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VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-72678: Elastic Elasticsearch · Excessive Memory Allocation

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 41% 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
  • >=8.19.0 <=8.19.19
  • >=9.4.0 <=9.4.4
  • =9.5.0
Fixed in–
Mavenorg.elasticsearch/elasticsearchpkg:maven/org.elasticsearch/elasticsearchOther threatsAffected
  • =8.19.0
  • =9.4.0
  • =9.5.0
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 a fix is available, restrict access to authenticated users and monitor for unusual node crashes.

Description

Elasticsearch does not validate a size value taken from a user-supplied input before that value is used to reserve memory for an internal data structure. An authenticated user holding only read privileges can submit a single small crafted request to a product API endpoint that causes the node to attempt an excessively large allocation. The resulting memory exhaustion raises a fatal error that terminates the Elasticsearch node process, causing a denial of service for the affected node and degrading cluster health. The defect is not volumetric, so a single request is sufficient regardless of the heap size configured on the target node.

References

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