Attack Discovery
Attack Discovery leverages large language models (LLMs) to analyze alerts in your environment and identify threats. Each "discovery" represents a potential attack and describes relationships among multiple alerts to tell you which users and hosts are involved, how alerts correspond to the MITRE ATT&CK matrix, and which threat actor might be responsible. This can help make the most of each security analyst’s time, fight alert fatigue, and reduce your mean time to respond.
For a demo, refer to the following video (click to view).
To use Attack Discovery, your role needs specific privileges.
Ensure your role has:
AllKibana privileges for theSecurity > Attack discovery Kibana feature and at leastReadprivileges for theSecurity > Rules Kibana feature.
The appropriateindex privileges, based on what you want to do with Attack Discovery alerts:
| Action | Indices | Elasticsearch privileges |
|---|---|---|
| Read Attack Discovery alerts | -.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .internal.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .adhoc.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .internal.adhoc.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id> | read andview_index_metadata |
| Read and modify Attack Discovery alerts. This includes: - Generating discovery alerts manually - Generating discovery alerts using schedules - Sharing manually created alerts with other users - Updating a discovery's status | -.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .internal.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .adhoc.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .internal.adhoc.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id> | read,view_index_metadata,write, andmaintenance |
Ensure your role has:
AllKibana privileges for theSecurity > Attack discovery Kibana feature and at leastReadprivileges for theSecurity > Rules, Alerts, and Exceptions Kibana feature.
The appropriateindex privileges, based on what you want to do with Attack Discovery alerts:
| Action | Indices | Elasticsearch privileges |
|---|---|---|
| Read Attack Discovery alerts | -.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .internal.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .adhoc.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .internal.adhoc.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id> | read andview_index_metadata |
| Read and modify Attack Discovery alerts. This includes: - Generating discovery alerts manually - Generating discovery alerts using schedules - Sharing manually created alerts with other users - Updating a discovery's status | -.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .internal.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .adhoc.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id>- .internal.adhoc.alerts-security.attack.discovery.alerts-<space-id> | read,view_index_metadata,write, andmaintenance |
Ensure your role hasAllKibana privileges for theSecurity > Attack discovery Kibana feature.

By default, Attack Discovery analyzes up to 100 alerts from the last 24 hours, but you can customize how many and which alerts it analyzes using the settings menu. To open it, click the settings icon next to theRun button.

You can select which alerts Attack Discovery will process by filtering based on a KQL query, the time and date selector, and theNumber of alerts slider. Note that sending more alerts than your chosen LLM can handle may result in an error. UnderAlert summary you can view a summary of the selected alerts grouped by various fields, and underAlerts preview you can see more details about the selected alerts.
Attack Discovery is designed for use with alerts based on data that complies with ECS, and by default only analyses ECS-compliant fields. However, you can enable Attack Discovery to review additional fields by following these steps:
- Select an alert with some of the non-ECS fields you want to analyze, and go to its details flyout. From here, use theAsk AI Assistant orAdd to chat button to open an AI chat.
- At the bottom of the chat window, the alert's information appears. ClickEdit to open the anonymization window to this alert's fields.
- Search for and select the non-ECS fields you want Attack Discovery to analyze. Set them toAllowed.
- Check the
Update presetsbox to add the allowed fields to the space's default anonymization settings.
The next time you run Attack Discovery it will be able to analyze the selected fields.
You’ll need to select an LLM connector before you can analyze alerts. To get started:
Click theAttack Discovery page from Elastic Security's navigation menu.
Do one of the following:
- Click the settings icon next to theRun button, then in the settings menu, select an existing connector from the dropdown menu, or add a new one.
- Select an existing connector from the dropdown menu, or add a new one.
Recommended modelsWhile Attack Discovery is compatible with many different models, refer to theLarge language model performance matrix to see which models perform best.



