CVE-2026-72645 Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value in Elasticsearch Leading to Denial of Service
An authenticated user with read access can cause a denial of service by triggering excessive memory allocation via a crafted search request.
- 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-2026-72645?
CVE-2026-72645 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Elastic Elasticsearch, published on 13 Aug 2026. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value (CWE-789) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via Excessive Allocation (CAPEC-130). An authenticated user holding only read privileges on a single index can submit one small, specially crafted search request that causes an excessively large memory allocation, exhausting the JVM heap and terminating the affected node.
Weakness: CWE-789
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72645?
1 open source package ship an affected version, including elasticsearch. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
elasticsearch Bitnami | From 8.0.0 | 8.19.20, 9.4.5, 9.5.1 |
Products include Elastic Elasticsearch.
How do I fix CVE-2026-72645?
Upgrade elasticsearch to a fixed version for your release line: 8.19.20, 9.4.5 or 9.5.1.
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-2026-72645 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72645 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-2026-72645, CLEANSTART-2026-FS56758, CLEANSTART-2026-GV25885, GHSA-vgfg-5pqm-8394, MINI-2839-2x22-m375, MINI-3r7r-2cr3-jhg3 and 19 more.