Vulnerability in Elastic Elasticsearch

CVE-2026-72686

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.

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: 0.005 (41.9th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 42nd percentile — 41.9% 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-2026-72686: held from 0.004 to 0.005.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.004 · newest: 0.005 · change: +0.002

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-72686?
CVE-2026-72686 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Elastic Elasticsearch, classified under Uncontrolled Recursion. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2026-08-13.
How severe is CVE-2026-72686?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.