Tomcat Logging – Log the Equivalent of SSL_CLIENT_S_DN

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In Apache HTTPD it is possible to create custom request logs which include the value of SSL_CLIENT_S_DN. Since the site requires mutual authentication (client certificates) this provides a good audit log of who is accessing the web server. The question is we have a large number of tomcat hosts as well and would like to do the same thing with request logs created by tomcat. I can't seem to find a way to do it though. I have looked at access valves in tomcat but can't seem to find an appropriate variable.

I've been looking here for configuration information: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/valve.html#Access_Log_Valve

Also these are tomcat instances with the HTTPS connector configured with clientAuth=True. They are not sitting behind a proxy.

How can I log the client certificate DN in a request log?

Best Answer

Not tested, but you could try with a pattern as :

%{javax.servlet.request.X509Certificate}r

Which should print the x509 certificate used by the User Agent for the authentication (with the chain). This uses the %{xxx}r pattern from AccessLogValve which prints an attributes from the request and tomcat (or the servlet api) which add that attribute (see tomcat source code on github )

Problem is the toString() method of X509Certificate is quite verbose. I'm sure the DN is here but there is a lot more information.

This is if you don't want to touch java code. If you want, you could also try to define a filter which add the exact attribute you want and print it in the log.

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