Log Amazon ECS API calls using AWS CloudTrail - Amazon Elastic Container Service

Log Amazon ECS API calls using AWS CloudTrail

Amazon ECS is integrated with AWS CloudTrail, a service that provides a record of actions taken by a user, role, or an AWS service in Amazon ECS. CloudTrail captures all API calls for Amazon ECS as events, including calls from the Amazon ECS console and from code calls to the Amazon ECS API operations. To protect your VPC, requests that are denied by a VPC endpoint policy, but otherwise would have been allowed, are not recorded in CloudTrail.

If you create a trail, you can enable continuous delivery of CloudTrail events to an Amazon S3 bucket, including events for Amazon ECS. 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 ECS, the IP address from which the request was made, who made the request, when it was made, and additional details.

For more information, see the AWS CloudTrail User Guide.

Amazon ECS information in CloudTrail

CloudTrail is turned on in your AWS account when you create the account. When activity occurs in Amazon ECS, 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 ECS, create a trail which CloudTrail uses to deliver log files to an Amazon S3 bucket. By default, when you create a trail in the console, the trail applies to all 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:

All Amazon ECS actions are logged by CloudTrail and are documented in the Amazon Elastic Container Service API Reference. For example, calls to the CreateService, RunTask and DeleteCluster sections generate entries in the CloudTrail log files.

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 user or 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.

Understanding Amazon ECS log file entries

A trail is a configuration that allows the 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 are not an ordered stack trace of the public API calls, so they do not appear in any specific order.

Note

These examples have been formatted for improved readability. In a CloudTrail log file, all entries and events are concatenated into a single line. In addition, this example has been limited to a single Amazon ECS entry. In a real CloudTrail log file, you see entries and events from multiple AWS services.

The following example shows a CloudTrail log entry that demonstrates the CreateCluster action:

{ "eventVersion": "1.04", "userIdentity": { "type": "AssumedRole", "principalId": "AIDACKCEVSQ6C2EXAMPLE:account_name", "arn": "arn:aws:sts::123456789012:user/Mary_Major", "accountId": "123456789012", "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE", "sessionContext": { "attributes": { "mfaAuthenticated": "false", "creationDate": "2018-06-20T18:32:25Z" }, "sessionIssuer": { "type": "Role", "principalId": "AIDACKCEVSQ6C2EXAMPLE", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/Admin", "accountId": "123456789012", "userName": "Mary_Major" } } }, "eventTime": "2018-06-20T19:04:36Z", "eventSource": "ecs.amazonaws.com", "eventName": "CreateCluster", "awsRegion": "us-east-1", "sourceIPAddress": "203.0.113.12", "userAgent": "console.amazonaws.com", "requestParameters": { "clusterName": "default" }, "responseElements": { "cluster": { "clusterArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:123456789012:cluster/default", "pendingTasksCount": 0, "registeredContainerInstancesCount": 0, "status": "ACTIVE", "runningTasksCount": 0, "statistics": [], "clusterName": "default", "activeServicesCount": 0 } }, "requestID": "cb8c167e-EXAMPLE", "eventID": "e3c6f4ce-EXAMPLE", "eventType": "AwsApiCall", "recipientAccountId": "123456789012" }