CVE-2026-72636: Elastic Elasticsearch · Uncontrolled Recursion
Affects Elastic ElasticsearchSource CVE Database V5
Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium.
Data as of 12 Nov 2026, 23:24 UTC
- EPSS
- 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 36% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HExploitation evidence
Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 13 Aug 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors
A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 13 Nov 2026.
What to do
Affected software
| Product | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| ElasticElasticsearch | Affected
| Fixed in– |
Mavenorg.elasticsearch/elasticsearchpkg:maven/org.elasticsearch/elasticsearchOther threats | Affected
| Fixed in– |
Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.
AI-suggested
Until an official fix is available, users should consider limiting or filtering wildcard search patterns that could trigger excessive recursion or stack exhaustion. Monitor vendor channels for updates.
Description
Uncontrolled Recursion (CWE-674) in the Elasticsearch wildcard matching helper can lead to a denial of service via Excessive Allocation (CAPEC-130). The matcher used to resolve wildcard patterns against names is implemented recursively and had no bound on recursion depth or on the total number of match operations performed. A search request containing a wildcard pattern with a large number of wildcard groups, evaluated against a sufficiently long name, exhausts the thread stack. Elasticsearch treats a stack overflow as an unrecoverable condition and shuts the node down, so the request terminates the affected node rather than failing gracefully.