CVE-2026-78588 in Filebeat
Summary
by MITRE • 09/02/2026
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) in Filebeat can lead to a denial of service via Excessive Allocation (CAPEC-130). An attacker able to reach the Filebeat HTTP ingestion endpoint could send specially crafted compressed requests that exhaust the memory resources of the Filebeat process.
Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/02/2026
The vulnerability identified as CWE-770 represents a critical failure in resource management within the Filebeat application, specifically concerning its handling of incoming data streams through the HTTP ingestion endpoint. This flaw allows for an allocation of system resources without appropriate limits or throttling mechanisms to control consumption rates. In practical terms, this architectural oversight means that the software does not enforce strict boundaries on the amount of memory it is willing to allocate during the processing of input payloads. When combined with specific attack vectors such as CAPEC-130, which involves excessive allocation techniques, this weakness becomes a potent tool for malicious actors seeking to disrupt service availability. The core technical issue lies in how Filebeat processes compressed data packets; rather than validating or limiting the decompressed size before full memory commitment, the application proceeds with unbounded expansion of these resources based on incoming requests.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability directly facilitates a denial of service attack by enabling resource exhaustion through excessive allocation. An attacker who has network access to the Filebeat HTTP ingestion endpoint can construct and transmit specially crafted compressed requests designed to trigger maximum memory consumption upon decompression or processing. Because there are no effective throttling controls in place to limit the rate or volume of data processed per connection, a single malicious request or a series of rapid requests from multiple sources can rapidly deplete the available RAM on the host system. This leads to the Filebeat process becoming unresponsive as it attempts to manage insufficient memory resources, potentially causing the entire application to crash or forcing the operating system to terminate the process via out-of-memory kill signals. The impact extends beyond just the loss of log collection capabilities; in shared hosting environments or containerized deployments, this resource starvation can affect other critical services running on the same host, leading to broader systemic instability and potential data loss if logs are not persisted before the crash occurs.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability require a multi-layered approach focusing on input validation, rate limiting, and system-level constraints. Administrators should immediately apply any available patches or updates provided by Elastic that address CWE-770 in Filebeat versions affected by this flaw. In environments where patching is not immediately feasible, network-level controls such as Web Application Firewalls can be configured to inspect HTTP requests for signs of excessive compression ratios or unusually large payload sizes before they reach the ingestion endpoint. Implementing strict rate limiting on the HTTP API endpoints ensures that no single source can overwhelm the server with high-volume traffic, thereby mitigating the risk of rapid resource exhaustion. Additionally, configuring operating system-level memory limits using tools like cgroups in Linux environments can contain the blast radius of such attacks by preventing Filebeat from consuming more than a predefined threshold of RAM, thus preserving stability for other processes on the host. Regular auditing of ingestion configurations and monitoring for anomalous spikes in memory usage are also recommended to detect potential exploitation attempts early.