You can exclude events by using the —spi-events-listener—email—exclude-events argument. For example:

kc.[sh|bat] --spi-events-listener--email--exclude-events=UPDATE_CREDENTIAL,REMOVE_CREDENTIAL

To enable optional events, use the following command:

kc.[sh|bat] --spi-events-listener--email--include-events=USER_DISABLED_BY_TEMPORARY_LOCKOUT_ERROR,USER_DISABLED_BY_PERMANENT_LOCKOUT

Auditing admin events

You can record all actions that are performed by an administrator in the Admin Console. The Admin Console performs administrative actions by invoking the Keycloak REST interface and Keycloak audits these REST invocations. You can view the resulting events in the Admin Console.

Procedure
Use this procedure to start auditing admin actions.

  1. Click Realm settings in the menu.
  2. Click the Events tab.
  3. Click the Admin events settings tab.
  4. Toggle Save events to ON.
    • Keycloak displays the Include representation switch.
  5. Toggle Include representation to ON.
    • The Include Representation switch includes JSON documents sent through the admin REST API so you can view the administrators actions.

  1. Click Save.
  2. To clear the database of stored actions, click Clear admin events.

Procedure
You can now view admin events.

  1. Click Events in the menu.
  2. Click the Admin events tab.

When the Include Representation switch is ON, it can lead to storing a lot of information in the database. You can set a maximum length of the representation by using the —spi-events-store—jpa—max-field-length argument. This setting is useful if you want to adhere to the underlying storage limitation. For example:

kc.[sh|bat] --spi-events-store--jpa--max-field-length=2500

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