CVE-2026-72636

Uncontrolled Recursion in Elasticsearch Wildcard Matching Leading to Denial of Service

Published Aug 13, 2026 CVSS 3.1 · 6.5 Medium EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
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.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

No advisories available
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:elastic:elasticsearch:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Elastic
Elastic elasticsearch
Vendors & Products Elastic
Elastic elasticsearch
Type Values Removed Values Added
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.
Title Uncontrolled Recursion in Elasticsearch Wildcard Matching Leading to Denial of Service
Weaknesses CWE-674
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 6.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
elastic
Published
Updated
Aug 13, 2026, 8:26 PM
Reserved
Aug 10, 2026, 11:17 AM
Status
Analyzed
Published
Aug 13, 2026, 8:17 PM
Modified
Sep 1, 2026, 2:28 PM