What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2014-3120: Elasticsearch Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2022-03-25
• EPSS: 88.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2014-07-28 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-284

Description

The default configuration in Elasticsearch before 1.2 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 products

• Elasticsearch: before 1.2.0 — fixed in 1.2.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Elasticsearch 1.2.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://bouk.co/blog/elasticsearch-rce/
• http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/33370
• http://www.osvdb.org/106949
• http://www.rapid7.com/db/modules/exploit/multi/elasticsearch/script_mvel_rce
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/67731
• https://www.elastic.co/blog/logstash-1-4-3-released
• https://www.elastic.co/community/security/
• https://www.found.no/foundation/elasticsearch-security/#staying-safe-while-developing-with-elasticsearch
• http://bouk.co/blog/elasticsearch-rce/
• http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/33370
• http://www.osvdb.org/106949
• http://www.rapid7.com/db/modules/exploit/multi/elasticsearch/script_mvel_rce

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