Logging Amazon SNS API calls using CloudTrail
Amazon SNS is integrated with AWS CloudTrail, a service that provides a record of actions taken by a user, role, or an AWS service in Amazon SNS. CloudTrail captures API calls for Amazon SNS as events. The calls captured include calls from the Amazon SNS console and code calls to the Amazon SNS API operations. If you create a trail, you can enable continuous delivery of CloudTrail events to an Amazon S3 bucket, including events for Amazon SNS. If you don't configure a trail, you can still view the most recent events in the CloudTrail console in Event history. Using the information collected by CloudTrail, you can determine the request that was made to Amazon SNS, the IP address from which the request was made, who made the request, when it was made, and additional details.
To learn more about CloudTrail, including how to configure and enable it, see the AWS CloudTrail User Guide.
Amazon SNS information in CloudTrail
CloudTrail is enabled on your AWS account when you create the account. When supported event activity occurs in Amazon SNS, that activity is recorded in a CloudTrail event along with other AWS service events in Event history. You can view, search, and download recent events in your AWS account. For more information, see Viewing Events with CloudTrail Event History.
For an ongoing record of events in your AWS account, including events for Amazon SNS, create a trail. A trail enables CloudTrail to deliver log files to an Amazon S3 bucket. By default, when you create a trail in the console, the trail applies to all AWS Regions. The trail logs events from all Regions in the AWS partition and delivers the log files to the Amazon S3 bucket that you specify. Additionally, you can configure other AWS services to further analyze and act upon the event data collected in CloudTrail logs. For more information, see the following:
Control plane events in CloudTrail
Amazon SNS supports logging the following actions as events in CloudTrail log files:
Note
When you are not logged in to Amazon Web Services (unauthenticated mode) and either the
ConfirmSubscription or Unsubscribe actions are
invoked, then they will not be logged to CloudTrail. Such as, when you choose the
provided link in an email notification to confirm a pending subscription to a
topic, the ConfirmSubscription action is invoked in unauthenticated
mode. In this example, the ConfirmSubscription action would not be
logged to CloudTrail.
Every event or log entry contains information about who generated the request. The identity information helps you determine the following:
-
Whether the request was made with root or AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user credentials.
-
Whether the request was made with temporary security credentials for a role or federated user.
-
Whether the request was made by another AWS service.
For more information, see the CloudTrail userIdentity Element.
Data plane events in CloudTrail
To enable logging of the following API actions in CloudTrail files, you'll need to enable logging of data plane API activity in CloudTrail. For more information, see Logging data events in the AWS CloudTrail User Guide.
Data plane events can also be filtered by resource type, for granular control over
which Amazon SNS API calls you want to selectively log and pay for in CloudTrail. For example,
by specifying AWS::SNS::Topic as a resource type, you
can log calls to Publish and PublishBatch API actions for
topics. Likewise, by specifying
AWS::SNS::PlatformEndpoint as a resource type, you
can log calls to Publish API action for platform endpoints. For more information,
see AdvancedEventSelector in the AWS CloudTrail API Reference.
Note
Amazon SNS resource type AWS::SNS::PhoneNumber is not
logged by CloudTrail.
Amazon SNS data plane APIs
Example: Amazon SNS log file entries
A trail is a configuration that enables delivery of events as log files to an Amazon S3 bucket that you specify. CloudTrail log files contain one or more log entries. An event represents a single request from any source and includes information about the requested action, the date and time of the action, request parameters, and so on. CloudTrail log files aren't an ordered stack trace of the public API calls, so they don't appear in any specific order.
The following example shows a CloudTrail log entry that demonstrates the
ListTopics, CreateTopic, and DeleteTopic
actions.
{ "Records": [ { "eventVersion": "1.02", "userIdentity": { "type":"IAMUser", "userName":"Bob" "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Bob", "accountId": "123456789012", "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE" }, "eventTime": "2014-09-30T00:00:00Z", "eventSource": "sns.amazonaws.com", "eventName": "ListTopics", "awsRegion": "us-west-2", "sourceIPAddress": "127.0.0.1", "userAgent": "aws-sdk-java/unknown-version", "requestParameters": { "nextToken": "ABCDEF1234567890EXAMPLE==" }, "responseElements": null, "requestID": "example1-b9bb-50fa-abdb-80f274981d60", "eventID": "example0-09a3-47d6-a810-c5f9fd2534fe", "eventType": "AwsApiCall", "recipientAccountId": "123456789012" }, { "eventVersion": "1.02", "userIdentity": { "type":"IAMUser", "userName":"Bob" "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Bob", "accountId": "123456789012", "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE" }, "eventTime": "2014-09-30T00:00:00Z", "eventSource": "sns.amazonaws.com", "eventName": "CreateTopic", "awsRegion": "us-west-2", "sourceIPAddress": "127.0.0.1", "userAgent": "aws-sdk-java/unknown-version", "requestParameters": { "name": "hello" }, "responseElements": { "topicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:hello-topic" }, "requestID": "example7-5cd3-5323-8a00-f1889011fee9", "eventID": "examplec-4f2f-4625-8378-130ac89660b1", "eventType": "AwsApiCall", "recipientAccountId": "123456789012" }, { "eventVersion": "1.02", "userIdentity": { "type":"IAMUser", "userName":"Bob" "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Bob", "accountId": "123456789012", "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE" }, "eventTime": "2014-09-30T00:00:00Z", "eventSource": "sns.amazonaws.com", "eventName": "DeleteTopic", "awsRegion": "us-west-2", "sourceIPAddress": "127.0.0.1", "userAgent": "aws-sdk-java/unknown-version", "requestParameters": { "topicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:123456789012:hello-topic" }, "responseElements": null, "requestID": "example5-4faa-51d5-aab2-803a8294388d", "eventID": "example8-6443-4b4d-abfd-1b867280d964", "eventType": "AwsApiCall", "recipientAccountId": "123456789012" }, ] }
The following examples show CloudTrail log entries that demonstrate the
Publish and PublishBatch actions.
Publish
{ "eventVersion": "1.09", "userIdentity": { "type": "AssumedRole", "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Bob", "accountId": "123456789012", "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE", "sessionContext": { "sessionIssuer": { "type": "Role", "principalId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/Admin", "accountId": "123456789012", "userName": "ExampleUser" }, "attributes": { "creationDate": "2023-08-21T16:44:05Z", "mfaAuthenticated": "false" } } }, "eventTime": "2023-08-21T16:48:37Z", "eventSource": "sns.amazonaws.com", "eventName": "Publish", "awsRegion": "us-east-1", "sourceIPAddress": "192.0.2.0", "userAgent": "aws-cli/1.29.16 md/Botocore#1.31.16 ua/2.0 os/linux#5.4.250-173.369.amzn2int.x86_64 md/arch#x86_64 lang/python#3.8.17 md/pyimpl#CPython cfg/retry-mode#legacy botocore/1.31.16", "requestParameters": { "topicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:ExampleSNSTopic", "message": "HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS", "subject": "HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS", "messageStructure": "json", "messageAttributes": "HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS" }, "responseElements": { "messageId": "0787cd1e-d92b-521c-a8b4-90434e8ef840" }, "requestID": "0a8ab208-11bf-5e01-bd2d-ef55861b545d", "eventID": "bb3496d4-5252-4660-9c28-3c6aebdb21c0", "readOnly": false, "resources": [{ "accountId": "123456789012", "type": "AWS::SNS::Topic", "ARN": "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:ExampleSNSTopic" }], "eventType": "AwsApiCall", "managementEvent": false, "recipientAccountId": "123456789012", "eventCategory": "Data", "tlsDetails": { "tlsVersion": "TLSv1.2", "cipherSuite": "ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256", "clientProvidedHostHeader": "sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com" } }
PublishBatch
{ "eventVersion": "1.09", "userIdentity": { "type": "AssumedRole", "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Bob", "accountId": "123456789012", "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE", "sessionContext": { "sessionIssuer": { "type": "Role", "principalId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/Admin", "accountId": "123456789012", "userName": "ExampleUser" }, "attributes": { "creationDate": "2023-08-21T19:20:49Z", "mfaAuthenticated": "false" } } }, "eventTime": "2023-08-21T19:22:01Z", "eventSource": "sns.amazonaws.com", "eventName": "PublishBatch", "awsRegion": "us-east-1", "sourceIPAddress": "192.0.2.0", "userAgent": "aws-cli/1.29.16 md/Botocore#1.31.16 ua/2.0 os/linux#5.4.250-173.369.amzn2int.x86_64 md/arch#x86_64 lang/python#3.8.17 md/pyimpl#CPython cfg/retry-mode#legacy botocore/1.31.16", "requestParameters": { "topicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:ExampleSNSTopic", "publishBatchRequestEntries": [{ "id": "1", "message": "HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS" }, { "id": "2", "message": "HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS" } ] }, "responseElements": { "successful": [{ "id": "1", "messageId": "30d68101-a64a-5573-9e10-dc5c1dd3af2f" }, { "id": "2", "messageId": "c0aa0c5c-561d-5455-b6c4-5101ed84de09" } ], "failed": [] }, "requestID": "e2cdf7f3-1b35-58ad-ac9e-aaaea0ace2f1", "eventID": "10da9a14-0154-4ab6-b3a5-1825b229a7ed", "readOnly": false, "resources": [{ "accountId": "123456789012", "type": "AWS::SNS::Topic", "ARN": "arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:ExampleSNSTopic" }], "eventType": "AwsApiCall", "managementEvent": false, "recipientAccountId": "123456789012", "eventCategory": "Data", "tlsDetails": { "tlsVersion": "TLSv1.2", "cipherSuite": "ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256", "clientProvidedHostHeader": "sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com" } }
