Kalos Cybersecurity LLC
Field guide

Wazuh Dashboard Authorization-Token Troubleshooting — v18

Symptom

The Wazuh application reports that it cannot obtain an authorization token, sometimes with Error 3002 and an HTTP 500 response from:

POST /security/user/authenticate

An HTTP 500 response indicates a server-side failure. It does not prove that the Dashboard service is the root cause.

1. Preserve the Evidence

Record the time, affected user, Dashboard URL, exact error, and recent configuration or service changes before restarting anything.

2. Check Component Health

sudo systemctl --no-pager --full status wazuh-manager
sudo systemctl --no-pager --full status wazuh-dashboard
sudo /var/ossec/bin/wazuh-control status

Use systemctl for service control. Use wazuh-control status to inspect the Wazuh manager processes.

3. Verify the API Listener

The Wazuh server API uses TCP 55000 by default:

sudo ss -lntp | grep ':55000'

A listener confirms that a process owns the port; it does not prove authentication is healthy.

4. Inspect the API Log

Depending on API log format, the active log is api.log or api.json:

sudo ls -l /var/ossec/logs/api.log /var/ossec/logs/api.json 2>/dev/null
sudo tail -n 100 /var/ossec/logs/api.log 2>/dev/null
sudo tail -n 100 /var/ossec/logs/api.json 2>/dev/null

Correlate entries with the recorded failure time. Look for unavailable daemons, authentication/RBAC errors, certificate problems, malformed requests, resource exhaustion, or startup failures.

5. Inspect Manager Processes and Journal

If the API reports an unavailable daemon, verify that daemon rather than assuming the historical wazuh-execd incident applies:

sudo /var/ossec/bin/wazuh-control status
sudo journalctl -u wazuh-manager --since "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" --no-pager

For an execd finding specifically:

pgrep -a -x wazuh-execd

No output supports the finding that the process is absent. Do not start individual Wazuh daemons manually during routine troubleshooting.

6. Perform a Controlled Restart When Justified

After logs and process evidence identify the manager as the affected layer:

sudo systemctl restart wazuh-manager
sudo systemctl --no-pager --full status wazuh-manager
sudo /var/ossec/bin/wazuh-control status

Then refresh the Dashboard and retest authentication. Restarting the Dashboard is unnecessary when restoring manager/API health resolves the failure.

Escalation

Escalate instead of repeatedly restarting when:

  • the manager or API immediately fails again;
  • logs identify certificate, RBAC, disk, memory, or configuration errors;
  • multiple nodes disagree about daemon health;
  • the problem follows an upgrade or unsupported customization.

Validation Checklist

Technical References