Rule Types and Configuration Options¶

Examples of several types of rule configuration can be found in the example_rules folder.

Note

All “time” formats are of the form unit: X where unit is one of weeks, days, hours, minutes or seconds. Such as minutes: 15 or hours: 1.

Rule Configuration Cheat Sheet¶

FOR ALL RULES
`es_host` (string)	Required
`es_port` (number)
`index` (string)
`type` (string)
`alert` (string or list)
`name` (string, defaults to the filename)	Optional
`use_strftime_index` (boolean, default False)
`use_ssl` (boolean, default False)
`verify_certs` (boolean, default True)
`es_username` (string, no default)
`es_password` (string, no default)
`es_url_prefix` (string, no default)
`es_send_get_body_as` (string, default “GET”)
`aggregation` (time, no default)
`description` (string, default empty string)
`generate_kibana_link` (boolean, default False)
`use_kibana_dashboard` (string, no default)
`kibana_url` (string, default from es_host)
`use_kibana4_dashboard` (string, no default)
`kibana4_start_timedelta` (time, default: 10 min)
`kibana4_end_timedelta` (time, default: 10 min)
`use_local_time` (boolean, default True)
`realert` (time, default: 1 min)
`exponential_realert` (time, no default)
`match_enhancements` (list of strs, no default)
`top_count_number` (int, default 5)
`top_count_keys` (list of strs)
`raw_count_keys` (boolean, default True)
`include` (list of strs, default [“*”])
`filter` (ES filter DSL, no default)
`max_query_size` (int, default global max_query_size)
`query_delay` (time, default 0 min)
`owner` (string, default empty string)
`priority` (int, default 2)
`category` (string, default empty string)
`scan_entire_timeframe` (bool, default False)
`import` (string) IGNORED IF `use_count_query` or `use_terms_query` is true
`buffer_time` (time, default from config.yaml)
`timestamp_type` (string, default iso)
`timestamp_format` (string, default “%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ”)
`timestamp_format_expr` (string, no default )
`_source_enabled` (boolean, default True)
`alert_text_args` (array of strs)
`alert_text_kw` (object)
`alert_missing_value` (string, default “<MISSING VALUE>”)
`is_enabled` (boolean, default True)
`search_extra_index` (boolean, default False)

RULE TYPE	Any	Blacklist	Whitelist	Change	Frequency	Spike	Flatline	New_term	Cardinality
`compare_key` (list of strs, no default)		Req	Req	Req
`blacklist` (list of strs, no default)		Req
`whitelist` (list of strs, no default)			Req
`ignore_null` (boolean, no default)			Req	Req
`query_key` (string, no default)	Opt			Req	Opt	Opt	Opt	Req	Opt
`aggregation_key` (string, no default)	Opt
`summary_table_fields` (list, no default)	Opt
`timeframe` (time, no default)				Opt	Req	Req	Req		Req
`num_events` (int, no default)					Req
`attach_related` (boolean, no default)					Opt
`use_count_query` (boolean, no default) `doc_type` (string, no default)					Opt	Opt	Opt
`use_terms_query` (boolean, no default) `doc_type` (string, no default) `query_key` (string, no default) `terms_size` (int, default 50)					Opt	Opt		Opt
`spike_height` (int, no default)						Req
`spike_type` ([up\|down\|both], no default)						Req
`alert_on_new_data` (boolean, default False)						Opt
`threshold_ref` (int, no default)						Opt
`threshold_cur` (int, no default)						Opt
`threshold` (int, no default)							Req
`fields` (string or list, no default)								Req
`terms_window_size` (time, default 30 days)								Opt
`window_step_size` (time, default 1 day)								Opt
`alert_on_missing_fields` (boolean, default False)								Opt
`cardinality_field` (string, no default)									Req
`max_cardinality` (boolean, no default)									Opt
`min_cardinality` (boolean, no default)									Opt

Common Configuration Options¶

Every file that ends in .yaml in the rules_folder will be run by default. The following configuration settings are common to all types of rules.

Required Settings¶

es_host¶

es_host: The hostname of the Elasticsearch cluster the rule will use to query. (Required, string, no default) The environment variable ES_HOST will override this field.

es_port¶

es_port: The port of the Elasticsearch cluster. (Required, number, no default) The environment variable ES_PORT will override this field.

index¶

index: The name of the index that will be searched. Wildcards can be used here, such as: index: my-index-* which will match my-index-2014-10-05. You can also use a format string containing %Y for year, %m for month, and %d for day. To use this, you must also set use_strftime_index to true. (Required, string, no default)

name¶

name: The name of the rule. This must be unique across all rules. The name will be used in alerts and used as a key when writing and reading search metadata back from Elasticsearch. (Required, string, no default)

type¶

type: The RuleType to use. This may either be one of the built in rule types, see Rule Types section below for more information, or loaded from a module. For loading from a module, the type should be specified as module.file.RuleName. (Required, string, no default)

alert¶

alert: The Alerter type to use. This may be one or more of the built in alerts, see Alert Types section below for more information, or loaded from a module. For loading from a module, the alert should be specified as module.file.AlertName. (Required, string or list, no default)

Optional Settings¶

import¶

import: If specified includes all the settings from this yaml file. This allows common config options to be shared. Note that imported files that aren’t complete rules should not have a .yml or .yaml suffix so that ElastAlert doesn’t treat them as rules. Filters in imported files are merged (ANDed) with any filters in the rule. You can only have one import per rule, though the imported file can import another file, recursively. The filename can be an absolute path or relative to the rules directory. (Optional, string, no default)

use_ssl¶

use_ssl: Whether or not to connect to es_host using TLS. (Optional, boolean, default False) The environment variable ES_USE_SSL will override this field.

verify_certs¶

verify_certs: Whether or not to verify TLS certificates. (Optional, boolean, default True)

client_cert¶

client_cert: Path to a PEM certificate to use as the client certificate (Optional, string, no default)

client_key¶

client_key: Path to a private key file to use as the client key (Optional, string, no default)

ca_certs¶

ca_certs: Path to a CA cert bundle to use to verify SSL connections (Optional, string, no default)

es_username¶

es_username: basic-auth username for connecting to es_host. (Optional, string, no default) The environment variable ES_USERNAME will override this field.

es_password¶

es_password: basic-auth password for connecting to es_host. (Optional, string, no default) The environment variable ES_PASSWORD will override this field.

es_url_prefix¶

es_url_prefix: URL prefix for the Elasticsearch endpoint. (Optional, string, no default)

es_send_get_body_as¶

es_send_get_body_as: Method for querying Elasticsearch. (Optional, string, default “GET”)

use_strftime_index¶

use_strftime_index: If this is true, ElastAlert will format the index using datetime.strftime for each query. See https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#strftime-strptime-behavior for more details. If a query spans multiple days, the formatted indexes will be concatenated with commas. This is useful as narrowing the number of indexes searched, compared to using a wildcard, may be significantly faster. For example, if index is logstash-%Y.%m.%d, the query url will be similar to elasticsearch.example.com/logstash-2015.02.03/... or elasticsearch.example.com/logstash-2015.02.03,logstash-2015.02.04/....

search_extra_index¶

search_extra_index: If this is true, ElastAlert will add an extra index on the early side onto each search. For example, if it’s querying completely within 2018-06-28, it will actually use 2018-06-27,2018-06-28. This can be useful if your timestamp_field is not what’s being used to generate the index names. If that’s the case, sometimes a query would not have been using the right index.

aggregation¶

aggregation: This option allows you to aggregate multiple matches together into one alert. Every time a match is found, ElastAlert will wait for the aggregation period, and send all of the matches that have occurred in that time for a particular rule together.

For example:

aggregation:
  hours: 2

means that if one match occurred at 12:00, another at 1:00, and a third at 2:30, one alert would be sent at 2:00, containing the first two matches, and another at 4:30, containing the third match plus any additional matches occurring before 4:30. This can be very useful if you expect a large number of matches and only want a periodic report. (Optional, time, default none)

If you wish to aggregate all your alerts and send them on a recurring interval, you can do that using the schedule field.

For example, if you wish to receive alerts every Monday and Friday:

aggregation:
  schedule: '2 4 * * mon,fri'

This uses Cron syntax, which you can read more about here. Make sure to only include either a schedule field or standard datetime fields (such as hours, minutes, days), not both.

By default, all events that occur during an aggregation window are grouped together. However, if your rule has the aggregation_key field set, then each event sharing a common key value will be grouped together. A separate aggregation window will be made for each newly encountered key value.

For example, if you wish to receive alerts that are grouped by the user who triggered the event, you can set:

aggregation_key: 'my_data.username'

Then, assuming an aggregation window of 10 minutes, if you receive the following data points:

{'my_data': {'username': 'alice', 'event_type': 'login'}, '@timestamp': '2016-09-20T00:00:00'}
{'my_data': {'username': 'bob', 'event_type': 'something'}, '@timestamp': '2016-09-20T00:05:00'}
{'my_data': {'username': 'alice', 'event_type': 'something else'}, '@timestamp': '2016-09-20T00:06:00'}

This should result in 2 alerts: One containing alice’s two events, sent at 2016-09-20T00:10:00 and one containing bob’s one event sent at 2016-09-20T00:16:00

For aggregations, there can sometimes be a large number of documents present in the viewing medium (email, jira ticket, etc..). If you set the summary_table_fields field, Elastalert will provide a summary of the specified fields from all the results.

For example, if you wish to summarize the usernames and event_types that appear in the documents so that you can see the most relevant fields at a quick glance, you can set:

summary_table_fields:
    - my_data.username
    - my_data.event_type

Then, for the same sample data shown above listing alice and bob’s events, Elastalert will provide the following summary table in the alert medium:

+------------------+--------------------+
| my_data.username | my_data.event_type |
+------------------+--------------------+
|      alice       |       login        |
|       bob        |     something      |
|      alice       |   something else   |
+------------------+--------------------+

Note

By default, aggregation time is relative to the current system time, not the time of the match. This means that running elastalert over past events will result in different alerts than if elastalert had been running while those events occured. This behavior can be changed by setting aggregate_by_match_time.

aggregate_by_match_time¶

Setting this to true will cause aggregations to be created relative to the timestamp of the first event, rather than the current time. This is useful for querying over historic data or if using a very large buffer_time and you want multiple aggregations to occur from a single query.

realert¶

realert: This option allows you to ignore repeating alerts for a period of time. If the rule uses a query_key, this option will be applied on a per key basis. All matches for a given rule, or for matches with the same query_key, will be ignored for the given time. All matches with a missing query_key will be grouped together using a value of _missing. This is applied to the time the alert is sent, not to the time of the event. It defaults to one minute, which means that if ElastAlert is run over a large time period which triggers many matches, only the first alert will be sent by default. If you want every alert, set realert to 0 minutes. (Optional, time, default 1 minute)

exponential_realert¶

exponential_realert: This option causes the value of realert to exponentially increase while alerts continue to fire. If set, the value of exponential_realert is the maximum realert will increase to. If the time between alerts is less than twice realert, realert will double. For example, if realert: minutes: 10 and exponential_realert: hours: 1, an alerts fires at 1:00 and another at 1:15, the next alert will not be until at least 1:35. If another alert fires between 1:35 and 2:15, realert will increase to the 1 hour maximum. If more than 2 hours elapse before the next alert, realert will go back down. Note that alerts that are ignored (e.g. one that occurred at 1:05) would not change realert. (Optional, time, no default)

buffer_time¶

buffer_time: This options allows the rule to override the buffer_time global setting defined in config.yaml. This value is ignored if use_count_query or use_terms_query is true. (Optional, time)

query_delay¶

query_delay: This option will cause ElastAlert to subtract a time delta from every query, causing the rule to run with a delay. This is useful if the data is Elasticsearch doesn’t get indexed immediately. (Optional, time)

owner¶

owner: This value will be used to identify the stakeholder of the alert. Optionally, this field can be included in any alert type. (Optional, string)

priority¶

priority: This value will be used to identify the relative priority of the alert. Optionally, this field can be included in any alert type (e.g. for use in email subject/body text). (Optional, int, default 2)

category¶

category: This value will be used to identify the category of the alert. Optionally, this field can be included in any alert type (e.g. for use in email subject/body text). (Optional, string, default empty string)

max_query_size¶

max_query_size: The maximum number of documents that will be downloaded from Elasticsearch in a single query. If you expect a large number of results, consider using use_count_query for the rule. If this limit is reached, a warning will be logged but ElastAlert will continue without downloading more results. This setting will override a global max_query_size. (Optional, int, default value of global max_query_size)

filter¶

filter: A list of Elasticsearch query DSL filters that is used to query Elasticsearch. ElastAlert will query Elasticsearch using the format {'filter': {'bool': {'must': [config.filter]}}} with an additional timestamp range filter. All of the results of querying with these filters are passed to the RuleType for analysis. For more information writing filters, see Writing Filters. (Required, Elasticsearch query DSL, no default)

include¶

include: A list of terms that should be included in query results and passed to rule types and alerts. When set, only those fields, along with ‘@timestamp’, query_key, compare_key, and top_count_keys are included, if present. (Optional, list of strings, default all fields)

top_count_keys¶

top_count_keys: A list of fields. ElastAlert will perform a terms query for the top X most common values for each of the fields, where X is 5 by default, or top_count_number if it exists. For example, if num_events is 100, and top_count_keys is - "username", the alert will say how many of the 100 events have each username, for the top 5 usernames. When this is computed, the time range used is from timeframe before the most recent event to 10 minutes past the most recent event. Because ElastAlert uses an aggregation query to compute this, it will attempt to use the field name plus “.raw” to count unanalyzed terms. To turn this off, set raw_count_keys to false.

top_count_number¶

top_count_number: The number of terms to list if top_count_keys is set. (Optional, integer, default 5)

raw_count_keys¶

raw_count_keys: If true, all fields in top_count_keys will have .raw appended to them. (Optional, boolean, default true)

description¶

description: text describing the purpose of rule. (Optional, string, default empty string) Can be referenced in custom alerters to provide context as to why a rule might trigger.

generate_kibana_link¶

generate_kibana_link: This option is for Kibana 3 only. If true, ElastAlert will generate a temporary Kibana dashboard and include a link to it in alerts. The dashboard consists of an events over time graph and a table with include fields selected in the table. If the rule uses query_key, the dashboard will also contain a filter for the query_key of the alert. The dashboard schema will be uploaded to the kibana-int index as a temporary dashboard. (Optional, boolean, default False)

kibana_url¶

kibana_url: The url to access Kibana. This will be used if generate_kibana_link or use_kibana_dashboard is true. If not specified, a URL will be constructed using es_host and es_port. (Optional, string, default http://<es_host>:<es_port>/_plugin/kibana/)

use_kibana_dashboard¶

use_kibana_dashboard: The name of a Kibana 3 dashboard to link to. Instead of generating a dashboard from a template, ElastAlert can use an existing dashboard. It will set the time range on the dashboard to around the match time, upload it as a temporary dashboard, add a filter to the query_key of the alert if applicable, and put the url to the dashboard in the alert. (Optional, string, no default)

use_kibana4_dashboard¶

use_kibana4_dashboard: A link to a Kibana 4 dashboard. For example, “https://kibana.example.com/#/dashboard/My-Dashboard”. This will set the time setting on the dashboard from the match time minus the timeframe, to 10 minutes after the match time. Note that this does not support filtering by query_key like Kibana 3. This value can use $VAR and ${VAR} references to expand environment variables.

kibana4_start_timedelta¶

kibana4_start_timedelta: Defaults to 10 minutes. This option allows you to specify the start time for the generated kibana4 dashboard. This value is added in front of the event. For example,

kibana4_start_timedelta: minutes: 2

kibana4_end_timedelta¶

kibana4_end_timedelta: Defaults to 10 minutes. This option allows you to specify the end time for the generated kibana4 dashboard. This value is added in back of the event. For example,

kibana4_end_timedelta: minutes: 2

use_local_time¶

use_local_time: Whether to convert timestamps to the local time zone in alerts. If false, timestamps will be converted to UTC, which is what ElastAlert uses internally. (Optional, boolean, default true)

match_enhancements¶

match_enhancements: A list of enhancement modules to use with this rule. An enhancement module is a subclass of enhancements.BaseEnhancement that will be given the match dictionary and can modify it before it is passed to the alerter. The enhancements will be run after silence and realert is calculated and in the case of aggregated alerts, right before the alert is sent. This can be changed by setting run_enhancements_first. The enhancements should be specified as module.file.EnhancementName. See Enhancements for more information. (Optional, list of strings, no default)

run_enhancements_first¶

run_enhancements_first: If set to true, enhancements will be run as soon as a match is found. This means that they can be changed or dropped before affecting realert or being added to an aggregation. Silence stashes will still be created before the enhancement runs, meaning even if a DropMatchException is raised, the rule will still be silenced. (Optional, boolean, default false)

query_key¶

query_key: Having a query key means that realert time will be counted separately for each unique value of query_key. For rule types which count documents, such as spike, frequency and flatline, it also means that these counts will be independent for each unique value of query_key. For example, if query_key is set to username and realert is set, and an alert triggers on a document with {'username': 'bob'}, additional alerts for {'username': 'bob'} will be ignored while other usernames will trigger alerts. Documents which are missing the query_key will be grouped together. A list of fields may also be used, which will create a compound query key. This compound key is treated as if it were a single field whose value is the component values, or “None”, joined by commas. A new field with the key “field1,field2,etc” will be created in each document and may conflict with existing fields of the same name.

aggregation_key¶

aggregation_key: Having an aggregation key in conjunction with an aggregation will make it so that each new value encountered for the aggregation_key field will result in a new, separate aggregation window.

summary_table_fields¶

summary_table_fields: Specifying the summmary_table_fields in conjunction with an aggregation will make it so that each aggregated alert will contain a table summarizing the values for the specified fields in all the matches that were aggregated together.

timestamp_type¶

timestamp_type: One of iso, unix, unix_ms, custom. This option will set the type of @timestamp (or timestamp_field) used to query Elasticsearch. iso will use ISO8601 timestamps, which will work with most Elasticsearch date type field. unix will query using an integer unix (seconds since 1/1/1970) timestamp. unix_ms will use milliseconds unix timestamp. custom allows you to define your own timestamp_format. The default is iso. (Optional, string enum, default iso).

timestamp_format¶

timestamp_format: In case Elasticsearch used custom date format for date type field, this option provides a way to define custom timestamp format to match the type used for Elastisearch date type field. This option is only valid if timestamp_type set to custom. (Optional, string, default ‘%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ’).

timestamp_format_expr¶

timestamp_format_expr: In case Elasticsearch used custom date format for date type field, this option provides a way to adapt the value obtained converting a datetime through timestamp_format, when the format cannot match perfectly what defined in Elastisearch. When set, this option is evaluated as a Python expression along with a globals dictionary containing the original datetime instance named dt and the timestamp to be refined, named ts. The returned value becomes the timestamp obtained from the datetime. For example, when the date type field in Elasticsearch uses milliseconds (yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z') and timestamp_format option is '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ', Elasticsearch would fail to parse query terms as they contain microsecond values - that is it gets 6 digits instead of 3 - since the %f placeholder stands for microseconds for Python strftime method calls. Setting timestamp_format_expr: 'ts[:23] + ts[26:]' will truncate the value to milliseconds granting Elasticsearch compatibility. This option is only valid if timestamp_type set to custom. (Optional, string, no default).

_source_enabled¶

_source_enabled: If true, ElastAlert will use _source to retrieve fields from documents in Elasticsearch. If false, ElastAlert will use fields to retrieve stored fields. Both of these are represented internally as if they came from _source. See https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/mapping-fields.html for more details. The fields used come from include, see above for more details. (Optional, boolean, default True)

scan_entire_timeframe¶

scan_entire_timeframe: If true, when ElastAlert starts, it will always start querying at the current time minus the timeframe. timeframe must exist in the rule. This may be useful, for example, if you are using a flatline rule type with a large timeframe, and you want to be sure that if ElastAlert restarts, you can still get alerts. This may cause duplicate alerts for some rule types, for example, Frequency can alert multiple times in a single timeframe, and if ElastAlert were to restart with this setting, it may scan the same range again, triggering duplicate alerts.

Some rules and alerts require additional options, which also go in the top level of the rule configuration file.

Testing Your Rule¶

Once you’ve written a rule configuration, you will want to validate it. To do so, you can either run ElastAlert in debug mode, or use elastalert-test-rule, which is a script that makes various aspects of testing easier.

It can:

Check that the configuration file loaded successfully.
Check that the Elasticsearch filter parses.
Run against the last X day(s) and the show the number of hits that match your filter.
Show the available terms in one of the results.
Save documents returned to a JSON file.
Run ElastAlert using either a JSON file or actual results from Elasticsearch.
Print out debug alerts or trigger real alerts.
Check that, if they exist, the primary_key, compare_key and include terms are in the results.
Show what metadata documents would be written to elastalert_status.

Without any optional arguments, it will run ElastAlert over the last 24 hours and print out any alerts that would have occurred. Here is an example test run which triggered an alert:

$ elastalert-test-rule my_rules/rule1.yaml
Successfully Loaded Example rule1

Got 105 hits from the last 1 day

Available terms in first hit:
    @timestamp
    field1
    field2
    ...
Included term this_field_doesnt_exist may be missing or null

INFO:root:Queried rule Example rule1 from 6-16 15:21 PDT to 6-17 15:21 PDT: 105 hits
INFO:root:Alert for Example rule1 at 2015-06-16T23:53:12Z:
INFO:root:Example rule1

At least 50 events occurred between 6-16 18:30 PDT and 6-16 20:30 PDT

field1:
value1: 25
value2: 25

@timestamp: 2015-06-16T20:30:04-07:00
field1: value1
field2: something


Would have written the following documents to elastalert_status:

silence - {'rule_name': 'Example rule1', '@timestamp': datetime.datetime( ... ), 'exponent': 0, 'until':
datetime.datetime( ... )}

elastalert_status - {'hits': 105, 'matches': 1, '@timestamp': datetime.datetime( ... ), 'rule_name': 'Example rule1',
'starttime': datetime.datetime( ... ), 'endtime': datetime.datetime( ... ), 'time_taken': 3.1415926}

Note that everything between “Alert for Example rule1 at …” and “Would have written the following …” is the exact text body that an alert would have. See the section below on alert content for more details. Also note that datetime objects are converted to ISO8601 timestamps when uploaded to Elasticsearch. See the section on metadata for more details.

Other options include:

--schema-only: Only perform schema validation on the file. It will not load modules or query Elasticsearch. This may catch invalid YAML and missing or misconfigured fields.

--count-only: Only find the number of matching documents and list available fields. ElastAlert will not be run and documents will not be downloaded.

--days N: Instead of the default 1 day, query N days. For selecting more specific time ranges, you must run ElastAlert itself and use --start and --end.

--save-json FILE: Save all documents downloaded to a file as JSON. This is useful if you wish to modify data while testing or do offline testing in conjunction with --data FILE. A maximum of 10,000 documents will be downloaded.

--data FILE: Use a JSON file as a data source instead of Elasticsearch. The file should be a single list containing objects, rather than objects on separate lines. Note than this uses mock functions which mimic some Elasticsearch query methods and is not guaranteed to have the exact same results as with Elasticsearch. For example, analyzed string fields may behave differently.

--alert: Trigger real alerts instead of the debug (logging text) alert.

--formatted-output: Output results in formatted JSON.

Note

Results from running this script may not always be the same as if an actual ElastAlert instance was running. Some rule types, such as spike and flatline require a minimum elapsed time before they begin alerting, based on their timeframe. In addition, use_count_query and use_terms_query rely on run_every to determine their resolution. This script uses a fixed 5 minute window, which is the same as the default.

Rule Types¶

The various RuleType classes, defined in elastalert/ruletypes.py, form the main logic behind ElastAlert. An instance is held in memory for each rule, passed all of the data returned by querying Elasticsearch with a given filter, and generates matches based on that data.

To select a rule type, set the type option to the name of the rule type in the rule configuration file:

type: <rule type>

Any¶

any: The any rule will match everything. Every hit that the query returns will generate an alert.

Blacklist¶

blacklist: The blacklist rule will check a certain field against a blacklist, and match if it is in the blacklist.

This rule requires two additional options:

compare_key: The name of the field to use to compare to the blacklist. If the field is null, those events will be ignored.

blacklist: A list of blacklisted values, and/or a list of paths to flat files which contain the blacklisted values using - "!file /path/to/file"; for example:

blacklist:
    - value1
    - value2
    - "!file /tmp/blacklist1.txt"
    - "!file /tmp/blacklist2.txt"

It is possible to mix between blacklist value definitions, or use either one. The compare_key term must be equal to one of these values for it to match.

Whitelist¶

whitelist: Similar to blacklist, this rule will compare a certain field to a whitelist, and match if the list does not contain the term.

This rule requires three additional options:

compare_key: The name of the field to use to compare to the whitelist.

ignore_null: If true, events without a compare_key field will not match.

whitelist: A list of whitelisted values, and/or a list of paths to flat files which contain the whitelisted values using - "!file /path/to/file"; for example:

whitelist:
    - value1
    - value2
    - "!file /tmp/whitelist1.txt"
    - "!file /tmp/whitelist2.txt"

It is possible to mix between whitelisted value definitions, or use either one. The compare_key term must be in this list or else it will match.

Change¶

For an example configuration file using this rule type, look at example_rules/example_change.yaml.

change: This rule will monitor a certain field and match if that field changes. The field must change with respect to the last event with the same query_key.

This rule requires three additional options:

compare_key: The names of the field to monitor for changes. Since this is a list of strings, we can have multiple keys. An alert will trigger if any of the fields change.

ignore_null: If true, events without a compare_key field will not count as changed. Currently this checks for all the fields in compare_key

query_key: This rule is applied on a per-query_key basis. This field must be present in all of the events that are checked.

There is also an optional field:

timeframe: The maximum time between changes. After this time period, ElastAlert will forget the old value of the compare_key field.

Frequency¶

For an example configuration file using this rule type, look at example_rules/example_frequency.yaml.

frequency: This rule matches when there are at least a certain number of events in a given time frame. This may be counted on a per-query_key basis.

This rule requires two additional options:

num_events: The number of events which will trigger an alert, inclusive.

timeframe: The time that num_events must occur within.

Optional:

use_count_query: If true, ElastAlert will poll Elasticsearch using the count api, and not download all of the matching documents. This is useful is you care only about numbers and not the actual data. It should also be used if you expect a large number of query hits, in the order of tens of thousands or more. doc_type must be set to use this.

doc_type: Specify the _type of document to search for. This must be present if use_count_query or use_terms_query is set.

use_terms_query: If true, ElastAlert will make an aggregation query against Elasticsearch to get counts of documents matching each unique value of query_key. This must be used with query_key and doc_type. This will only return a maximum of terms_size, default 50, unique terms.

terms_size: When used with use_terms_query, this is the maximum number of terms returned per query. Default is 50.

query_key: Counts of documents will be stored independently for each value of query_key. Only num_events documents, all with the same value of query_key, will trigger an alert.

attach_related: Will attach all the related events to the event that triggered the frequency alert. For example in an alert triggered with num_events: 3, the 3rd event will trigger the alert on itself and add the other 2 events in a key named related_events that can be accessed in the alerter.

Spike¶

spike: This rule matches when the volume of events during a given time period is spike_height times larger or smaller than during the previous time period. It uses two sliding windows to compare the current and reference frequency of events. We will call this two windows “reference” and “current”.

This rule requires three additional options:

spike_height: The ratio of number of events in the last timeframe to the previous timeframe that when hit will trigger an alert.

spike_type: Either ‘up’, ‘down’ or ‘both’. ‘Up’ meaning the rule will only match when the number of events is spike_height times higher. ‘Down’ meaning the reference number is spike_height higher than the current number. ‘Both’ will match either.

timeframe: The rule will average out the rate of events over this time period. For example, hours: 1 means that the ‘current’ window will span from present to one hour ago, and the ‘reference’ window will span from one hour ago to two hours ago. The rule will not be active until the time elapsed from the first event is at least two timeframes. This is to prevent an alert being triggered before a baseline rate has been established. This can be overridden using alert_on_new_data.

Optional:

field_value: When set, uses the value of the field in the document and not the number of matching documents. This is useful to monitor for example a temperature sensor and raise an alarm if the temperature grows too fast. Note that the means of the field on the reference and current windows are used to determine if the spike_height value is reached. Note also that the threshold parameters are ignored in this smode.

threshold_ref: The minimum number of events that must exist in the reference window for an alert to trigger. For example, if spike_height: 3 and threshold_ref: 10, then the ‘reference’ window must contain at least 10 events and the ‘current’ window at least three times that for an alert to be triggered.

threshold_cur: The minimum number of events that must exist in the current window for an alert to trigger. For example, if spike_height: 3 and threshold_cur: 60, then an alert will occur if the current window has more than 60 events and the reference window has less than a third as many.

To illustrate the use of threshold_ref, threshold_cur, alert_on_new_data, timeframe and spike_height together, consider the following examples:

" Alert if at least 15 events occur within two hours and less than a quarter of that number occurred within the previous two hours. "
timeframe: hours: 2
spike_height: 4
spike_type: up
threshold_cur: 15

hour1: 5 events (ref: 0, cur: 5) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour2: 5 events (ref: 0, cur: 10) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour3: 10 events (ref: 5, cur: 15) - No alert because (a) spike_height not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour4: 35 events (ref: 10, cur: 45) - Alert because (a) spike_height met, (b) threshold_cur met, (c) ref window filled

hour1: 20 events (ref: 0, cur: 20) - No alert because ref window not filled
hour2: 21 events (ref: 0, cur: 41) - No alert because ref window not filled
hour3: 19 events (ref: 20, cur: 40) - No alert because (a) spike_height not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour4: 23 events (ref: 41, cur: 42) - No alert because spike_height not met

hour1: 10 events (ref: 0, cur: 10) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour2: 0 events (ref: 0, cur: 10) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour3: 0 events (ref: 10, cur: 0) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled, (c) spike_height not met
hour4: 30 events (ref: 10, cur: 30) - No alert because spike_height not met
hour5: 5 events (ref: 0, cur: 35) - Alert because (a) spike_height met, (b) threshold_cur met, (c) ref window filled

" Alert if at least 5 events occur within two hours, and twice as many events occur within the next two hours. "
timeframe: hours: 2
spike_height: 2
spike_type: up
threshold_ref: 5

hour1: 20 events (ref: 0, cur: 20) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour2: 100 events (ref: 0, cur: 120) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour3: 100 events (ref: 20, cur: 200) - No alert because ref window not filled
hour4: 100 events (ref: 120, cur: 200) - No alert because spike_height not met

hour1: 0 events (ref: 0, cur: 0) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour2: 20 events (ref: 0, cur: 20) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour3: 100 events (ref: 0, cur: 120) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour4: 100 events (ref: 20, cur: 200) - Alert because (a) spike_height met, (b) threshold_ref met, (c) ref window filled

hour1: 1 events (ref: 0, cur: 1) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour2: 2 events (ref: 0, cur: 3) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour3: 2 events (ref: 1, cur: 4) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour4: 1000 events (ref: 3, cur: 1002) - No alert because threshold_ref not met
hour5: 2 events (ref: 4, cur: 1002) - No alert because threshold_ref not met
hour6: 4 events: (ref: 1002, cur: 6) - No alert because spike_height not met

hour1: 1000 events (ref: 0, cur: 1000) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour2: 0 events (ref: 0, cur: 1000) - No alert because (a) threshold_ref not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour3: 0 events (ref: 1000, cur: 0) - No alert because (a) spike_height not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour4: 0 events (ref: 1000, cur: 0) - No alert because spike_height not met
hour5: 1000 events (ref: 0, cur: 1000) - No alert because threshold_ref not met
hour6: 1050 events (ref: 0, cur: 2050)- No alert because threshold_ref not met
hour7: 1075 events (ref: 1000, cur: 2125) Alert because (a) spike_height met, (b) threshold_ref met, (c) ref window filled

" Alert if at least 100 events occur within two hours and less than a fifth of that number occurred in the previous two hours. "
timeframe: hours: 2
spike_height: 5
spike_type: up
threshold_cur: 100

hour1: 1000 events (ref: 0, cur: 1000) - No alert because ref window not filled

hour1: 2 events (ref: 0, cur: 2) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour2: 1 events (ref: 0, cur: 3) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour3: 20 events (ref: 2, cur: 21) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour4: 81 events (ref: 3, cur: 101) - Alert because (a) spike_height met, (b) threshold_cur met, (c) ref window filled

hour1: 10 events (ref: 0, cur: 10) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour2: 20 events (ref: 0, cur: 30) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour3: 40 events (ref: 10, cur: 60) - No alert because (a) threshold_cur not met, (b) ref window not filled
hour4: 80 events (ref: 30, cur: 120) - No alert because spike_height not met
hour5: 200 events (ref: 60, cur: 280) - No alert because spike_height not met

alert_on_new_data: This option is only used if query_key is set. When this is set to true, any new query_key encountered may trigger an immediate alert. When set to false, baseline must be established for each new query_key value, and then subsequent spikes may cause alerts. Baseline is established after timeframe has elapsed twice since first occurrence.

use_count_query: If true, ElastAlert will poll Elasticsearch using the count api, and not download all of the matching documents. This is useful is you care only about numbers and not the actual data. It should also be used if you expect a large number of query hits, in the order of tens of thousands or more. doc_type must be set to use this.

doc_type: Specify the _type of document to search for. This must be present if use_count_query or use_terms_query is set.

use_terms_query: If true, ElastAlert will make an aggregation query against Elasticsearch to get counts of documents matching each unique value of query_key. This must be used with query_key and doc_type. This will only return a maximum of terms_size, default 50, unique terms.

terms_size: When used with use_terms_query, this is the maximum number of terms returned per query. Default is 50.

query_key: Counts of documents will be stored independently for each value of query_key.

Flatline¶

flatline: This rule matches when the total number of events is under a given threshold for a time period.

This rule requires two additional options:

threshold: The minimum number of events for an alert not to be triggered.

timeframe: The time period that must contain less than threshold events.

Optional:

use_count_query: If true, ElastAlert will poll Elasticsearch using the count api, and not download all of the matching documents. This is useful is you care only about numbers and not the actual data. It should also be used if you expect a large number of query hits, in the order of tens of thousands or more. doc_type must be set to use this.

doc_type: Specify the _type of document to search for. This must be present if use_count_query or use_terms_query is set.

use_terms_query: If true, ElastAlert will make an aggregation query against Elasticsearch to get counts of documents matching each unique value of query_key. This must be used with query_key and doc_type. This will only return a maximum of terms_size, default 50, unique terms.

terms_size: When used with use_terms_query, this is the maximum number of terms returned per query. Default is 50.

query_key: With flatline rule, query_key means that an alert will be triggered if any value of query_key has been seen at least once and then falls below the threshold.

forget_keys: Only valid when used with query_key. If this is set to true, ElastAlert will “forget” about the query_key value that triggers an alert, therefore preventing any more alerts for it until it’s seen again.

New Term¶

new_term: This rule matches when a new value appears in a field that has never been seen before. When ElastAlert starts, it will use an aggregation query to gather all known terms for a list of fields.

This rule requires one additional option:

fields: A list of fields to monitor for new terms. query_key will be used if fields is not set. Each entry in the list of fields can itself be a list. If a field entry is provided as a list, it will be interpreted as a set of fields that compose a composite key used for the ElasticSearch query.

Note

The composite fields may only refer to primitive types, otherwise the initial ElasticSearch query will not properly return the aggregation results, thus causing alerts to fire every time the ElastAlert service initially launches with the rule. A warning will be logged to the console if this scenario is encountered. However, future alerts will actually work as expected after the initial flurry.

Optional:

terms_window_size: The amount of time used for the initial query to find existing terms. No term that has occurred within this time frame will trigger an alert. The default is 30 days.

window_step_size: When querying for existing terms, split up the time range into steps of this size. For example, using the default 30 day window size, and the default 1 day step size, 30 invidivdual queries will be made. This helps to avoid timeouts for very expensive aggregation queries. The default is 1 day.

alert_on_missing_field: Whether or not to alert when a field is missing from a document. The default is false.

use_terms_query: If true, ElastAlert will use aggregation queries to get terms instead of regular search queries. This is faster than regular searching if there is a large number of documents. If this is used, you may only specify a single field, and must also set query_key to that field. Also, note that terms_size (the number of buckets returned per query) defaults to 50. This means that if a new term appears but there are at least 50 terms which appear more frequently, it will not be found.

Note

When using use_terms_query, make sure that the field you are using is not analyzed. If it is, the results of each terms query may return tokens rather than full values. ElastAlert will by default turn on use_keyword_postfix, which attempts to use the non-analyzed version (.keyword or .raw) to gather initial terms. These will not match the partial values and result in false positives.

use_keyword_postfix: If true, ElastAlert will automatically try to add .keyword (ES5+) or .raw to the fields when making an initial query. These are non-analyzed fields added by Logstash. If the field used is analyzed, the initial query will return only the tokenized values, potentially causing false positives. Defaults to true.

Cardinality¶

cardinality: This rule matches when a the total number of unique values for a certain field within a time frame is higher or lower than a threshold.

This rule requires:

timeframe: The time period in which the number of unique values will be counted.

cardinality_field: Which field to count the cardinality for.

This rule requires one of the two following options:

max_cardinality: If the cardinality of the data is greater than this number, an alert will be triggered. Each new event that raises the cardinality will trigger an alert.

min_cardinality: If the cardinality of the data is lower than this number, an alert will be triggered. The timeframe must have elapsed since the first event before any alerts will be sent. When a match occurs, the timeframe will be reset and must elapse again before additional alerts.

Optional:

query_key: Group cardinality counts by this field. For each unique value of the query_key field, cardinality will be counted separately.

Metric Aggregation¶

metric_aggregation: This rule matches when the value of a metric within the calculation window is higher or lower than a threshold. By default this is buffer_time.

This rule requires:

metric_agg_key: This is the name of the field over which the metric value will be calculated. The underlying type of this field must be supported by the specified aggregation type.

metric_agg_type: The type of metric aggregation to perform on the metric_agg_key field. This must be one of ‘min’, ‘max’, ‘avg’, ‘sum’, ‘cardinality’, ‘value_count’.

doc_type: Specify the _type of document to search for.

This rule also requires at least one of the two following options:

max_threshold: If the calculated metric value is greater than this number, an alert will be triggered. This threshold is exclusive.

min_threshold: If the calculated metric value is less than this number, an alert will be triggered. This threshold is exclusive.

Optional:

query_key: Group metric calculations by this field. For each unique value of the query_key field, the metric will be calculated and evaluated separately against the threshold(s).

min_doc_count: The minimum number of events in the current window needed for an alert to trigger. Used in conjunction with query_key, this will only consider terms which in their last buffer_time had at least min_doc_count records. Default 1.

use_run_every_query_size: By default the metric value is calculated over a buffer_time sized window. If this parameter is true the rule will use run_every as the calculation window.

allow_buffer_time_overlap: This setting will only have an effect if use_run_every_query_size is false and buffer_time is greater than run_every. If true will allow the start of the metric calculation window to overlap the end time of a previous run. By default the start and end times will not overlap, so if the time elapsed since the last run is less than the metric calculation window size, rule execution will be skipped (to avoid calculations on partial data).

bucket_interval: If present this will divide the metric calculation window into bucket_interval sized segments. The metric value will be calculated and evaluated against the threshold(s) for each segment. If bucket_interval is specified then buffer_time must be a multiple of bucket_interval. (Or run_every if use_run_every_query_size is true).

sync_bucket_interval: This only has an effect if bucket_interval is present. If true it will sync the start and end times of the metric calculation window to the keys (timestamps) of the underlying date_histogram buckets. Because of the way elasticsearch calculates date_histogram bucket keys these usually round evenly to nearest minute, hour, day etc (depending on the bucket size). By default the bucket keys are offset to allign with the time elastalert runs, (This both avoid calculations on partial data, and ensures the very latest documents are included). See: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-aggregations-bucket-datehistogram-aggregation.html#_offset for a more comprehensive explaination.

Spike Aggregation¶

spike_aggregation: This rule matches when the value of a metric within the calculation window is spike_height times larger or smaller than during the previous time period. It uses two sliding windows to compare the current and reference metric values. We will call these two windows “reference” and “current”.

This rule requires:

metric_agg_key: This is the name of the field over which the metric value will be calculated. The underlying type of this field must be supported by the specified aggregation type. If using a scripted field via metric_agg_script, this is the name for your scripted field

metric_agg_type: The type of metric aggregation to perform on the metric_agg_key field. This must be one of ‘min’, ‘max’, ‘avg’, ‘sum’, ‘cardinality’, ‘value_count’.

spike_height: The ratio of the metric value in the last timeframe to the previous timeframe that when hit will trigger an alert.

spike_type: Either ‘up’, ‘down’ or ‘both’. ‘Up’ meaning the rule will only match when the metric value is spike_height times higher. ‘Down’ meaning the reference metric value is spike_height higher than the current metric value. ‘Both’ will match either.

buffer_time: The rule will average out the rate of events over this time period. For example, hours: 1 means that the ‘current’ window will span from present to one hour ago, and the ‘reference’ window will span from one hour ago to two hours ago. The rule will not be active until the time elapsed from the first event is at least two timeframes. This is to prevent an alert being triggered before a baseline rate has been established. This can be overridden using alert_on_new_data.

Optional:

query_key: Group metric calculations by this field. For each unique value of the query_key field, the metric will be calculated and evaluated separately against the ‘reference’/’current’ metric value and spike height.

metric_agg_script: A Painless formatted script describing how to calculate your metric on-the-fly:

metric_agg_key: myScriptedMetric
metric_agg_script:
    script: doc['field1'].value * doc['field2'].value

threshold_ref: The minimum value of the metric in the reference window for an alert to trigger. For example, if spike_height: 3 and threshold_ref: 10, then the ‘reference’ window must have a metric value of 10 and the ‘current’ window at least three times that for an alert to be triggered.

threshold_cur: The minimum value of the metric in the current window for an alert to trigger. For example, if spike_height: 3 and threshold_cur: 60, then an alert will occur if the current window has a metric value greater than 60 and the reference window is less than a third of that value.

min_doc_count: The minimum number of events in the current window needed for an alert to trigger. Used in conjunction with query_key, this will only consider terms which in their last buffer_time had at least min_doc_count records. Default 1.

Percentage Match¶

percentage_match: This rule matches when the percentage of document in the match bucket within a calculation window is higher or lower than a threshold. By default the calculation window is buffer_time.

This rule requires:

match_bucket_filter: ES filter DSL. This defines a filter for the match bucket, which should match a subset of the documents returned by the main query filter.

doc_type: Specify the _type of document to search for.

This rule also requires at least one of the two following options:

min_percentage: If the percentage of matching documents is less than this number, an alert will be triggered.

max_percentage: If the percentage of matching documents is greater than this number, an alert will be triggered.

Optional:

query_key: Group percentage by this field. For each unique value of the query_key field, the percentage will be calculated and evaluated separately against the threshold(s).

use_run_every_query_size: See use_run_every_query_size in Metric Aggregation rule

allow_buffer_time_overlap: See allow_buffer_time_overlap in Metric Aggregation rule

bucket_interval: See bucket_interval in Metric Aggregation rule

sync_bucket_interval: See sync_bucket_interval in Metric Aggregation rule

percentage_format_string: An optional format string to apply to the percentage value in the alert match text. Must be a valid python format string. For example, “%.2f” will round it to 2 decimal places. See: https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/string.html#format-specification-mini-language

min_denominator: Minimum number of documents on which percentage calculation will apply. Default is 0.

Alerts¶

Each rule may have any number of alerts attached to it. Alerts are subclasses of Alerter and are passed a dictionary, or list of dictionaries, from ElastAlert which contain relevant information. They are configured in the rule configuration file similarly to rule types.

To set the alerts for a rule, set the alert option to the name of the alert, or a list of the names of alerts:

alert: email

or

alert:
- email
- jira

Options for each alerter can either defined at the top level of the YAML file, or nested within the alert name, allowing for different settings for multiple of the same alerter. For example, consider sending multiple emails, but with different ‘To’ and ‘From’ fields:

alert:
 - email
from_addr: "no-reply@example.com"
email: "customer@example.com"

versus

alert:
 - email:
     from_addr: "no-reply@example.com"
     email: "customer@example.com"
 - email:
     from_addr: "elastalert@example.com""
     email: "devs@example.com"

If multiple of the same alerter type are used, top level settings will be used as the default and inline settings will override those for each alerter.

Alert Subject¶

E-mail subjects, JIRA issue summaries, PagerDuty alerts, or any alerter that has a “subject” can be customized by adding an alert_subject that contains a custom summary. It can be further formatted using standard Python formatting syntax:

alert_subject: "Issue {0} occurred at {1}"

The arguments for the formatter will be fed from the matched objects related to the alert. The field names whose values will be used as the arguments can be passed with alert_subject_args:

alert_subject_args:
- issue.name
- "@timestamp"

It is mandatory to enclose the @timestamp field in quotes since in YAML format a token cannot begin with the @ character. Not using the quotation marks will trigger a YAML parse error.

In case the rule matches multiple objects in the index, only the first match is used to populate the arguments for the formatter.

If the field(s) mentioned in the arguments list are missing, the email alert will have the text alert_missing_value in place of its expected value. This will also occur if use_count_query is set to true.

Alert Content¶

There are several ways to format the body text of the various types of events. In EBNF:

rule_name           = name
alert_text          = alert_text
ruletype_text       = Depends on type
top_counts_header   = top_count_key, ":"
top_counts_value    = Value, ": ", Count
top_counts          = top_counts_header, LF, top_counts_value
field_values        = Field, ": ", Value

Similarly to alert_subject, alert_text can be further formatted using standard Python formatting syntax. The field names whose values will be used as the arguments can be passed with alert_text_args or alert_text_kw. You may also refer to any top-level rule property in the alert_subject_args, alert_text_args, alert_missing_value, and alert_text_kw fields. However, if the matched document has a key with the same name, that will take preference over the rule property.

By default:

body                = rule_name

                      [alert_text]

                      ruletype_text

                      {top_counts}

                      {field_values}

With alert_text_type: alert_text_only:

body                = rule_name

                      alert_text

With alert_text_type: exclude_fields:

body                = rule_name

                      [alert_text]

                      ruletype_text

                      {top_counts}

With alert_text_type: aggregation_summary_only:

body                = rule_name

                      aggregation_summary

ruletype_text is the string returned by RuleType.get_match_str.

field_values will contain every key value pair included in the results from Elasticsearch. These fields include “@timestamp” (or the value of timestamp_field), every key in include, every key in top_count_keys, query_key, and compare_key. If the alert spans multiple events, these values may come from an individual event, usually the one which triggers the alert.

When using alert_text_args, you can access nested fields and index into arrays. For example, if your match was {"data": {"ips": ["127.0.0.1", "12.34.56.78"]}}, then by using "data.ips[1]" in alert_text_args, it would replace value with "12.34.56.78". This can go arbitrarily deep into fields and will still work on keys that contain dots themselves.

Command¶

The command alert allows you to execute an arbitrary command and pass arguments or stdin from the match. Arguments to the command can use Python format string syntax to access parts of the match. The alerter will open a subprocess and optionally pass the match, or matches in the case of an aggregated alert, as a JSON array, to the stdin of the process.

This alert requires one option:

command: A list of arguments to execute or a string to execute. If in list format, the first argument is the name of the program to execute. If passed a string, the command is executed through the shell.

Strings can be formatted using the old-style format (%) or the new-style format (.format()). When the old-style format is used, fields are accessed using %(field_name)s, or %(field.subfield)s. When the new-style format is used, fields are accessed using {field_name}. New-style formatting allows accessing nested fields (e.g., {field_1[subfield]}).

In an aggregated alert, these fields come from the first match.

Optional:

pipe_match_json: If true, the match will be converted to JSON and passed to stdin of the command. Note that this will cause ElastAlert to block until the command exits or sends an EOF to stdout.

pipe_alert_text: If true, the standard alert body text will be passed to stdin of the command. Note that this will cause ElastAlert to block until the command exits or sends an EOF to stdout. It cannot be used at the same time as pipe_match_json.

Example usage using old-style format:

alert:
  - command
command: ["/bin/send_alert", "--username", "%(username)s"]

Warning

Executing commmands with untrusted data can make it vulnerable to shell injection! If you use formatted data in your command, it is highly recommended that you use a args list format instead of a shell string.

Example usage using new-style format:

alert:
  - command
command: ["/bin/send_alert", "--username", "{match[username]}"]

Email¶

This alert will send an email. It connects to an smtp server located at smtp_host, or localhost by default. If available, it will use STARTTLS.

This alert requires one additional option:

email: An address or list of addresses to sent the alert to.

Optional:

email_from_field: Use a field from the document that triggered the alert as the recipient. If the field cannot be found, the email value will be used as a default. Note that this field will not be available in every rule type, for example, if you have use_count_query or if it’s type: flatline. You can optionally add a domain suffix to the field to generate the address using email_add_domain. It can be a single recipient or list of recipients. For example, with the following settings:

email_from_field: "data.user"
email_add_domain: "@example.com"

and a match {"@timestamp": "2017", "data": {"foo": "bar", "user": "qlo"}}

an email would be sent to qlo@example.com

smtp_host: The SMTP host to use, defaults to localhost.

smtp_port: The port to use. Default is 25.

smtp_ssl: Connect the SMTP host using TLS, defaults to false. If smtp_ssl is not used, ElastAlert will still attempt STARTTLS.

smtp_auth_file: The path to a file which contains SMTP authentication credentials. The path can be either absolute or relative to the given rule. It should be YAML formatted and contain two fields, user and password. If this is not present, no authentication will be attempted.

smtp_cert_file: Connect the SMTP host using the given path to a TLS certificate file, default to None.

smtp_key_file: Connect the SMTP host using the given path to a TLS key file, default to None.

email_reply_to: This sets the Reply-To header in the email. By default, the from address is ElastAlert@ and the domain will be set by the smtp server.

from_addr: This sets the From header in the email. By default, the from address is ElastAlert@ and the domain will be set by the smtp server.

cc: This adds the CC emails to the list of recipients. By default, this is left empty.

bcc: This adds the BCC emails to the list of recipients but does not show up in the email message. By default, this is left empty.

email_format: If set to html, the email’s MIME type will be set to HTML, and HTML content should correctly render. If you use this, you need to put your own HTML into alert_text and use alert_text_type: alert_text_only.

Jira¶

The JIRA alerter will open a ticket on jira whenever an alert is triggered. You must have a service account for ElastAlert to connect with. The credentials of the service account are loaded from a separate file. The ticket number will be written to the alert pipeline, and if it is followed by an email alerter, a link will be included in the email.

This alert requires four additional options:

jira_server: The hostname of the JIRA server.

jira_project: The project to open the ticket under.

jira_issuetype: The type of issue that the ticket will be filed as. Note that this is case sensitive.

jira_account_file: The path to the file which contains JIRA account credentials.

For an example JIRA account file, see example_rules/jira_acct.yaml. The account file is also yaml formatted and must contain two fields:

user: The username.

password: The password.

Optional:

jira_component: The name of the component or components to set the ticket to. This can be a single string or a list of strings. This is provided for backwards compatibility and will eventually be deprecated. It is preferable to use the plural jira_components instead.

jira_components: The name of the component or components to set the ticket to. This can be a single string or a list of strings.

jira_description: Similar to alert_text, this text is prepended to the JIRA description.

jira_label: The label or labels to add to the JIRA ticket. This can be a single string or a list of strings. This is provided for backwards compatibility and will eventually be deprecated. It is preferable to use the plural jira_labels instead.

jira_labels: The label or labels to add to the JIRA ticket. This can be a single string or a list of strings.

jira_priority: The index of the priority to set the issue to. In the JIRA dropdown for priorities, 0 would represent the first priority, 1 the 2nd, etc.

jira_watchers: A list of user names to add as watchers on a JIRA ticket. This can be a single string or a list of strings.

jira_bump_tickets: If true, ElastAlert search for existing tickets newer than jira_max_age and comment on the ticket with information about the alert instead of opening another ticket. ElastAlert finds the existing ticket by searching by summary. If the summary has changed or contains special characters, it may fail to find the ticket. If you are using a custom alert_subject, the two summaries must be exact matches, except by setting jira_ignore_in_title, you can ignore the value of a field when searching. For example, if the custom subject is “foo occured at bar”, and “foo” is the value field X in the match, you can set jira_ignore_in_title to “X” and it will only bump tickets with “bar” in the subject. Defaults to false.

jira_ignore_in_title: ElastAlert will attempt to remove the value for this field from the JIRA subject when searching for tickets to bump. See jira_bump_tickets description above for an example.

jira_max_age: If jira_bump_tickets is true, the maximum age of a ticket, in days, such that ElastAlert will comment on the ticket instead of opening a new one. Default is 30 days.

jira_bump_not_in_statuses: If jira_bump_tickets is true, a list of statuses the ticket must not be in for ElastAlert to comment on the ticket instead of opening a new one. For example, to prevent comments being added to resolved or closed tickets, set this to ‘Resolved’ and ‘Closed’. This option should not be set if the jira_bump_in_statuses option is set.

Example usage:

jira_bump_not_in_statuses:
  - Resolved
  - Closed

jira_bump_in_statuses: If jira_bump_tickets is true, a list of statuses the ticket must be in for ElastAlert to comment on the ticket instead of opening a new one. For example, to only comment on ‘Open’ tickets – and thus not ‘In Progress’, ‘Analyzing’, ‘Resolved’, etc. tickets – set this to ‘Open’. This option should not be set if the jira_bump_not_in_statuses option is set.

Example usage:

jira_bump_in_statuses:
  - Open

jira_bump_only: Only update if a ticket is found to bump. This skips ticket creation for rules where you only want to affect existing tickets.

Example usage:

jira_bump_only: true

jira_transition_to: If jira_bump_tickets is true, Transition this ticket to the given Status when bumping. Must match the text of your JIRA implementation’s Status field.

Example usage:

jira_transition_to: 'Fixed'

jira_bump_after_inactivity: If this is set, ElastAlert will only comment on tickets that have been inactive for at least this many days. It only applies if jira_bump_tickets is true. Default is 0 days.

Arbitrary Jira fields:

ElastAlert supports setting any arbitrary JIRA field that your jira issue supports. For example, if you had a custom field, called “Affected User”, you can set it by providing that field name in snake_case prefixed with jira_. These fields can contain primitive strings or arrays of strings. Note that when you create a custom field in your JIRA server, internally, the field is represented as customfield_1111. In elastalert, you may refer to either the public facing name OR the internal representation.

In addition, if you would like to use a field in the alert as the value for a custom JIRA field, use the field name plus a # symbol in front. For example, if you wanted to set a custom JIRA field called “user” to the value of the field “username” from the match, you would use the following.

Example:

jira_user: "#username"

Example usage:

jira_arbitrary_singular_field: My Name
jira_arbitrary_multivalue_field:
  - Name 1
  - Name 2
jira_customfield_12345: My Custom Value
jira_customfield_9999:
  - My Custom Value 1
  - My Custom Value 2

OpsGenie¶

OpsGenie alerter will create an alert which can be used to notify Operations people of issues or log information. An OpsGenie API integration must be created in order to acquire the necessary opsgenie_key rule variable. Currently the OpsGenieAlerter only creates an alert, however it could be extended to update or close existing alerts.

It is necessary for the user to create an OpsGenie Rest HTTPS API integration page in order to create alerts.

The OpsGenie alert requires one option:

opsgenie_key: The randomly generated API Integration key created by OpsGenie.

Optional:

opsgenie_account: The OpsGenie account to integrate with.

opsgenie_recipients: A list OpsGenie recipients who will be notified by the alert. opsgenie_recipients_args: Map of arguments used to format opsgenie_recipients. opsgenie_default_recipients: List of default recipients to notify when the formatting of opsgenie_recipients is unsuccesful. opsgenie_teams: A list of OpsGenie teams to notify (useful for schedules with escalation). opsgenie_teams_args: Map of arguments used to format opsgenie_teams (useful for assigning the alerts to teams based on some data) opsgenie_default_teams: List of default teams to notify when the formatting of opsgenie_teams is unsuccesful. opsgenie_tags: A list of tags for this alert.

opsgenie_message: Set the OpsGenie message to something other than the rule name. The message can be formatted with fields from the first match e.g. “Error occurred for {app_name} at {timestamp}.”.

opsgenie_alias: Set the OpsGenie alias. The alias can be formatted with fields from the first match e.g “{app_name} error”.

opsgenie_subject: A string used to create the title of the OpsGenie alert. Can use Python string formatting.

opsgenie_subject_args: A list of fields to use to format opsgenie_subject if it contains formaters.

opsgenie_priority: Set the OpsGenie priority level. Possible values are P1, P2, P3, P4, P5.

SNS¶

The SNS alerter will send an SNS notification. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters. The SNS alerter uses boto3 and can use credentials in the rule yaml, in a standard AWS credential and config files, or via environment variables. See http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-getting-started.html for details.

SNS requires one option:

sns_topic_arn: The SNS topic’s ARN. For example, arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789:somesnstopic

Optional:

aws_access_key: An access key to connect to SNS with.

aws_secret_key: The secret key associated with the access key.

aws_region: The AWS region in which the SNS resource is located. Default is us-east-1

profile: The AWS profile to use. If none specified, the default will be used.

HipChat¶

HipChat alerter will send a notification to a predefined HipChat room. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following two options:

hipchat_auth_token: The randomly generated notification token created by HipChat. Go to https://XXXXX.hipchat.com/account/api and use ‘Create new token’ section, choosing ‘Send notification’ in Scopes list.

hipchat_room_id: The id associated with the HipChat room you want to send the alert to. Go to https://XXXXX.hipchat.com/rooms and choose the room you want to post to. The room ID will be the numeric part of the URL.

hipchat_msg_color: The color of the message background that is sent to HipChat. May be set to green, yellow or red. Default is red.

hipchat_domain: The custom domain in case you have HipChat own server deployment. Default is api.hipchat.com.

hipchat_ignore_ssl_errors: Ignore TLS errors (self-signed certificates, etc.). Default is false.

hipchat_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to HipChat. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

hipchat_notify: When set to true, triggers a hipchat bell as if it were a user. Default is true.

hipchat_from: When humans report to hipchat, a timestamp appears next to their name. For bots, the name is the name of the token. The from, instead of a timestamp, defaults to empty unless set, which you can do here. This is optional.

hipchat_message_format: Determines how the message is treated by HipChat and rendered inside HipChat applications html - Message is rendered as HTML and receives no special treatment. Must be valid HTML and entities must be escaped (e.g.: ‘&’ instead of ‘&’). May contain basic tags: a, b, i, strong, em, br, img, pre, code, lists, tables. text - Message is treated just like a message sent by a user. Can include @mentions, emoticons, pastes, and auto-detected URLs (Twitter, YouTube, images, etc). Valid values: html, text. Defaults to ‘html’.

hipchat_mentions: When using a html message format, it’s not possible to mentions specific users using the @user syntax. In that case, you can set hipchat_mentions to a list of users which will be first mentioned using a single text message, then the normal ElastAlert message will be sent to Hipchat. If set, it will mention the users, no matter if the original message format is set to HTML or text. Valid values: list of strings. Defaults to [].

Stride¶

Stride alerter will send a notification to a predefined Stride room. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters. Simple HTML such as <a> and <b> tags will be parsed into a format that Stride can consume.

The alerter requires the following two options:

stride_access_token: The randomly generated notification token created by Stride.

stride_cloud_id: The site_id associated with the Stride site you want to send the alert to.

stride_conversation_id: The conversation_id associated with the Stride conversation you want to send the alert to.

stride_ignore_ssl_errors: Ignore TLS errors (self-signed certificates, etc.). Default is false.

stride_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to Stride. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

MS Teams¶

MS Teams alerter will send a notification to a predefined Microsoft Teams channel.

The alerter requires the following options:

ms_teams_webhook_url: The webhook URL that includes your auth data and the ID of the channel you want to post to. Go to the Connectors menu in your channel and configure an Incoming Webhook, then copy the resulting URL. You can use a list of URLs to send to multiple channels.

ms_teams_alert_summary: Summary should be configured according to MS documentation, although it seems not displayed by Teams currently.

Optional:

ms_teams_theme_color: By default the alert will be posted without any color line. To add color, set this attribute to a HTML color value e.g. #ff0000 for red.

ms_teams_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to MS Teams. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

ms_teams_alert_fixed_width: By default this is False and the notification will be sent to MS Teams as-is. Teams supports a partial Markdown implementation, which means asterisk, underscore and other characters may be interpreted as Markdown. Currenlty, Teams does not fully implement code blocks. Setting this attribute to True will enable line by line code blocks. It is recommended to enable this to get clearer notifications in Teams.

Slack¶

Slack alerter will send a notification to a predefined Slack channel. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following option:

slack_webhook_url: The webhook URL that includes your auth data and the ID of the channel (room) you want to post to. Go to the Incoming Webhooks section in your Slack account https://XXXXX.slack.com/services/new/incoming-webhook , choose the channel, click ‘Add Incoming Webhooks Integration’ and copy the resulting URL. You can use a list of URLs to send to multiple channels.

Optional:

slack_username_override: By default Slack will use your username when posting to the channel. Use this option to change it (free text).

slack_channel_override: Incoming webhooks have a default channel, but it can be overridden. A public channel can be specified “#other-channel”, and a Direct Message with “@username”.

slack_emoji_override: By default ElastAlert will use the :ghost: emoji when posting to the channel. You can use a different emoji per ElastAlert rule. Any Apple emoji can be used, see http://emojipedia.org/apple/ . If slack_icon_url_override parameter is provided, emoji is ignored.

slack_icon_url_override: By default ElastAlert will use the :ghost: emoji when posting to the channel. You can provide icon_url to use custom image. Provide absolute address of the pciture, for example: http://some.address.com/image.jpg .

slack_msg_color: By default the alert will be posted with the ‘danger’ color. You can also use ‘good’ or ‘warning’ colors.

slack_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to Slack. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

slack_alert_fields: You can add additional fields to your slack alerts using this field. Specify the title using title and a value for the field using value. Additionally you can specify whether or not this field should be a short field using short: true.

slack_title: Sets a title for the message, this shows up as a blue text at the start of the message

slack_title_link: You can add a link in your Slack notification by setting this to a valid URL. Requires slack_title to be set.

slack_timeout: You can specify a timeout value, in seconds, for making communicating with Slac. The default is 10. If a timeout occurs, the alert will be retried next time elastalert cycles.

Mattermost¶

Mattermost alerter will send a notification to a predefined Mattermost channel. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following option:

mattermost_webhook_url: The webhook URL. Follow the instructions on https://docs.mattermost.com/developer/webhooks-incoming.html to create an incoming webhook on your Mattermost installation.

Optional:

mattermost_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to Mattermost. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

mattermost_ignore_ssl_errors: By default ElastAlert will verify SSL certificate. Set this option to False if you want to ignore SSL errors.

mattermost_username_override: By default Mattermost will use your username when posting to the channel. Use this option to change it (free text).

mattermost_channel_override: Incoming webhooks have a default channel, but it can be overridden. A public channel can be specified “#other-channel”, and a Direct Message with “@username”.

mattermost_icon_url_override: By default ElastAlert will use the default webhook icon when posting to the channel. You can provide icon_url to use custom image. Provide absolute address of the picture (for example: http://some.address.com/image.jpg) or Base64 data url.

mattermost_msg_pretext: You can set the message attachment pretext using this option.

mattermost_msg_color: By default the alert will be posted with the ‘danger’ color. You can also use ‘good’, ‘warning’, or hex color code.

mattermost_msg_fields: You can add fields to your Mattermost alerts using this option. You can specify the title using title and the text value using value. Additionally you can specify whether this field should be a short field using short: true. If you set args and value is a formattable string, ElastAlert will format the incident key based on the provided array of fields from the rule or match. See https://docs.mattermost.com/developer/message-attachments.html#fields for more information.

Telegram¶

Telegram alerter will send a notification to a predefined Telegram username or channel. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following two options:

telegram_bot_token: The token is a string along the lines of 110201543:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw that will be required to authorize the bot and send requests to the Bot API. You can learn about obtaining tokens and generating new ones in this document https://core.telegram.org/bots#botfather

telegram_room_id: Unique identifier for the target chat or username of the target channel using telegram chat_id (in the format “-xxxxxxxx”)

Optional:

telegram_api_url: Custom domain to call Telegram Bot API. Default to api.telegram.org

telegram_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to Telegram. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

GoogleChat¶

GoogleChat alerter will send a notification to a predefined GoogleChat channel. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following options:

googlechat_webhook_url: The webhook URL that includes the channel (room) you want to post to. Go to the Google Chat website https://chat.google.com and choose the channel in which you wish to receive the notifications. Select ‘Configure Webhooks’ to create a new webhook or to copy the URL from an existing one. You can use a list of URLs to send to multiple channels.

Optional:

googlechat_format: Formatting for the notification. Can be either ‘card’ or ‘basic’ (default).

googlechat_header_title: Sets the text for the card header title. (Only used if format=card)

googlechat_header_subtitle: Sets the text for the card header subtitle. (Only used if format=card)

googlechat_header_image: URL for the card header icon. (Only used if format=card)

googlechat_footer_kibanalink: URL to Kibana to include in the card footer. (Only used if format=card)

PagerDuty¶

PagerDuty alerter will trigger an incident to a predefined PagerDuty service. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following option:

pagerduty_service_key: Integration Key generated after creating a service with the ‘Use our API directly’ option at Integration Settings

pagerduty_client_name: The name of the monitoring client that is triggering this event.

pagerduty_event_type: Any of the following: trigger, resolve, or acknowledge. (Optional, defaults to trigger)

Optional:

alert_subject: If set, this will be used as the Incident description within PagerDuty. If not set, ElastAlert will default to using the rule name of the alert for the incident.

alert_subject_args: If set, and alert_subject is a formattable string, ElastAlert will format the incident key based on the provided array of fields from the rule or match.

pagerduty_incident_key: If not set PagerDuty will trigger a new incident for each alert sent. If set to a unique string per rule PagerDuty will identify the incident that this event should be applied. If there’s no open (i.e. unresolved) incident with this key, a new one will be created. If there’s already an open incident with a matching key, this event will be appended to that incident’s log.

pagerduty_incident_key_args: If set, and pagerduty_incident_key is a formattable string, Elastalert will format the incident key based on the provided array of fields from the rule or match.

pagerduty_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to PagerDuty. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

V2 API Options (Optional):

These options are specific to the PagerDuty V2 API

See https://v2.developer.pagerduty.com/docs/send-an-event-events-api-v2

pagerduty_api_version: Defaults to v1. Set to v2 to enable the PagerDuty V2 Event API.

pagerduty_v2_payload_class: Sets the class of the payload. (the event type in PagerDuty)

pagerduty_v2_payload_class_args: If set, and pagerduty_v2_payload_class is a formattable string, Elastalert will format the class based on the provided array of fields from the rule or match.

pagerduty_v2_payload_component: Sets the component of the payload. (what program/interface/etc the event came from)

pagerduty_v2_payload_component_args: If set, and pagerduty_v2_payload_component is a formattable string, Elastalert will format the component based on the provided array of fields from the rule or match.

pagerduty_v2_payload_group: Sets the logical grouping (e.g. app-stack)

pagerduty_v2_payload_group_args: If set, and pagerduty_v2_payload_group is a formattable string, Elastalert will format the group based on the provided array of fields from the rule or match.

pagerduty_v2_payload_severity: Sets the severity of the page. (defaults to critical, valid options: critical, error, warning, info)

pagerduty_v2_payload_source: Sets the source of the event, preferably the hostname or fqdn.

pagerduty_v2_payload_source_args: If set, and pagerduty_v2_payload_source is a formattable string, Elastalert will format the source based on the provided array of fields from the rule or match.

PagerTree¶

PagerTree alerter will trigger an incident to a predefined PagerTree integration url.

The alerter requires the following options:

pagertree_integration_url: URL generated by PagerTree for the integration.

Exotel¶

Developers in India can use Exotel alerter, it will trigger an incident to a mobile phone as sms from your exophone. Alert name along with the message body will be sent as an sms.

The alerter requires the following option:

exotel_accout_sid: This is sid of your Exotel account.

exotel_auth_token: Auth token assosiated with your Exotel account.

If you don’t know how to find your accound sid and auth token, refer - http://support.exotel.in/support/solutions/articles/3000023019-how-to-find-my-exotel-token-and-exotel-sid-

exotel_to_number: The phone number where you would like send the notification.

exotel_from_number: Your exophone number from which message will be sent.

The alerter has one optional argument:

exotel_message_body: Message you want to send in the sms, is you don’t specify this argument only the rule name is sent

Twilio¶

Twilio alerter will trigger an incident to a mobile phone as sms from your twilio phone number. Alert name will arrive as sms once this option is chosen.

The alerter requires the following option:

twilio_account_sid: This is sid of your twilio account.

twilio_auth_token: Auth token assosiated with your twilio account.

twilio_to_number: The phone number where you would like send the notification.

twilio_from_number: Your twilio phone number from which message will be sent.

VictorOps¶

VictorOps alerter will trigger an incident to a predefined VictorOps routing key. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following options:

victorops_api_key: API key generated under the ‘REST Endpoint’ in the Integrations settings.

victorops_routing_key: VictorOps routing key to route the alert to.

victorops_message_type: VictorOps field to specify severity level. Must be one of the following: INFO, WARNING, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, CRITICAL, RECOVERY

Optional:

victorops_entity_id: The identity of the incident used by VictorOps to correlate incidents throughout the alert lifecycle. If not defined, VictorOps will assign a random string to each alert.

victorops_entity_display_name: Human-readable name of alerting entity to summarize incidents without affecting the life-cycle workflow.

victorops_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to VictorOps. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

Gitter¶

Gitter alerter will send a notification to a predefined Gitter channel. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following option:

gitter_webhook_url: The webhook URL that includes your auth data and the ID of the channel (room) you want to post to. Go to the Integration Settings of the channel https://gitter.im/ORGA/CHANNEL#integrations , click ‘CUSTOM’ and copy the resulting URL.

Optional:

gitter_msg_level: By default the alert will be posted with the ‘error’ level. You can use ‘info’ if you want the messages to be black instead of red.

gitter_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to Gitter. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

ServiceNow¶

The ServiceNow alerter will create a ne Incident in ServiceNow. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

The alerter requires the following options:

servicenow_rest_url: The ServiceNow RestApi url, this will look like https://instancename.service-now.com/api/now/v1/table/incident

username: The ServiceNow Username to access the api.

password: The ServiceNow password to access the api.

short_description: The ServiceNow password to access the api.

comments: Comments to be attached to the incident, this is the equivilant of work notes.

assignment_group: The group to assign the incident to.

category: The category to attach the incident to, use an existing category.

subcategory: The subcategory to attach the incident to, use an existing subcategory.

cmdb_ci: The configuration item to attach the incident to.

caller_id: The caller id (email address) of the user that created the incident (elastalert@somewhere.com).

Optional:

servicenow_proxy: By default ElastAlert will not use a network proxy to send notifications to ServiceNow. Set this option using hostname:port if you need to use a proxy.

Debug¶

The debug alerter will log the alert information using the Python logger at the info level. It is logged into a Python Logger object with the name elastalert that can be easily accessed using the getLogger command.

Stomp¶

This alert type will use the STOMP protocol in order to push a message to a broker like ActiveMQ or RabbitMQ. The message body is a JSON string containing the alert details. The default values will work with a pristine ActiveMQ installation.

Optional:

stomp_hostname: The STOMP host to use, defaults to localhost. stomp_hostport: The STOMP port to use, defaults to 61613. stomp_login: The STOMP login to use, defaults to admin. stomp_password: The STOMP password to use, defaults to admin. stomp_destination: The STOMP destination to use, defaults to /queue/ALERT

The stomp_destination field depends on the broker, the /queue/ALERT example is the nomenclature used by ActiveMQ. Each broker has its own logic.

Alerta¶

Alerta alerter will post an alert in the Alerta server instance through the alert API endpoint. See http://alerta.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api/alert.html for more details on the Alerta JSON format.

For Alerta 5.0

Required:

alerta_api_url: API server URL.

Optional:

alerta_api_key: This is the api key for alerta server, sent in an Authorization HTTP header. If not defined, no Authorization header is sent.

alerta_use_qk_as_resource: If true and query_key is present, this will override alerta_resource field with the query_key value (Can be useful if query_key is a hostname).

alerta_use_match_timestamp: If true, it will use the timestamp of the first match as the createTime of the alert. otherwise, the current server time is used.

alert_missing_value: Text to replace any match field not found when formating strings. Defaults to <MISSING_TEXT>.

The following options dictate the values of the API JSON payload:

alerta_severity: Defaults to “warning”.

alerta_timeout: Defaults 84600 (1 Day).

alerta_type: Defaults to “elastalert”.

The following options use Python-like string syntax {<field>} or %(<field>)s to access parts of the match, similar to the CommandAlerter. Ie: “Alert for {clientip}”. If the referenced key is not found in the match, it is replaced by the text indicated by the option alert_missing_value.

alerta_resource: Defaults to “elastalert”.

alerta_service: Defaults to “elastalert”.

alerta_origin: Defaults to “elastalert”.

alerta_environment: Defaults to “Production”.

alerta_group: Defaults to “”.

alerta_correlate: Defaults to an empty list.

alerta_tags: Defaults to an empty list.

alerta_event: Defaults to the rule’s name.

alerta_text: Defaults to the rule’s text according to its type.

alerta_value: Defaults to “”.

The attributes dictionary is built by joining the lists from alerta_attributes_keys and alerta_attributes_values, considered in order.

Example usage using old-style format:

alert:
  - alerta
alerta_api_url: "http://youralertahost/api/alert"
alerta_attributes_keys:   ["hostname",   "TimestampEvent",  "senderIP" ]
alerta_attributes_values: ["%(key)s",    "%(logdate)s",     "%(sender_ip)s"  ]
alerta_correlate: ["ProbeUP","ProbeDOWN"]
alerta_event: "ProbeUP"
alerta_text:  "Probe %(hostname)s is UP at %(logdate)s GMT"
alerta_value: "UP"

Example usage using new-style format:

alert:
  - alerta
alerta_attributes_values: ["{key}",    "{logdate}",     "{sender_ip}"  ]
alerta_text:  "Probe {hostname} is UP at {logdate} GMT"

HTTP POST¶

This alert type will send results to a JSON endpoint using HTTP POST. The key names are configurable so this is compatible with almost any endpoint. By default, the JSON will contain all the items from the match, unless you specify http_post_payload, in which case it will only contain those items.

Required:

http_post_url: The URL to POST.

Optional:

http_post_payload: List of keys:values to use as the content of the POST. Example - ip:clientip will map the value from the clientip index of Elasticsearch to JSON key named ip. If not defined, all the Elasticsearch keys will be sent.

http_post_static_payload: Key:value pairs of static parameters to be sent, along with the Elasticsearch results. Put your authentication or other information here.

http_post_headers: Key:value pairs of headers to be sent as part of the request.

http_post_proxy: URL of proxy, if required.

http_post_all_values: Boolean of whether or not to include every key value pair from the match in addition to those in http_post_payload and http_post_static_payload. Defaults to True if http_post_payload is not specified, otherwise False.

http_post_timeout: The timeout value, in seconds, for making the post. The default is 10. If a timeout occurs, the alert will be retried next time elastalert cycles.

Example usage:

alert: post
http_post_url: "http://example.com/api"
http_post_payload:
  ip: clientip
http_post_static_payload:
  apikey: abc123
http_post_headers:
  authorization: Basic 123dr3234

Alerter¶

For all Alerter subclasses, you may reference values from a top-level rule property in your Alerter fields by referring to the property name surrounded by dollar signs. This can be useful when you have rule-level properties that you would like to reference many times in your alert. For example:

Example usage:

jira_priority: $priority$
jira_alert_owner: $owner$

Line Notify¶

Line Notify will send notification to a Line application. The body of the notification is formatted the same as with other alerters.

Required:

linenotify_access_token: The access token that you got from https://notify-bot.line.me/my/

theHive¶

theHive alert type will send JSON request to theHive (Security Incident Response Platform) with TheHive4py API. Sent request will be stored like Hive Alert with description and observables.

Required:

hive_connection: The connection details as key:values. Required keys are hive_host, hive_port and hive_apikey.

hive_alert_config: Configuration options for the alert.

Optional:

hive_proxies: Proxy configuration.

hive_observable_data_mapping: If needed, matched data fields can be mapped to TheHive observable types using python string formatting.

Example usage:

    alert: hivealerter

 hive_connection:
   hive_host: http://localhost
   hive_port: <hive_port>
   hive_apikey: <hive_apikey>
   hive_proxies:
     http: ''
     https: ''

  hive_alert_config:
    title: 'Title'  ## This will default to {rule[index]_rule[name]} if not provided
    type: 'external'
    source: 'elastalert'
    description: '{match[field1]} {rule[name]} Sample description'
    severity: 2
    tags: ['tag1', 'tag2 {rule[name]}']
    tlp: 3
    status: 'New'
    follow: True

hive_observable_data_mapping:
    - domain: "{match[field1]}_{rule[name]}"
    - domain: "{match[field]}"
    - ip: "{match[ip_field]}"

Zabbix¶

Zabbix will send notification to a Zabbix server. The item in the host specified receive a 1 value for each hit. For example, if the elastic query produce 3 hits in the last execution of elastalert, three ‘1’ (integer) values will be send from elastalert to Zabbix Server. If the query have 0 hits, any value will be sent.

Required:

zbx_sender_host: The address where zabbix server is running. zbx_sender_port: The port where zabbix server is listenning. zbx_host: This field setup the host in zabbix that receives the value sent by Elastalert. zbx_item: This field setup the item in the host that receives the value sent by Elastalert.