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How to Find AWS CloudTrail Trails with Logging Disabled

Sending AWS CloudTrail events to CloudWatch Logs facilitates real-time and historic activity logging based on user, API, resource, and IP address, and makes it possible to establish alarms and notifications for anomalous or sensitive account activity.

info

This security check is part of the CIS Amazon Web Services Benchmarks and is rated severity low.

Prerequisites​

This guide assumes that you have already installed and configured Fix Inventory to collect your AWS resources.

Directions​

  1. Execute the following search command in Fix Inventory Shell:

    > search is(aws_cloud_trail) and trail_status.is_logging==false
    ​kind=aws_cloud_trail, ..., region=fixinventory-poweruser
    ​kind=aws_cloud_trail, ..., account=poweruser-team

  2. Pipe the search command into the dump command:

    > search is(aws_cloud_trail) and trail_status.is_logging==false | dump
    ​reported:
    ​  id: /aws/cloudtrail/123
    ​  name: some-name
    ​  ctime: '2022-12-05T22:53:14Z'
    ​  kind: aws_cloud_trail
    ​  age: 2mo28d

    The command output will list the details of all non-compliant aws_cloud_trail resources.

Remediation​

  • Validate that the trails in CloudTrail has an ARN set in the CloudWatchLogsLogGroupArn property.
note

Please refer to the AWS CloudTrail documentation for details.

Further Reading​