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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.5

CVE-2026-72636 json

Uncontrolled Recursion in Elasticsearch Wildcard Matching Leading to Denial of Service

published 2026-08-13 2 mo ago modified 2026-09-08 2 mo ago also BIT-elasticsearch-2026-72636 , EUVD-2026-58222

cvss
6.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 36%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • bitnami elasticsearch 8.19.20, 9.4.5
  • elastic elasticsearch 8.19.20, 9.4.5
  • elasticsearch elasticsearch 8.19.20, 9.4.5
  • org.elasticsearch elasticsearch 8.19.20, 9.4.5

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.42% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 36% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
OSV 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
bitnami elasticsearch
>=8.0.0, <8.19.20
>=9.0.0, <9.4.5
8.19.20
9.4.5

Affected products

  • Elastic Elasticsearch

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.