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VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-72638: Elastic Elasticsearch · Uncontrolled Recursion

Affects Elastic ElasticsearchSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.5 Medium.

Data as of 12 Nov 2026, 23:24 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score
6.5Medium
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.
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:H

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 13 Aug 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq 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

ProductAffectedFixed in
ElasticElasticsearchAffected
  • >=8.0.0 <=8.19.19
  • >=9.0.0 <=9.4.4
Fixed in–
Mavenorg.elasticsearch/elasticsearchpkg:maven/org.elasticsearch/elasticsearchOther threatsAffected
  • =8.0.0
  • =9.0.0
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, restrict index creation permissions to trusted users only and monitor for unusual requests involving custom analysis definitions. No official remediation or temporary fix has been published by Elastic at this time.

Description

Uncontrolled Recursion (CWE-674) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via Input Data Manipulation (CAPEC-153). An authenticated user holding only low-privileged index creation permissions can submit a single request containing a specially crafted, malformed custom analysis definition that is resolved recursively without a cycle or depth check, exhausting the thread stack and terminating the affected node.

References

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