Elasticsearch MCP Server

Enhanced Elasticsearch MCP Server Solution - Security & Threat Analysis Focused

This is a professional security-focused solution maintained by TocharianOU. It enables comprehensive interaction with all Elasticsearch APIs, specifically optimized for security analysis, threat detection, and incident investigation. Features include advanced security monitoring, anomaly detection, threat hunting, root cause analysis, and comprehensive audit capabilities.

Key Security Features:

Real-time threat detection and security monitoring
Advanced machine learning for anomaly detection
Root cause analysis and attack chain tracking
Security incident investigation and forensics
Compliance monitoring and audit reporting

Note: This solution requires a valid Elasticsearch license (trial, platinum, or enterprise) and is designed for security professionals, SOC teams, and threat analysts.

Connect to your Elasticsearch data directly from any MCP Client (such as Claude Desktop) using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Interact with your Elasticsearch security data through natural language queries for advanced threat analysis and incident response.

Prerequisites

An Elasticsearch instance
A valid Elasticsearch license (trial, platinum, enterprise) is required.
Elasticsearch authentication credentials (API key or username/password)
MCP Client (e.g. Claude Desktop) or HTTP client for remote access

⚠️ This project requires your Elasticsearch cluster to have a valid license. If you do not have a license, you can activate a trial license as shown below.

Multi-Version Elasticsearch Support

Automatically supports Elasticsearch 5.x - 9.x with intelligent version detection:

Version	Status	Client	Notes
ES 5.x	✅	5.6.22	EOL - Basic tools only
ES 6.x	✅	6.8.8	EOL - ILM available (6.6+)
ES 7.x	✅	7.17.14	LTS - Full features
ES 8.x	✅	8.19.1	Recommended - Latest features
ES 9.x+	✅	Auto-fallback	Future-ready

Key Features:

🔍 Automatic version detection - No manual configuration needed
🔄 Smart client selection - Loads the right client for your ES version
⚙️ Adaptive features - Disables unsupported tools (e.g., Data Streams on ES < 7.9)
📊 Version-specific optimizations - Handles API differences transparently

What happens:

Connect → Detect ES version → Load matching client → Register compatible tools

SSL/TLS Connection

To connect to Elasticsearch with a self-signed certificate or in a test environment, you can set the following environment variable:

NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0

⚠️ This disables Node.js SSL certificate validation. Use only in development or testing environments. For production, always use a trusted CA certificate.

Installation & Setup

Start a Conversation
- Open a new conversation in your MCP Client
- The MCP server should connect automatically
- You can now ask questions about your Elasticsearch data

Configuration Options

The Elasticsearch MCP Server supports the following configuration options:

Elasticsearch Configuration

Environment Variable	Description	Required
`ES_URL`	Your Elasticsearch instance URL	Yes
`ES_API_KEY`	Elasticsearch API key for authentication	No
`ES_USERNAME`	Elasticsearch username for basic authentication	No
`ES_PASSWORD`	Elasticsearch password for basic authentication	No
`ES_CA_CERT`	Path to custom CA certificate for Elasticsearch SSL/TLS	No
`NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED`	Set to `0` to disable SSL certificate validation	No

Transport Mode Configuration (NEW in v0.3.0)

Environment Variable	Description	Default	Values
`MCP_TRANSPORT`	Transport mode selection	`stdio`	`stdio`, `http`
`MCP_HTTP_PORT`	HTTP server port (when using HTTP transport)	`3000`	1-65535
`MCP_HTTP_HOST`	HTTP server host (when using HTTP transport)	`localhost`	Any valid host

Transport Mode Details:

Stdio mode (default): For Claude Desktop and local MCP clients
HTTP Streamable mode: Runs as a standalone HTTP server for remote access, API integration, and web applications

Quick Start

Option 1: NPM Installation (Recommended)

Install globally via NPM

npm install -g @tocharianou/elasticsearch-mcp

Run directly
```
npx @tocharianou/elasticsearch-mcp
```

Option 2: Source Installation

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/TocharianOU/elasticsearch-mcp.git
cd elasticsearch-mcp

Install Dependencies
```
npm install
```
Build the Project
```
npm run build
```

Configure Claude Desktop App

Open Claude Desktop App
Go to Settings > Developer > MCP Servers
Click Edit Config and add a new MCP Server with the following configuration:

For NPM Installation:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "elasticsearch-mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "@tocharianou/elasticsearch-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ES_URL": "your-elasticsearch-url",
        "ES_USERNAME": "elastic",
        "ES_PASSWORD": "your_pass",
        "NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED": "0"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Source Installation:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "elasticsearch-mcp-server-local": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "/path/to/your/elasticsearch-mcp/dist/index.js"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ES_URL": "your-elasticsearch-url",
        "ES_USERNAME": "elastic",
        "ES_PASSWORD": "your_pass",
        "NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED": "0"
      }
    }
  }
}

Debugging with MCP Inspector

ES_URL=your-elasticsearch-url ES_USERNAME=elastic ES_PASSWORD=your_pass npm run inspector

This will start the MCP Inspector, allowing you to debug and analyze requests. You should see:

Starting MCP inspector...
Proxy server listening on port 3000

🔍 MCP Inspector is up and running at http://localhost:5173 🚀

Method 3: HTTP Streamable Mode (NEW in v0.3.0)

Run the server as a standalone HTTP service for remote access and API integration:

# Start HTTP server (default port 3000)
MCP_TRANSPORT=http \
ES_URL=your-elasticsearch-url \
ES_USERNAME=elastic \
ES_PASSWORD=your_pass \
npx @tocharianou/elasticsearch-mcp

# Or with custom port and host
MCP_TRANSPORT=http \
MCP_HTTP_PORT=9000 \
MCP_HTTP_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
ES_URL=your-elasticsearch-url \
ES_USERNAME=elastic \
ES_PASSWORD=your_pass \
npx @tocharianou/elasticsearch-mcp

HTTP Streamable Mode Features:

Exposes MCP server at http://host:port/mcp endpoint
Health check available at http://host:port/health
Session-based connection management
Supports both POST (JSON-RPC requests) and GET (SSE streams)
Compatible with any HTTP client or MCP SDK

Example HTTP client usage:

// Initialize connection
const response = await fetch('http://localhost:3000/mcp', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    jsonrpc: '2.0',
    method: 'initialize',
    params: {
      protocolVersion: '2024-11-05',
      capabilities: {},
      clientInfo: { name: 'my-client', version: '1.0.0' }
    },
    id: 1
  })
});

const sessionId = response.headers.get('mcp-session-id');

// Subsequent requests include session ID
const toolsResponse = await fetch('http://localhost:3000/mcp', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'mcp-session-id': sessionId
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    jsonrpc: '2.0',
    method: 'tools/list',
    params: {},
    id: 2
  })
});

// Call a tool (e.g., list_indices)
const indicesResponse = await fetch('http://localhost:3000/mcp', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'mcp-session-id': sessionId
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    jsonrpc: '2.0',
    method: 'tools/call',
    params: {
      name: 'list_indices',
      arguments: {}
    },
    id: 3
  })
});

Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community! For details on how to contribute, please see Contributing Guidelines.

How It Works

The MCP Client analyzes your request and determines which Elasticsearch operations are needed.
The MCP server comunicate with ES.
The MCP Client processes the results and presents them in a user-friendly format, including highlights, aggregation summaries, and anomaly insights.

Security Analysis Examples

[!TIP] Here are security-focused queries you can try with your MCP Client.

Threat Detection:

"Analyze brute force attack attempts in the past 24 hours"
"Detect abnormal login behavior and suspicious IP addresses in the system"
"Identify potential SQL injection attack patterns and malicious requests"
"Discover DDoS attack signatures and traffic anomalies in network flows"

Root Cause Analysis:

"Trace the complete attack chain and impact scope for specific security incidents"
"Analyze root causes and propagation paths of system failures"
"Identify data breach sources and involved sensitive information"
"Investigate user privilege abuse incidents with timeline and operation records"

Threat Intelligence:

"Create machine learning models to detect zero-day attacks and unknown threats"
"Establish behavioral baselines and identify activities deviating from normal patterns"
"Analyze threat levels and attack history of malicious domains and IP addresses"
"Detect behavioral characteristics and attack patterns of Advanced Persistent Threats (APT)"

Real-time Monitoring:

"Monitor active threats and ongoing attacks in the current system"
"Detect abnormal data access patterns and privilege escalation behaviors"
"Discover suspicious network communications and data exfiltration activities"
"Identify security causes of abnormal system resource consumption and performance degradation"

Security Best Practices

[!WARNING] Avoid using cluster-admin privileges. Create dedicated API keys with limited scope and apply fine-grained access control at the index level to prevent unauthorized data access.

You can create a dedicated Elasticsearch API key with minimal permissions to control access to your data:

{
  "name": "es-mcp-server-access",
  "role_descriptors": {
    "mcp_server_role": {
      "cluster": [
        "monitor"
      ],
      "indices": [
        {
          "names": [
            "index-1",
            "index-2",
            "index-pattern-*"
          ],
          "privileges": [
            "read",
            "view_index_metadata"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

Troubleshooting

Ensure your MCP configuration is correct.
Verify that your Elasticsearch URL is accessible from your machine.
Check that your authentication credentials (API key or username/password) have the necessary permissions.
If using SSL/TLS with a custom CA, verify that the certificate path is correct and the file is readable.
Look at the terminal output for error messages.

If you encounter issues, feel free to open an issue on the GitHub repository.

Running with a Trial License

If your Elasticsearch cluster does not have a valid license, you can activate a 30-day trial license with the following command:

curl -X POST -u elastic:your_password \
  -k "https://your-es-host:9200/_license/start_trial?acknowledge=true"

Replace your_password and your-es-host with your actual credentials and host.
This will enable all features for 30 days.

Note: This project will not start if your cluster does not have a valid license (trial, platinum, enterprice etc.).