CVE-2026-63144 Uncontrolled Recursion in Elasticsearch Leading to Denial of Service
A low-privileged user can cause a denial of service in Elasticsearch by submitting a crafted search request that triggers uncontrolled recursion.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-63144?
CVE-2026-63144 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Elastic Elasticsearch, published on 21 Jul 2026. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Uncontrolled Recursion (CWE-674) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via a specially crafted search request submitted by a low-privileged authenticated user. A user with read-level index access can submit a request that triggers unbounded recursive processing within the Elasticsearch query evaluation component, causing a fatal error that terminates the affected node. In single-node deployments, this results in complete service outage; in multi-node clusters, it causes repeated node restarts and sustained availability degradation.
Weakness: CWE-674
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-63144?
1 open source package ship an affected version, including elasticsearch. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
elasticsearch Bitnami | From 8.0.0 | 8.19.19, 9.3.8, 9.4.4 |
Products include Elastic Elasticsearch.
How do I fix CVE-2026-63144?
Upgrade elasticsearch to a fixed version for your release line: 8.19.19, 9.3.8 or 9.4.4.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-63144 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-63144 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Elastic Elasticsearch
- CVE-2015-1427 Elasticsearch Groovy Scripting Engine Remote Code Execution
- CVE-2014-3120 Elasticsearch Remote Code Execution
- CVE-2015-5377 Code injection in n/a
- CVE-2026-72649 Deserialization of Untrusted Data in Elasticsearch Leading to Remote Code Execution
- CVE-2026-72642 Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset in the Elasticsearch Machine Learning Native Inference Process
Sources
Also known as BIT-elasticsearch-2026-63144, CLEANSTART-2026-GG06012, CLEANSTART-2026-NZ15191, GHSA-5v5g-hvw6-x2x7, MINI-2rmw-mj6p-r56x, MINI-2xrv-mx26-8rpg and 20 more.