Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch & Kibana)
The Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana and Beats/Elastic Agent) stores, searches and visualises logs; Elastic Security adds SIEM detection features.
Legal & ethical use. Use this tool only on systems, networks and data that you own or have explicit written permission to test. Unauthorised access or scanning can break computer-misuse laws (for example Pakistan's Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016, and equivalents elsewhere). Practise in your own lab or in authorised environments such as CTFs.
What it is used for
- Build a searchable log pipeline for a lab
- Create dashboards and detection rules
Key features
- Fast full-text search
- Kibana dashboards
- Ingestion via agents and Beats
Installation
Follow the installation guides at elastic.co; check licence terms for the features you use.
Beginner usage guide
Ingest a small log source such as auth logs, then build a Kibana query for failed logins and visualise them over time.
Example commands
Run these only against your own lab or authorised targets. Placeholder addresses such as 192.0.2.x are documentation ranges.
Query example (Kibana KQL)
event.category: authentication and event.outcome: failureShows failed authentication events when ECS-formatted data is ingested.
References
Source verification
Last reviewed: 2026-10-27
Links checked over HTTP: 2026-10-27 07:51 UTC — official: 200, docs: 200, repo: 200
Commands were written from the official documentation and have not been executed on this site; test them in your lab.