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CloudTrail log file examples - AWS CloudTrail
CloudTrail log file name formatLog file examples

CloudTrail log file examples

CloudTrail monitors events for your account. If you create a trail, it delivers those events as log files to your Amazon S3 bucket. See the following to learn more about log files.

CloudTrail log file name format

CloudTrail uses the following file name format for the log file objects that it delivers to your Amazon S3 bucket:

AccountID_CloudTrail_RegionName_YYYYMMDDTHHmmZ_UniqueString.FileNameFormat

  • The YYYY, MM, DD, HH, and mm are the digits of the year, month, day, hour, and minute when the log file was delivered. Hours are in 24-hour format. The Z indicates that the time is in UTC.

    Note

    A log file delivered at a specific time can contain records written at any point before that time.

  • The 16-character UniqueString component of the log file name is there to prevent overwriting of files. It has no meaning, and log processing software should ignore it.

  • FileNameFormat is the encoding of the file. Currently, this is json.gz, which is a JSON text file in compressed gzip format.

Example CloudTrail Log File Name

111122223333_CloudTrail_us-east-2_20150801T0210Z_Mu0KsOhtH1ar15ZZ.json.gz

Log file examples

A log file contains one or more records. The following examples are snippets of logs that show the records for an action that started the creation of a log file.

Amazon EC2 log examples

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides resizeable computing capacity in the AWS Cloud. You can launch virtual servers, configure security and networking, and manage storage. Amazon EC2 can also scale up or down quickly to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity, thereby reducing your need to forecast server traffic. For more information, see the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

The following example shows that an IAM user named Alice used the AWS CLI to call the Amazon EC2 StartInstances action by using the ec2-start-instances command for instance i-ebeaf9e2. 

{"Records": [{
    "eventVersion": "1.0",
    "userIdentity": {
        "type": "IAMUser",
        "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID",
        "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Alice",
        "accessKeyId": "EXAMPLE_KEY_ID",
        "accountId": "123456789012",
        "userName": "Alice"
    },
    "eventTime": "2014-03-06T21:22:54Z",
    "eventSource": "ec2.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "StartInstances",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-2",
    "sourceIPAddress": "205.251.233.176",
    "userAgent": "ec2-api-tools 1.6.12.2",
    "requestParameters": {"instancesSet": {"items": [{"instanceId": "i-ebeaf9e2"}]}},
    "responseElements": {"instancesSet": {"items": [{
        "instanceId": "i-ebeaf9e2",
        "currentState": {
            "code": 0,
            "name": "pending"
        },
        "previousState": {
            "code": 80,
            "name": "stopped"
        }
    }]}}
}]}

The following example shows that an IAM user named Alice used the AWS CLI to call the Amazon EC2 StopInstancesaction by using the ec2-stop-instances. 

{"Records": [{
    "eventVersion": "1.0",
    "userIdentity": {
        "type": "IAMUser",
        "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID",
        "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Alice",
        "accountId": "123456789012",
        "accessKeyId": "EXAMPLE_KEY_ID",
        "userName": "Alice"
    },
    "eventTime": "2014-03-06T21:01:59Z",
    "eventSource": "ec2.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "StopInstances",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-2",
    "sourceIPAddress": "205.251.233.176",
    "userAgent": "ec2-api-tools 1.6.12.2",
    "requestParameters": {
        "instancesSet": {"items": [{"instanceId": "i-ebeaf9e2"}]},
        "force": false
    },
    "responseElements": {"instancesSet": {"items": [{
        "instanceId": "i-ebeaf9e2",
        "currentState": {
            "code": 64,
            "name": "stopping"
        },
        "previousState": {
            "code": 16,
            "name": "running"
        }
    }]}}
}]}

The following example shows that the Amazon EC2 console backend called the CreateKeyPair action in response to requests initiated by the IAM user Alice. Note that the responseElements contain a hash of the key pair and that the key material has been removed by AWS. 

{"Records": [{
    "eventVersion": "1.0",
    "userIdentity": {
        "type": "IAMUser",
        "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID",
        "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Alice",
        "accountId": "123456789012",
        "accessKeyId": "EXAMPLE_KEY_ID",
        "userName": "Alice",
        "sessionContext": {"attributes": {
            "mfaAuthenticated": "false",
            "creationDate": "2014-03-06T15:15:06Z"
        }}
    },
    "eventTime": "2014-03-06T17:10:34Z",
    "eventSource": "ec2.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "CreateKeyPair",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-2",
    "sourceIPAddress": "72.21.198.64",
    "userAgent": "EC2ConsoleBackend, aws-sdk-java/Linux/x.xx.fleetxen Java_HotSpot(TM)_64-Bit_Server_VM/xx",
    "requestParameters": {"keyName": "mykeypair"},
    "responseElements": {
        "keyName": "mykeypair",
        "keyFingerprint": "30:1d:46:d0:5b:ad:7e:1b:b6:70:62:8b:ff:38:b5:e9:ab:5d:b8:21",
        "keyMaterial": "\u003csensitiveDataRemoved\u003e"
    }
}]}

IAM log examples

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that enables AWS customers to manage users and user permissions. With IAM, you can manage users, security credentials such as access keys, and permissions that control which AWS resources users can access. For more information, see the IAM User Guide.

The following example shows that the IAM user Alice used the AWS CLI to call the CreateUser action to create a new user named Bob.

{"Records": [{
    "eventVersion": "1.0",
    "userIdentity": {
        "type": "IAMUser",
        "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID",
        "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Alice",
        "accountId": "123456789012",
        "accessKeyId": "EXAMPLE_KEY_ID",
        "userName": "Alice"
    },
    "eventTime": "2014-03-24T21:11:59Z",
    "eventSource": "iam.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "CreateUser",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-2",
    "sourceIPAddress": "127.0.0.1",
    "userAgent": "aws-cli/1.3.2 Python/2.7.5 Windows/7",
    "requestParameters": {"userName": "Bob"},
    "responseElements": {"user": {
        "createDate": "Mar 24, 2014 9:11:59 PM",
        "userName": "Bob",
        "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Bob",
        "path": "/",
        "userId": "EXAMPLEUSERID"
    }}
}]}

The following example shows that the IAM user Alice used the AWS Management Console to call the AddUserToGroup action to add Bob to the administrator group.

{"Records": [{
    "eventVersion": "1.0",
    "userIdentity": {
        "type": "IAMUser",
        "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID",
        "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Alice",
        "accountId": "123456789012",
        "accessKeyId": "EXAMPLE_KEY_ID",
        "userName": "Alice",
        "sessionContext": {"attributes": {
            "mfaAuthenticated": "false",
            "creationDate": "2014-03-25T18:45:11Z"
        }}
    },
    "eventTime": "2014-03-25T21:08:14Z",
    "eventSource": "iam.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "AddUserToGroup",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-2",
    "sourceIPAddress": "127.0.0.1",
    "userAgent": "AWSConsole",
    "requestParameters": {
        "userName": "Bob",
        "groupName": "admin"
    },
    "responseElements": null
}]}

The following example shows that the IAM user Alice used the AWS CLI to call the CreateRole action to create a new IAM role.

{
    "Records": [{
        "eventVersion": "1.0",
        "userIdentity": {
            "type": "IAMUser",
            "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID",
            "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Alice",
            "accountId": "123456789012",
            "accessKeyId": "EXAMPLE_KEY_ID",
            "userName": "Alice"
        },
        "eventTime": "2014-03-25T20:17:37Z",
        "eventSource": "iam.amazonaws.com",
        "eventName": "CreateRole",
        "awsRegion": "us-east-2",
        "sourceIPAddress": "127.0.0.1",
        "userAgent": "aws-cli/1.3.2 Python/2.7.5 Windows/7",
        "requestParameters": {
            "assumeRolePolicyDocument": "{\n  \"Version\": \"2012-10-17\",\n  \"Statement\": [\n    {\n      \"Sid\": \"\",
            \n\"Effect\": \"Allow\",\n      \"Principal\": {\n        \"AWS\": \"arn:aws:iam::210987654321:root\"\n      },\n      \"Action\": \"sts:AssumeRole\"\n    }\n  ]\n}",
            "roleName": "TestRole"
        },
        "responseElements": {
            "role": {
                "assumeRolePolicyDocument": "%7B%0A%20%20%22Version%22%3A%20%222012-10-17%22%2C%0A%20%20%22Statement%22%3A%20%5B%0A%20%20%20%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%22Sid%22%3A%20%22%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%22Effect%22%3A%20%22Allow%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%22Principal%22%3A%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%22AWS%22%3A%20%22arn%3Aaws%3Aiam%3A%3A803981987763%3Aroot%22%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D%2C%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%22Action%22%3A%20%22sts%3AAssumeRole%22%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%20%20%5D%0A%7D",
                "roleName": "TestRole",
                "roleId": "AROAIUU2EOWSWPGX2UJUO",
                "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/TestRole",
                "createDate": "Mar 25, 2014 8:17:37 PM",
                "path": "/"
            }
        }
    }]
}

Error code and message log example

The following example shows that the IAM user Alice used the AWS CLI to call the UpdateTrail action to update a trail named myTrail2, but the trail name was not found. The log shows this error in the errorCode and errorMessage elements. 

{"Records": [{
    "eventVersion": "1.04",
    "userIdentity": {
        "type": "IAMUser",
        "principalId": "EX_PRINCIPAL_ID",
        "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Alice",
        "accountId": "123456789012",
        "accessKeyId": "EXAMPLE_KEY_ID",
        "userName": "Alice"
    },
    "eventTime": "2016-07-14T19:15:45Z",
    "eventSource": "cloudtrail.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "UpdateTrail",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-2",
    "sourceIPAddress": "205.251.233.182",
    "userAgent": "aws-cli/1.10.32 Python/2.7.9 Windows/7 botocore/1.4.22",
    "errorCode": "TrailNotFoundException",
    "errorMessage": "Unknown trail: myTrail2 for the user: 123456789012",
    "requestParameters": {"name": "myTrail2"},
    "responseElements": null,
    "requestID": "5d40662a-49f7-11e6-97e4-d9cb6ff7d6a3",
    "eventID": "b7d4398e-b2f0-4faa-9c76-e2d316a8d67f",
    "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
    "recipientAccountId": "123456789012"
}]}

CloudTrail Insights event log example

The following example shows a CloudTrail Insights event log. An Insights event is actually a pair of events that mark the start and end of a period of unusual write management API activity or error response activity. The state field shows whether the event was logged at the start or end of the period of unusual activity. The event name, UpdateInstanceInformation, is the same name as the AWS Systems Manager API for which CloudTrail analyzed management events to determine that unusual activity occurred. Although the start and end events have unique eventID values, they also have a sharedEventID value that is used by the pair. The Insights event shows the baseline, or the normal pattern of activity, the insight, or average unusual activity that triggered the start Insights event, and in the end event, the insight value for the average unusual activity over the duration of the Insights event. For more information about CloudTrail Insights, see Logging Insights events for trails.

{
    "Records": [
        {
            "eventVersion": "1.07",
            "eventTime": "2019-11-14T00:51:00Z",
            "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
            "eventID": "EXAMPLE8-9621-4d00-b913-beca2EXAMPLE",
            "eventType": "AwsCloudTrailInsight",
            "recipientAccountId": "123456789012",
            "sharedEventID": "EXAMPLE2-1729-42f1-b735-5d8c0EXAMPLE",
            "insightDetails": {
                "state": "Start",
                "eventSource": "ssm.amazonaws.com",
                "eventName": "UpdateInstanceInformation",
                "insightType": "ApiCallRateInsight",
                "insightContext": {
                    "statistics": {
                        "baseline": {
                            "average": 85.4202380952
                        },
                        "insight": {
                            "average": 664
                        }
                    }
                }
            },
            "eventCategory": "Insight"
        },
        {
            "eventVersion": "1.07",
            "eventTime": "2019-11-14T00:52:00Z",
            "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
            "eventID": "EXAMPLEc-28be-486c-8928-49ce6EXAMPLE",
            "eventType": "AwsCloudTrailInsight",
            "recipientAccountId": "123456789012",
            "sharedEventID": "EXAMPLE2-1729-42f1-b735-5d8c0EXAMPLE",
            "insightDetails": {
                "state": "End",
                "eventSource": "ssm.amazonaws.com",
                "eventName": "UpdateInstanceInformation",
                "insightType": "ApiCallRateInsight",
                "insightContext": {
                    "statistics": {
                        "baseline": {
                            "average": 85.4202380952
                        },
                        "insight": {
                            "average": 664
                        },
                        "insightDuration": 1
                    }
                }
            },
            "eventCategory": "Insight"
        }
    ]
}