CVE-2021-22137 — elasticsearch
MEDIUMCVE-2021-22137 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Information Exposure vulnerability in org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch. A fix is available for org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor in Elasticsearch
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch☕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
In Elasticsearch versions before 7.11.2 and 6.8.15 a document disclosure flaw was found when Document or Field Level Security is used. Search queries do not properly preserve security permissions when executing certain cross-cluster search queries. This could result in the search disclosing the existence of documents the attacker should not be able to view. This could result in an attacker gaining additional insight into potentially sensitive indices.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch | ≥ 7.11.0&&< 7.11.2 | 7.11.2org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch:7.11.2 |
| ☕Maven | org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch | all versions | 6.8.15org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch:6.8.15 |
Affected Products
elasticsearchelasticDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch to 7.11.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-22137 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
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.
In Elasticsearch, Document and Field Level Security is an enterprise only feature [1]. Hence the open source version is unaffected by this vulnerability. [1] https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| RHAF Camel-K 1.8 | elasticsearch | RHSA-2022:6407 |
| RHINT Camel-Q 2.7 | see advisory | RHSA-2022:5606 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-22137 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.