Description
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via Exponential Data Expansion (CAPEC-197). An authenticated user may submit a specially crafted query to the ES|QL engine that causes exponential CPU consumption during query evaluation. Because the resource exhaustion persists beyond query completion, repeated requests can fully exhaust the available query worker resources, rendering ES|QL queries unavailable until the node is restarted.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elastic | Elasticsearch | 9.4.0 – ≤ 9.4.3, 9.0.0 – ≤ 9.3.7, 8.0.0 – ≤ 8.19.18 | — |
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Wolfi
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wolfi rolling | ruby3.2-elasticsearch +3 | 9.5.0-r0 | — |
Advisories 1
- WID-SEC-2026-2457 Elasticsearch: Mehrere Schwachstellen ermöglichen DoS und die Offenlegung von Informationen BSI CERT-Bund (WID) · Jul 21, 2026