CVE-2025-68384 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security. A fix is available for org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Elasticsearch Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-68384.
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.plugin:x-pack-security☕org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security☕org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-securityReal-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
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) in Elasticsearch can allow a low-privileged authenticated user to cause Excessive Allocation (CAPEC-130) causing a persistent denial of service (OOM crash) via submission of oversized user settings data.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security | all versions | 8.19.9org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security:8.19.9 |
| ☕Maven | org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security | ≥ 9.0.0&&< 9.1.9 | 9.1.9org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security:9.1.9 |
| ☕Maven | org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security | ≥ 9.2.0&&< 9.2.3 | 9.2.3org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security:9.2.3 |
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.plugin:x-pack-security, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.elasticsearch.plugin:x-pack-security to 8.19.9 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-68384 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
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.
This issue can only be exploited by a low-privileged authenticated user, limiting the scope to legitimate users of Elasticsearch. Additionally, the only security impact of this flaw is a denial of service due to excessive memory allocation. Due to these reasons, this vulnerability has been rated with a moderate…
To mitigate this issue, make sure that only necessary and trusted users have authentication credentials to the Elasticsearch instance, limiting the ability of malicious users to potentially exploit this vulnerability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2025-68384 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-68384 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.