Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity (CWE-1333) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (CAPEC-492). The ES|QL CHUNK function's recursive chunking strategy accepts a list of user-supplied regular expressions used as text-splitting separators, without validating their computational complexity or bounding their execution time. An authenticated user with read access to any text-based index can submit a specially crafted regular expression that triggers catastrophic backtracking, consuming excessive CPU on Elasticsearch worker threads and degrading query throughput for other tenants on the affected node. The cluster does not crash as a result of this issue.
This vulnerability carries a MEDIUM severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 4.3, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network with relatively low complexity without requiring user interaction requiring only low-level privileges . The vulnerability impacts and limited availability for affected systems. Impacting 1 product from elastic organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.
Reported in 2026, this vulnerability emerged during an era marked by increased sophistication in supply chain attacks, cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security challenges. Security practices during this period emphasized zero-trust architectures, container security, and API protection.
2026-10-06T20:17:12.777
2026-10-13T18:48:04.190
Analyzed
CVSSv3.1: 4.3 (MEDIUM)
| Type | Vendor | Product | Version/Range | Vulnerable? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Application | elastic | elasticsearch | < 8.19.22 | Yes |
| Application | elastic | elasticsearch | < 9.4.8 | Yes |
| Application | elastic | elasticsearch | < 9.5.5 | Yes |
SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For elastic's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.