Resource exhaustion in Elastic Elasticsearch

CVE-2026-72684

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.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.004 (33.8th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 34th percentile — 33.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-72684: held from 0.003 to 0.004.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.003 · newest: 0.004 · change: +0.001

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-72684?
CVE-2026-72684 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Elastic Elasticsearch, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2026-08-13.
How severe is CVE-2026-72684?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.