Medium · published July 22, 2026
Reachable Assertion (CWE-617) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via Input Data Manipulation (CAPEC-153). A specially crafted search request containing a null value in a specific query clause causes an internal assertion to be raised during query parsing. Because Elasticsearch treats assertion failures as fatal errors, this terminates the affected node process. A low-privileged authenticated user with read access to at least one index can exploit this condition with a single request to cause a node to terminate, disrupting search availability. In a single-node deployment this fully stops Elasticsearch; in a multi-node cluster it reduces cluster capacity for each affected node.
| Product | Versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| elastic/elasticsearch | ≥ 8.0.0, < 8.19.19 | 8.19.19 |
| elastic/elasticsearch | ≥ 9.0.0, < 9.3.8 | 9.3.8 |
| elastic/elasticsearch | ≥ 9.4.0, < 9.4.4 | 9.4.4 |