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CVE-2026-72636

Uncontrolled Recursion in Elasticsearch Wildcard Matching Leading to Denial of Service

Published: Aug 13, 2026Updated: Aug 13, 2026 Sources: CVE List NVDCWE-674
6.5MEDIUM
NVD MITRE
EPSS Score
0.3%
Top 78.6%
CISA KEV
Not in KEV
Exploits
No Known Exploits
Remediation
No Fix Available
Self-Check
OpenVAS

Description

Uncontrolled Recursion (CWE-674) in the Elasticsearch wildcard matching helper can lead to a denial of service via Excessive Allocation (CAPEC-130). The matcher used to resolve wildcard patterns against names is implemented recursively and had no bound on recursion depth or on the total number of match operations performed. A search request containing a wildcard pattern with a large number of wildcard groups, evaluated against a sufficiently long name, exhausts the thread stack. Elasticsearch treats a stack overflow as an unrecoverable condition and shuts the node down, so the request terminates the affected node rather than failing gracefully.

No summary for this CVE yet.

CVSS Vector Breakdown

AV:NAC:LPR:LUI:NS:UC:NI:NA:H
Exploitability
AV:NAttack Vector
Network
AC:LAttack Complexity
Low
PR:LPrivileges Required
Low
UI:NUser Interaction
None
Scope
S:UScope
Unchanged
Impact
C:NConfidentiality
None
I:NIntegrity
None
A:HAvailability
High
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Weaknesses

CWE-674

Affected Products

Elastic
commercial·USaka elasticsearch co., elastic.co
ElasticsearchOn-premDatabase
Databases

Exploitability

No known exploits, KEV entries, or remediation guidance available for this vulnerability yet.
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Attack Graph

Products CVE Techniques Tactics

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MITRE ATT&CK

1 technique
Impact
View detailed technique mapping

References

https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-8-19-20-9-4-5-security-update-esa-2026-133/389499
discuss.elastic.co

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