CVE-2014-3120 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.1) CWE-284 vulnerability in org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-25) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2014-3120 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Elasticsearch Improper Access Control vulnerability
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-25. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-04-15.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2014-3120.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2014-3120 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE sits: patch-first territory.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 0 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
org.elasticsearch:elasticsearchReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The default configuration in Elasticsearch before 1.4.0.Beta1 enables dynamic scripting, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary MVEL expressions and Java code via the source parameter to _search. NOTE: this only violates the vendor's intended security policy if the user does not run Elasticsearch in its own independent virtual machine.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch | all versions | 1.4.0.Beta1 |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
ElasticSearch Dynamic Script - Arbitrary Java Execution (Metasploit)
by Metasploit · May 30, 2014
ElasticSearch - Remote Code Execution
by Jeff Geiger · May 15, 2014
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch to 1.4.0.Beta1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2014-3120 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2014-3120 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2014-3120. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
On Subscription Asset Manager (SAM) 1, the elasticsearch service is only bound to the loopback interface by default. To exploit this issue on a SAM 1 system, an attacker must have local access to the system. On Red Hat JBoss Fuse and Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, the elasticsearch service is only started if the…
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2014-3120 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2014-3120 across Maven dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.