Fortinet logs collected through syslog TCP with SC4S are not splitted correctly

[Numb78]

Hi all,

I'm struggling with an issue related to collecting Fortinet Fortios events through SC4S. If I use UDP protocol I have no issues, but when changing the collecting protocol to TCP the events are not interpreted correctly, because the line breaking does not work anymore, and basically I receive a buffer of merged events breaked only by the _raw size limit. My config is the following:

Fortinet FW --> (Syslog TCP) --> SC4S --> HEC on Indexer (Splunk Cloud) --> Search Head (Splunk Cloud)

If I receive the same events directly with a Splunk instance where the "Fortinet FortiGate Add-On for Splunk" the configuration correctly breaks the events. Here is the additional configuration needed.

[source::tcp:1514]
SHOULD_LINEMERGE = false
LINE_BREAKER = (\d{2,3}\s+<\d{2,3}>)
TIME_PREFIX = eventtime=
TIME_FORMAT = %s%9N

If I try to apply this configuration on the Splunk Cloud SH it does not work. I believe that SC4S or the indexer is not permitting to perform this line breaking configuration on the SH, so I'm unable to make it work. Maybe it's possible to apply some adjustement on SC4S, if anyone already solves this.

Regards

[livehybrid]

Hi @Numb78 

Im not sure this config will take effect, because SC4S uses the /event endpoint (unless you have overwritten this?)
This blog article from Splunk  states "We want to ensure this is properly parsed before it gets to Splunk, as timestamp processing is bypassed (by default) with the /event HEC endpoint used by SC4S."

I think there must be a configuration on the SC4S that needs applying which is different between the TCP and UDP ingestion. 

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[Numb78]

Hi livehybrid,

thanks for your answer.  I finally find the solution to this, and it was easier than ever. There's a note on SC4S guide saying that "When configuring a fortigate fortios device for TCP syslog, port 601 or an RFC6587 custom port must be used. UDP syslog should use the default port of 514." I read this, tried this on a first stage, but as it does now seemed to work, basically because I was using some test events sent via netcat without specifying any newline character. I have tried it again simply adding a "\r\n" at the end of the event blob and setting this environment variable on SC4S env file:

SC4S_LISTEN_RFC6587_PORT=601

It works perfectly now, also tried in production environment with live events.

Regards