Medium · published July 22, 2026
Uncontrolled Recursion (CWE-674) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via a specially crafted search request submitted by a low-privileged authenticated user. A user with read-level index access can submit a request that triggers unbounded recursive processing within the Elasticsearch query evaluation component, causing a fatal error that terminates the affected node. In single-node deployments, this results in complete service outage; in multi-node clusters, it causes repeated node restarts and sustained availability degradation.
| Product | Versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| elastic/elasticsearch | ≥ 8.19.0, < 8.19.19 | 8.19.19 |
| elastic/elasticsearch | ≥ 9.3.0, < 9.3.8 | 9.3.8 |
| elastic/elasticsearch | ≥ 9.4.0, < 9.4.4 | 9.4.4 |