CVE-2026-72684 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in Elasticsearch Leading to Denial of Service
An authenticated user with read privileges can cause a fatal out-of-memory condition in Elasticsearch by submitting a crafted search request, leading to denial of service.
- 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-2026-72684?
CVE-2026-72684 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
A flaw in Elasticsearch allows an authenticated user holding only read privileges to submit a small search request containing a crafted user-supplied input. Processing that input causes a specific internal component to allocate memory without any upper bound, and the allocation occurs outside the scope of the existing memory accounting controls that were intended to constrain it. The resulting out-of-memory condition is fatal and terminates the affected node process, causing a denial of service.
Weakness: CWE-770
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72684?
1 open source package ship an affected version, including elasticsearch. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
elasticsearch Bitnami | From 8.0.0 | 8.19.21, 9.4.6 |
Products include Elastic Elasticsearch.
How do I fix CVE-2026-72684?
Upgrade elasticsearch to a fixed version for your release line: 8.19.21 or 9.4.6.
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-2026-72684 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72684 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-2026-72684, CLEANSTART-2026-DA78586, CLEANSTART-2026-VD99251, GHSA-78xm-g482-ch2r, MINI-25v4-vqxj-9frh, MINI-29xm-xp73-w6p7 and 20 more.