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Data Infrastructure Insights

Forensics - All Activity

Contributors netapp-alavoie
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The All Activity page helps you understand the actions performed on entities in the Workload Security environment.

Examining All Activity Data

Click Forensics > Activity Forensics and click the All Activity tab to access the All Activity page.
This page provides an overview of activities in your environment, highlighting the following information:

  • A graph showing Activity History (accessed per minute/per 5 minutes/per 10 minutes based on selected global time range)

    You can zoom the graph by dragging out a rectangle in the graph. The entire page will be loaded to display the zoomed time range. When zoomed in, a button is displayed that lets the user zoom out.

  • A chart of Activity Types. To obtain activity history data by activity type, click on corresponding x-axis label link.

  • A chart of Activity on Entity Types. To obtain activity history data by entity type, click on corresponding x-axis label link.

  • A list of the All Activity data

The *All Activity* table shows the following information. Note that not all of these columns are displayed by default. You can select columns to display by clicking on the "gear" icon.

  • The time an entity was accessed including the year, month, day, and time of the last access.

  • The user that accessed the entity with a link to the User information.

  • The activity the user performed. Supported types are:

    • Change Group Ownership - Group Ownership is of file or folder is changed. For more details about group ownership please see this link.

    • Change Owner - Ownership of file or folder is changed to another user.

    • Change Permission - File or folder permission is changed.

    • Create - Create file or folder.

    • Delete - Delete file or folder. If a folder is deleted, delete events are obtained for all the files in that folder and subfolders.

    • Read - File is read.

    • Read Metadata - Only on enabling folder monitoring option. Will be generated on opening a folder on Windows or Running “ls” inside a folder in Linux.

    • Rename - Rename file or folder.

    • Write - Data is written to a file.

    • Write Metadata - File metadata is written, for example, permission changed.

    • Other Change - Any other event which are not described above. All unmapped events are mapped to “Other Change” activity type. Applicable to files and folders.

  • The Path to the entity with a link to the Entity Detail Data

  • The Entity Type, including entity (i.e. file) extension (.doc, .docx, .tmp, etc.)

  • The Device where the entities reside

  • The Protocol used to fetch events.

  • The Original Path used for rename events when the original file was renamed. This column is not visible in the table by default. Use the column selector to add this column to the table.

  • The Volume where the entities reside. This column is not visible in the table by default. Use the column selector to add this column to the table.

Filtering Forensic Activity History Data

There are two methods you can use to filter data.

  1. Hover over the field in the table and click the filter icon that appears. The value is added to the appropriate filters in the top Filter By list.

  2. Filter data by typing in the Filter By field:

    Select the appropriate filter from the top ‘Filter By’ widget by clicking the [+] button:

    Entity Filer

    Enter the search text

    Press Enter or click outside of the filter box to apply the filter.

You can filter Forensic Activity data by the following fields:

  • The Activity type.

  • Source IP from which the entity was accessed. You must provide a valid source IP address in double quotes, for example “10.1.1.1.”. Incomplete IPs such as “10.1.1.”, “10.1..*”, etc. will not work.

  • Protocol to fetch protocol-specific activities.

  • Username of the user performing the activity. You need to provide the exact Username to filter. Search with partial username, or partial username prefixed or suffixed with ‘*’ will not work.

  • Noise Reduction to filter files which are created in the last 2 hours by the user. It is also used to filter temporary files (for example, .tmp files) accessed by the user.

  • Domain of the user performing the activity. You need to provide the exact domain to filter. Searching for partial domain, or partial domain prefixed or suffixed with wildcard ('*'), will not work. None can be specified to search for missing domain.

The following fields are subject to special filtering rules:

  • Entity Type, using entity (file) extension - it is preferable to specify exact entity type within quotes. For example “txt”.

  • Path of the entity - Directory Path filters (path string ending with /) up to 4 directories deep are recommended for faster results. For example, /home/userX/nested1/nested2/ OR "/home/userX/nested1/nested2/". See the table below for more details.

  • User performing the activity - it is preferable to specify the exact user within quotes. For example, "Administrator".

  • Device (SVM) where entities reside

  • Volume where entities reside

  • The Original Path used for rename events when the original file was renamed.

The preceding fields are subject to the following when filtering:

  • Exact value should be within quotes: Example: "searchtext"

  • Wildcard strings must contain no quotes: Example: searchtext, *searchtext*, will filter for any strings containing ‘searchtext’.

  • String with a prefix, Example: searchtext* , will search any strings which start with ‘searchtext’.

Activity Forensics Filter Examples:

User applied Filter expression Expected Outcome Performance assessment Comment

Path = /home/userX/nested1/nested2/ or /home/userX/nested1/nested2/* or "/home/userX/nested1/nested2/"

Recursive lookup of all files and folders under given directory

Fast

Directory searches up to 4 directories will be fast.

Path = /home/userX/nested1/ or /home/userX/nested1/* or "/home/userX/nested1/"

Recursive lookup of all files and folders under given directory

Fast

Directory searches up to 4 directories will be fast.

Path = /home/userX/nested1/test* or /home/userX/nested1/test

Recursive lookup of all files and folders under given path regex(test* could mean file OR directory OR Both)

Slower

Directory+File regex search will be slower to search on compared to Directory searches.

Path =
/home/userX/nested1/nested2/nested3/ or /home/userX/nested1/nested2/nested3/* or "/home/userX/nested1/nested2/nested3/"

Recursive lookup of all files and folders under given directory

Slower

More than 4 directories searches are slower to search on.

Path=*userX/nested1/test*

Recursive lookup of all files and folders under given wildcard path string(test* could mean file OR directory OR Both)

Slowest

Leading wildcard search are slowest searches.

Any other Non path based filters. User and Entity Type filters recommended to be in quotes
e.g., User="Administrator"
Entity Type="txt"

Fast

NOTE:

  1. The Activity count displayed alongside the All Activity icon is rounded off to 30 mins when the selected time range spans more than 3 days. e.g., a time range of Sept 1st 10:15 am to Sept 7th 10:15 am will show Activity counts from Sept 1st 10:00 am to Sept 7th 10:30 am.

  2. Likewise the count metrics shown in Activity Types, Activity on Entity Types, and Activity History graph are rounded off to 30 mins when the selected time range spans more than 3 days.

Sorting Forensic Activity History Data

You can sort activity history data by Time, User, Source IP, Activity, and Entity Type. By default, the table is sorted by descending Time order, meaning the latest data will be displayed first. Sorting is disabled for Device and Protocol fields.

User Guide for Asynchronous Exports

Overview

The Asynchronous Exports feature in Storage Workload Security is designed to handle large data exports.

Step-by-Step Guide: Exporting Data with Asynchronous Exports

  1. Initiate Export: Select the desired time duration and filters for the export and click on the export button.

  2. Wait for Export to Complete: The processing time can range from a few minutes to a few hours. You may need to refresh the forensics page a few times. Once the export job is complete, the "Download last export CSV file" button will be enabled.

  3. Download: Click on the "Download last created export file" button to get the exported data in a .zip format. This data will be available for download until the user initiates another Asynchronous Export or 3 days have elapsed, whichever occurs first. The button will remain enabled until another Asynchronous Export is initiated.

  4. Limitations:

    • The number of asynchronous downloads is currently limited to 1 per user and 3 per tenant.

    • The exported data is limited to a maximum of 1 million records.

A sample script to extract forensic data via API is present at /opt/netapp/cloudsecure/agent/export-script/ on the agent. See the readme at this location for more details about the script.

Column Selection for All Activity

The All activity table shows select columns by default. To add, remove, or change the columns, click the gear icon on the right of the table and select from the list of available columns.

Activity Selector

Activity History Retention

Activity history is retained for 13 months for active Workload Security environments.

Applicability of Filters in Forensics Page

Filter What it does Example Applicable for these Filters Not applicable for these filters Result

* (Asterisk)

enables you to search for everything

Auto*03172022

If search text contains hyphen or underscore, give expression in brackets. e.g., (svm*) for searching svm-123

User, PATH, Entity Type, Device, Volume, Original Path

returns all resources that start with “Auto" and end with “03172022”

? (question mark)

enables you to search for a specific number of characters

AutoSabotageUser1_03172022?

User, Entity Type, Device, Volume

returns AutoSabotageUser1_03172022A, AutoSabotageUser1_03172022B, AutoSabotageUser1_031720225, and so on

OR

enables you to specify multiple entities

AutoSabotageUser1_03172022 OR AutoRansomUser4_03162022

User, Domain, PATH, Entity Type, Original Path

returns any of AutoSabotageUser1_03172022 OR AutoRansomUser4_03162022

NOT

allows you to exclude text from the search results

NOT AutoRansomUser4_03162022

User,Domain, PATH, Entity Type, Original PATH

Device

returns everything that does not start with"AutoRansomUser4_03162022”

None

searches for NULL values in all fields

None

Domain

returns results where the target field is empty

Search results with and without / will be different

/AutoDir1/AutoFile

Works

AutoDir1/AutoFile

Doesn’t work

/AutoDir1/AutoFile (Dir1)

Dir1 Partial substring doesn’t work

"/AutoDir1/AutoFile03242022"

Exact search works

Auto*03242022

Doesn’t work

AutoSabotageUser1_03172022?

Doesn’t work

/AutoDir1/AutoFile03242022 OR /AutoDir1/AutoFile03242022

Works

NOT /AutoDir1/AutoFile03242022

Works

NOT /AutoDir1

Works

NOT /AutoFile03242022

Doesn’t work

*

Shows all the entries

Local root SVM user activity changes

If a local root SVM user is performing any activity, the IP of the client on which the NFS share is mounted is now considered in the username, which will be shown as root@<ip-address-of-the-client> in both forensic activity and user activity pages.

For example:

  • If SVM-1 is monitored by Workload Security, and the root user of that SVM mounts the share on a client with IP address 10.197.12.40, the username shown in forensic activity page will be root@10.197.12.40.

  • If the same SVM-1 is mounted into another client with IP address 10.197.12.41, the username shown in forensic activity page will be root@10.197.12.41.

*• This is done to segregate NFS root user activity by IP address. Previously, all the activity was considered to be done by root user only, with no IP distinction.

Troubleshooting

Problem

Try This

In the “All Activities” table, under the ‘User’ column, the user name is shown as:
“ldap:HQ.COMPANYNAME.COM:S-1-5-21-3577637-1906459482-1437260136-1831817”
or
"ldap:default:80038003”

Possible reasons could be:
1. No User Directory Collectors have been configured yet. To add one, go to Workload Security > Collectors > User Directory Collectors and click on +User Directory Collector. Choose Active Directory or LDAP Directory Server.
2. A User Directory Collector has been configured, however it has stopped or is in error state. Please go to Collectors > User Directory Collectors and check the status. Refer to the User Directory Collector troubleshooting section of the documentation for troubleshooting tips.
After configuring properly, the name will get automatically resolved within 24 hours.
If it still does not get resolved, check if you have added the correct User Data Collector. Make sure that the user is indeed part of the added Active Directory/LDAP Directory Server.

Some NFS events are not seen in UI.

Check the following:
1. A user directory collector for AD server with POSIX attributes set should be running with the unixid attribute enabled from UI.
2. Any user doing NFS access should be seen when searched in the user page from UI
3. Raw events (Events for whom the user is not yet discovered) are not supported for NFS
4. Anonymous access to the NFS export will not be monitored.
5. Make sure NFS version used in lesser than NFS4.1.

After typing some letters containing a wildcard character like asterisk (*) in the filters on the Forensics All Activity or Entities pages, the pages load very slowly.

An asterisk (*) in the search string searches for everything. However, leading wildcard strings like *<searchTerm> or *<searchTerm>* will result in a slow query.
To get better performance, use prefix strings instead, in the format <searchTerm>* (in other words, append the asterisk (*) after a search term).
Example: use the string testvolume*, rather than *testvolume or *test*volume.

Use a directory search to see all activities underneath a given folder recursively (Hierarchical search). e.g., /path1/path2/path3/ or “/path1/path2/path3/” will list all the activities recursively under /path1/path2/path3.
Alternatively use the "Add To Filter" option under the All Activity tab.”

I am encountering a "Request failed with status code 500/503" error when using a Path filter.

Try using a smaller date range for filtering records.

Forensic UI is loading data slowly when using the path filter.

Directory Path filters (path string ending with /) up to 4 directories deep are recommended for faster results. e.g., If the directory path is /Aaa/Bbb/Ccc/Ddd, try searching for /Aaa/Bbb/Ccc/Ddd/ or “/Aaa/Bbb/Ccc/Ddd/” to load data faster.