Solarwinds' Loggly and Papertrail Default to Sending Unencrypted Logs

wrble.com

2 points·millisecond··3 comments

This blog post is factually incorrect. Papertrail and Loggly both strongly recommend and support syslog over TLS. For example, https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/Success_Center/paper... covers how to setup encrypted logging.

That page is linked to as part of the standard setup doc and it's in the sidebar, immediately beneath the simplest possible setup instructions.

This blog post says "Of course, they support TLS and have advanced/optional instructions for configuring that but after decades of experience in software and devops we know the power of defaults," which is at best a mischaracterization.

Also, the sender maintained by Papertrail, remote_syslog2, both defaults to encryption (https://github.com/papertrail/remote_syslog2/blob/master/exa...) and makes it a single config option, which isn't true of most other senders.

I'm not sure what's factually incorrect, as you mention the article says they support it. But their default instructions are very vague about it.

Papertrail for example, their primary syslog configuration page: https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/Success_Center/paper...

Way down they say "Optionally, configure encrypted logging with TLS." but don't mention it in the intro paragraphs, or that it's a best-practice, or that people should do it... just that it's "optional".

I'd suggest signing up for the service and looking at the actual user-facing setup UI (which is how users arrive at these pages). I think it's really hard to miss in the UI, but if you disagree or even just have suggestions how to make it even more obvious, email them to Papertrail; they're responsive.

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