CVE-2026-72678

medium

Assigned by CNA: elastic

Published 2026-08-13 · Modified 2026-08-13

Discuss on Community Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

6.5

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

6.5

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.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

75%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

Propose a mitigation on Community Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

References

https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-8-19-20-9-4-5-9-5-1-security-update-esa-2026-80/389507

CWEs

CWE-789

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.