CVE-2026-72639: Elastic Elasticsearch · Excessive Memory Allocation
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 a fix is available, consider restricting access to Elasticsearch nodes to trusted users only and monitor for unusual search highlighting requests. No official remediation or temporary fix has been provided by the vendor at this time.
Description
Elasticsearch does not enforce an upper bound on a user-supplied count accepted by a search highlighting option, and the allocation derived from that count is not accounted against any circuit breaker. An authenticated user holding only read privileges on a single searchable index can submit one small search request that causes the node to reserve an excessively large internal data structure. The allocation occurs before the existing highlighting safety limits are evaluated, so memory exhaustion raises a fatal error that terminates the Elasticsearch node process. This results in a denial of service for the affected node and degrades cluster routing and health. The defect is not volumetric and does not depend on the size of the indexed data, so a single request is sufficient.