Capture with Retina CLI

The capture command in Retina allows users to capture network traffic and metadata for the capture target, and send the data to the location defined by output configuration.

NOTE: captures can also be performed with a Capture CRD after installing Retina with capture support.

Capture Create

kubectl retina capture create [--flags] creates a Capture with underlying Kubernetes jobs.

Selecting a Target

The target indicates where the packet capture will be performed. This can be set via --node-selectors, --node-names, --pod-selectors and --namespace-selectors flags. Run kubectl retina capture -h for further details based on the Retina CLI version installed on your environment.

Note that Node Selectors are not compatible with Pod Selectors & Namespace Selectors pairs and the capture will not go through if all are populated.

If nothing is set, kubectl retina capture create will use --node-selectors with the default value shown below in Flags.

You can find target selection examples below.

Configuring the Output Location

The output configuration indicates the location where the capture will be stored. At least one location needs to be specified. This can either be the host path on the node, or a remote storage option.

Blob-upload requires a Blob Shared Access Signature (SAS) with the write permission to the storage account container, to create SAS tokens in the Azure portal, please read: Create SAS Tokens in the Azure Portal.

You can find output configuration examples below.

Stopping a Capture

The Capture can be stopped in a number of ways:

• In a given time, by the duration flag, or when the file reaches the maximum allowed file size defined by the max-size flag. When both are specified, the capture will stop whenever either condition is first met.
• On demand by deleting the capture before the specified conditions meets.

The network traffic will be uploaded to the specified output location.

Flags

Flag	Type	Default	Description	Notes
blob-upload	string	""	Blob SAS URL with write permission to upload capture files.
debug	bool	false	When debug is true, a customized retina-agent image, determined by the environment variable RETINA_AGENT_IMAGE, is set.
duration	string	1m0s	Maximum duration of the packet capture - in minutes / seconds.
exclude-filter	string	""	A comma-separated list of IP:Port pairs that are excluded from capturing network packets. Supported formats are IP:Port, IP, Port, :Port, IP:	Only works on Linux.
help			Help for create command.
host-path	string	/mnt/retina/captures	Store the capture file in the node's specified host path.
include-filter	string	""	A comma-separated list of IP:Port pairs that are included from capturing network packets. Supported formats are IP:Port, IP, Port, :Port, IP:	Only works on Linux.
include-metadata	bool	true	Collect static network metadata into the capture file if true.
job-num-limit	int	0	The maximum number of jobs which can be created for each capture. The default value 0 indicates no limit. This can be configured by CLI flags for each CLI command, or by a config map consumed by the retina-operator. When creating a job requires job number exceeds this limit, it will fail with prompt like Error: the number of capture jobs 3 exceeds the limit 2.
max-size	int	100	Maximum size of the capture file - in MB	Only works on Linux.
name	string	retina-capture	A name for the Retina Capture.
namespace	string	default	Sets the namespace which hosts the capture job and the other Kubernetes resources for a network capture.	Ensure the namespace exists.
namespace-selectors	string	""	Capture network captures on pods filtered by the provided namespace selectors.	Pair with pod-selectors.
node-names	string	""	A comma-separated list of node names to select nodes on which the network capture will be performed.
node-selectors	string	kubernetes.io/os=linux	A comma-separated list of node labels to select nodes on which the network capture will be performed.
no-wait	bool	true	By default, Retina capture CLI will exit before the jobs are completed. If false, the CLI will wait until the jobs are completed and clean up the Kubernetes resources created.
packet-size	int	0	Limit the packet size in bytes. Packets longer than the defined maximum size will be truncated. The default value 0 indicates no limit. This is beneficial when the user wants to reduce the capture file size or hide customer data due to security concerns.	Only works on Linux.
pod-selectors	string	""	A comma-separated list of pod labels to select pods on which the network capture will be performed.	Pair with namespace-selectors.
pvc	string	""	PersistentVolumeClaim under the specified or default namespace to store capture files.
s3-access-key-id	string	""	S3 access key id to upload capture files.
s3-bucket	string	""	Bucket in which to store capture files.
s3-endpoint	string	""	Endpoint for an S3 compatible storage service. Use this if you are using a custom or private S3 service that requires a specific endpoint.
s3-path	string	retina/captures	Prefix path within the S3 bucket where captures will be stored.
s3-region	string	""	Region where the S3 compatible bucket is located.
s3-secret-access-key	string	""	S3 access secret key to upload capture files.
tcpdump-filter	string	""	Raw tcpdump flags. Available tcpdump filters can be found in the TCPDUMP MAN PAGE.	Only works on Linux. Includes only tcpdump flags, for boolean expressions, please use include/exclude filters.

Examples

Target Selection

Node Selectors

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-node-selectors \
  --node-selectors "kubernetes.io/os=linux"

Node Names

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-node-names \
  --node-names "aks-agentpool-26113504-vmss000000,aks-agentpool-26113504-vmss000001"

Pod Selectors & Namespace Selectors (Pairs)

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-pod-namespace-selectors \
  --pod-selectors="k8s-app=kube-dns" \
  --namespace-selectors="kubernetes.io/metadata.name=kube-system"

Output Configuration

Host Path

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-host-path \
  --host-path /mnt/retina/example/captures

PVC

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-pvc \
  --pvc mypvc

Storage Account

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-blob \
  --blob-upload <Blob SAS URL with write permission>

AWS S3

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-s3 \
  --s3-bucket "your-bucket-name" \
  --s3-region "eu-central-1" \
  --s3-access-key-id "your-access-key-id" \
  --s3-secret-access-key "your-secret-access-key"

S3 Compatible Service (MinIO)

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-minio \
  --s3-bucket "your-bucket-name" \
  --s3-endpoint "https://play.min.io:9000" \
  --s3-access-key-id "your-access-key-id" \
  --s3-secret-access-key "your-secret-access-key"

Capture Filters

Include / Exclude Filters

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-include-exclude-filters \
  --include-filter="10.224.0.42:80,10.224.0.33:8080" \
  --exclude-filter="10.224.0.26:80,10.224.0.34:8080"

Tcpdump Filters

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name example-tcpdump-filters \
  --tcpdump-filter="udp port 53"

Capture Delete

Deleting the capture job before either of the terminating conditions have been met will stop the capture.

kubectl retina capture delete --name <string> deletes a Kubernetes Jobs with the specified Capture name.

Example:

kubectl retina capture delete --name retina-capture-zlx5v

Capture List

To get a list of the captures you can run kubectl retina capture list to get the captures in a specific namespace or in all namespaces.

List by namespace:

kubectl retina capture list --namespace capture

List by all namespaces:

kubectl retina capture list --all-namespaces

Obtaining the output

After downloading or copying the tarball from the location specified, extract the tarball through the tar command in either Linux shell or Windows Powershell, for example,

tar -xvf retina-capture-aks-nodepool1-41844487-vmss000000-20230320013600UTC.tar.gz

Name pattern of the tarball

the tarball take such name pattern, $(capturename)-$(hostname)-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S%Z).tar.gz, for example, retina-capture-aks-nodepool1-41844487-vmss000000-20230313101436UTC.tar.gz.

File and directory structure inside the tarball

• Linux

├── ip-resources.txt
├── iptables-rules.txt
├── retina-capture-aks-nodepool1-41844487-vmss000000-20230320013600UTC.pcap
├── proc-net
│   ├── anycast6
│   ├── arp
... ...
├── proc-sys-net
│   ├── bridge
... ...
|-- socket-stats.txt
`-- tcpdump.log

• Windows

│   retina-capture-akswin000002-20230322010252UTC.etl
│   retina-capture-akswin000002-20230322010252UTC.pcap
│   netsh.log
│
└───metadata
    │   arp.txt
        ... ...
    │
    ├───adapters
    │       6to4 Adapter_int.txt
            ... ...
    │
    ├───logs
    │   ├───cbs
    │   │       CBS.log
    │   │
    │   ├───dism
    │   │       dism.log
    │   │
    │   └───NetSetup
    │           service.0.etl
                ... ...
    │
    ├───wfp
    │       filters.xml
    │       netevents.xml
    │       wfpstate.xml
    │
    └───winevt
            Application.evtx
            ... ...

Network metadata

• Linux

  • IP address configuration (ip -d -j addr show)
  • IP neighbor status (ip -d -j neighbor show)
  • IPtables rule dumps
    • iptables-save
    • iptables -vnx -L
    • iptables -vnx -L -t nat
    • iptables -vnx -L -t mangle
  • Network statistics information
    • ss -s (summary)
    • ss -tapionume (socket information)
  • networking stats (/proc/net)
  • kernel networking configuration (/proc/sys/net)

• Windows

  • reference: Microsoft SDN Debug tool

Debug mode

With debug mode, when --debug is specified, you can overwrite the capture job's pod image.

Use ghcr.io image in default debug mode:

kubectl retina capture create \
  --name capture-test \
  --host-path /mnt/test \
  --namespace capture \
  --node-selectors "kubernetes.io/os=linux" \
  --debug

Use custom retina-agent image by specifying it in the RETINA_AGENT_IMAGE environment variable:

RETINA_AGENT_IMAGE=<YOUR RETINA AGENT IMAGE>
kubectl retina capture create \
  --name capture-test \
  --host-path /mnt/test \
  --namespace capture \
  --node-selectors "kubernetes.io/os=linux" \
  --

Cleanup

When creating a capture, you can specify --no-wait to clean up the jobs after the Capture is completed.

Otherwise, after creating a Capture, a random Capture name is returned, with which you can delete the jobs by running the kubectl retina capture delete command.