Medium severity · published Aug 13, 2026
CVE-2026-72687
Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value in Elasticsearch Leading to Denial of Service
6.5
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 36% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
EL
Elasticsearch · Elastic
8.0.0 through 8.19.19; 9.0.0 through 9.4.4; 9.5.0 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-72687
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-72687
Vendor Advisory
https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-8-19-20-9-4-5-9-5-1-security-update-esa-2026-79/389506
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