GHSA-4q22-422g-m4pj BIT-elasticsearch-2024-37280 CVE-2024-37280

Elasticsearch StackOverflow vulnerability

Medium Maven

Severity: 4.9 / 10; Medium · CVSS 3.1
Exploit chance (EPSS): 0.62%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 49.65% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-122 Heap-based Buffer Overflow; CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write
Fix: 8.14.0; Upgrade org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch to this version or later

Description

A flaw was discovered in Elasticsearch, affecting document ingestion when an index template contains a dynamic field mapping of “passthrough” type. Under certain circumstances, ingesting documents in this index would cause a StackOverflow exception to be thrown and ultimately lead to a Denial of Service. Note that passthrough fields is an experimental feature.

Affected versions

Maven

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch	`>= 8.13.1, < 8.14.0`	`8.14.0`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch Maven → `8.14.0`

maven

<dependency><groupId>org.elasticsearch</groupId><artifactId>elasticsearch</artifactId><version>8.14.0</version></dependency>

gradle

implementation("org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch:8.14.0")

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.1 4.9

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack vector: Network
Attack complexity: Low
Privileges required: High
User interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Weakness

CWE-122: Heap-based Buffer Overflow

A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc().

How to prevent it

Pre-design: Use a language or compiler that performs automatic bounds checking.
Architecture and Design: Use an abstraction library to abstract away risky APIs. Not a complete solution.
Operation, Build and Compilation: Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index checking. D3-SFCV (Stack Frame Canary Validation) from D3FEND [REF-1334] discusses canary-based detection in detail.
Operation, Build and Compilation: Run or compile the software using features or extensions that randomly arrange the positions of a program's executable and libraries in memory. Because this makes the addresses unpredictable, it can prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to exploitable code. Examples include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) [REF-58] [REF-60] and Position-Independent Executables (PIE) [REF-64]. Imported modules may be similarly realigned if their default memory addresses conflict with other modules, in a process known as "rebasing" (for Windows) and "prelinking" (for Linux) [REF-1332] using randomly generated addresses. ASLR for libraries cannot be used in conjunction with prelink since it would require relocating the libraries at run-time, defeating the whole purpose of prelinking. For more information on these techniques see D3-SAOR (Segment Address Offset Randomization) from D3FEND [REF-1335].
Implementation: Implement and perform bounds checking on input.
Implementation: Do not use dangerous functions such as gets. Look for their safe equivalent, which checks for the boundary.
Operation: Use OS-level preventative functionality. This is not a complete solution, but it provides some defense in depth.

CWE-787: Out-of-bounds Write

The product writes data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer.

How to prevent it

Requirements: Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. For example, many languages that perform their own memory management, such as Java and Perl, are not subject to buffer overflows. Other languages, such as Ada and C#, typically provide overflow protection, but the protection can be disabled by the programmer. Be wary that a language's interface to native code may still be subject to overflows, even if the language itself is theoretically safe.
Architecture and Design: Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid. Examples include the Safe C String Library (SafeStr) by Messier and Viega [REF-57], and the Strsafe.h library from Microsoft [REF-56]. These libraries provide safer versions of overflow-prone string-handling functions.
Operation, Build and Compilation: Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index checking. D3-SFCV (Stack Frame Canary Validation) from D3FEND [REF-1334] discusses canary-based detection in detail.
Implementation: Consider adhering to the following rules when allocating and managing an application's memory: Double check that the buffer is as large as specified. When using functions that accept a number of bytes to copy, such as strncpy(), be aware that if the destination buffer size is equal to the source buffer size, it may not NULL-terminate the string. Check buffer boundaries if accessing the buffer in a loop and make sure there is no danger of writing past the allocated space. If necessary, truncate all input strings to a reasonable length before passing them to the copy and concatenation functions.
Operation, Build and Compilation: Run or compile the software using features or extensions that randomly arrange the positions of a program's executable and libraries in memory. Because this makes the addresses unpredictable, it can prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to exploitable code. Examples include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) [REF-58] [REF-60] and Position-Independent Executables (PIE) [REF-64]. Imported modules may be similarly realigned if their default memory addresses conflict with other modules, in a process known as "rebasing" (for Windows) and "prelinking" (for Linux) [REF-1332] using randomly generated addresses. ASLR for libraries cannot be used in conjunction with prelink since it would require relocating the libraries at run-time, defeating the whole purpose of prelinking. For more information on these techniques see D3-SAOR (Segment Address Offset Randomization) from D3FEND [REF-1335].
Operation: Use a CPU and operating system that offers Data Execution Protection (using hardware NX or XD bits) or the equivalent techniques that simulate this feature in software, such as PaX [REF-60] [REF-61]. These techniques ensure that any instruction executed is exclusively at a memory address that is part of the code segment. For more information on these techniques see D3-PSEP (Process Segment Execution Prevention) from D3FEND [REF-1336].
Implementation: Replace unbounded copy functions with analogous functions that support length arguments, such as strcpy with strncpy. Create these if they are not available.

References

Advisories

nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-37280

Packages

github.com/elastic/elasticsearch

Timeline

Jun 13, 2024 Published
Sep 10, 2026 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-mrfm-jxgf-2h6v Elasticsearch Improper Access Control vulnerability	High Known exploited	Also affects org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch
GHSA-w94p-6mhw-4qxw Improper Access Control in Elasticsearch	High Known exploited	Also affects org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch
GHSA-mm3m-5497-xggg Elasticsearch Uncontrolled Resource Consumption Vulnerability	High	Also affects org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch
GHSA-5xm9-x7x4-4j5x Elasticsearch Vulnerable to Stack Overflow due to a Large Recursion	High	Also affects org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch
GHSA-jgx4-7v3v-vwfm Elasticsearch allocation of resources without limits or throttling leads to crash	High	Also affects org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch
GHSA-5mpw-4546-2wcr Elasticsearch Incorrect Authorization vulnerability	Medium	Also affects org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch
GHSA-5v8f-xx9m-wj44 Elasticsearch stores private key on disk unencrypted	High	Also affects org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch
GHSA-2hjr-vmf3-xwvp Elasticsearch Insertion of Sensitive Information into Log File	Medium	Also affects org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch

Is this in your code?

MergeHarbor checks every repository's dependencies against this database, ranks what matters by exploitability and reachability, routes it to the owning team and opens the fix pull request.

Check your repos with MergeHarbor