CVE-2026-63263
MediumCVSS 6.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk15th percentile - higher than 15% of all known CVEs
Summary
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via Exponential Data Expansion (CAPEC-197). An authenticated user may submit a specially crafted query to the ES|QL engine that causes exponential CPU consumption during query evaluation. Resource exhaustion persists beyond query completion, and repeated requests can fully exhaust available query worker resources, rendering ES|QL queries unavailable until the node is restarted.
Risk Assessment
An attacker can cause unavailability of the ES|QL feature in Elasticsearch, impacting data analysis capabilities. In extreme cases, complete service unavailability may occur.
Recommendation
Update Elasticsearch to a patched version. Monitor CPU usage and restrict access to the ES|QL engine for untrusted users.
Other vulnerabilities in Elasticsearch
See all- CVE-2015-4165High
The snapshot API in Elasticsearch before version 1.6.0 is vulnerable when another application exists on the system that can read Lucene files and execute code from them. This allows remote authenticated users to write to and create arbitrary snapshot metadata files, potentially executing arbitrary code.
- CVE-2026-72687Medium
A flaw in Elasticsearch allows a low-privileged authenticated user to submit a single small request containing a forged opaque identifier. Elasticsearch decodes and deserializes the identifier before confirming that it was legitimately issued by the cluster, and a size value carried inside the identifier drives an allocation that is neither capped nor accounted for by the available memory-usage controls. The resulting out-of-memory condition is fatal and terminates the affected node process, resulting in a denial of service.
- CVE-2026-72686Medium
A flaw in Elasticsearch allows a low-privileged authenticated user to submit a single request containing a crafted user-supplied input. A specific internal component validates the input using a recursive routine and applies no bound to the length of the value being validated, so the validation causes the thread to exhaust its stack. The resulting fatal error is not handled by the surrounding execution paths and terminates the affected node process, producing a denial of service.
- CVE-2026-72685Medium
A flaw in Elasticsearch allows a low-privileged authenticated user who can index documents to submit a single small document containing a crafted user-supplied input. Processing one such document occupies a worker thread from a bounded pool for a disproportionate amount of time, degrading the availability of indexing operations on the affected node.
- CVE-2026-72684Medium
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.
- CVE-2026-72683Medium
A flaw in Elasticsearch allows an authenticated user with the privileges required to invoke the simulate pipeline API endpoint to submit a request that causes a self-referential data structure to be created. When a specific internal component later processes that structure, the operation recurses without bound and raises a fatal error that is not handled by the surrounding execution path, terminating the affected node process and resulting in a denial of service.
- CVE-2026-72679Medium
Elasticsearch does not apply its configurable input length restriction to a user-supplied pattern accepted by an intervals query. Compiling a deeply nested pattern drives unbounded recursion that exhausts the thread stack and raises a fatal error, terminating the Elasticsearch node process and causing a denial of service for that node. An authenticated user holding only read-only privileges on a single searchable index can trigger the condition with one small search request.
- CVE-2026-72678Medium
Elasticsearch does not validate a size value from user input before using it to reserve memory for an internal data structure. An authenticated user with read-only privileges can send a single crafted request causing an excessively large allocation. Memory exhaustion raises a fatal error that terminates the node process, causing denial of service and degrading cluster health.
- CVE-2026-72656Medium
Memory allocation with excessive size in ES|QL query processing of Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service. An authenticated user can submit a specially crafted query whose evaluation allocates unbounded heap memory, exhausting available heap on the receiving node and causing the node to become unavailable.
- CVE-2026-72647Medium
Uncontrolled recursion in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service. An authenticated user with read-only privileges on a single index can submit one specially crafted search request whose deeply nested structure is processed without a depth limit, exhausting the thread stack and terminating the affected node.
Original NVD description (English source)
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via Exponential Data Expansion (CAPEC-197). An authenticated user may submit a specially crafted query to the ES|QL engine that causes exponential CPU consumption during query evaluation. Because the resource exhaustion persists beyond query completion, repeated requests can fully exhaust the available query worker resources, rendering ES|QL queries unavailable until the node is restarted.

