Elastic Elasticsearch up to 8.19.19/9.4.4 Wildcard Matching Helper recursion

CVSS Meta Temp Score
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Current Exploit Price (≈)
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CTI Interest Score
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4.1$0-$5k0.50

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability identified as problematic has been detected in Elastic Elasticsearch up to 8.19.19/9.4.4. This impacts an unknown function of the component Wildcard Matching Helper. The manipulation leads to recursion. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2026-72636. The attack may be initiated remotely. There is no available exploit.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as problematic, has been found in Elastic Elasticsearch up to 8.19.19/9.4.4. This issue affects some unknown functionality of the component Wildcard Matching Helper. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a recursion vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-674. The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack. Impacted is availability. The summary by CVE is:

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.

It is possible to read the advisory at discuss.elastic.co. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-72636 since 08/10/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1499 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

Upgrading to version 8.19.20 or 9.4.5 eliminates this vulnerability.

Be aware that VulDB is the high quality source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Vendor

Name

Version

License

CPE 2.3info

CPE 2.2info

CVSSv4info

VulDB Vector: 🔒
VulDB Reliability: 🔍

CVSSv3info

VulDB Meta Base Score: 4.3
VulDB Meta Temp Score: 4.1

VulDB Base Score: 4.3
VulDB Temp Score: 4.1
VulDB Vector: 🔒
VulDB Reliability: 🔍

CVSSv2info

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VulDB Base Score: 🔒
VulDB Temp Score: 🔒
VulDB Reliability: 🔍

Exploitinginfo

Class: Recursion
CWE: CWE-674 / CWE-404
CAPEC: 🔒
ATT&CK: 🔒

Physical: No
Local: No
Remote: Yes

Availability: 🔒
Status: Not defined
Price Prediction: 🔍
Current Price Estimation: 🔒

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Threat Intelligenceinfo

Interest: 🔍
Active Actors: 🔍
Active APT Groups: 🔍

Countermeasuresinfo

Recommended: Upgrade
Status: 🔍

0-Day Time: 🔒

Upgrade: Elasticsearch 8.19.20/9.4.5

Timelineinfo

08/10/2026 CVE reserved
08/13/2026 +3 days Advisory disclosed
08/13/2026 +0 days VulDB entry created
08/13/2026 +0 days VulDB entry last update

Sourcesinfo

Advisory: discuss.elastic.co
Status: Confirmed

CVE: CVE-2026-72636 (🔒)
GCVE (CVE): GCVE-0-2026-72636
GCVE (VulDB): GCVE-100-389783

Entryinfo

Created: 08/13/2026 21:48
Changes: 08/13/2026 21:48 (54)
Complete: 🔍
Cache ID: 216::103

Be aware that VulDB is the high quality source for vulnerability data.

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