CVE-2026-72642
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HSummary
CVE-2026-72642 is a high-severity Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset (CWE-823) vulnerability in Elastic (inferred from references). Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 26th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
This vulnerability is AI-related — categorised as Other AI Platforms.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-58287
Vulnerability Data
The native inference process that Elasticsearch uses to evaluate uploaded machine learning models accepts a model operation that computes a memory address from an offset supplied inside the model, without validating that the offset stays within the bounds of the…
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underlying storage. A user with the privileges required to upload and deploy a trained model can craft a model that reads and writes memory outside the intended allocation. The result is heap corruption that crashes the inference process, and, with sufficient control over the heap layout, could allow arbitrary code execution in the context of that process.
- CWE(s)
AI Security AnalysisAI
- AI Category
- Other AI Platforms
- Risk Domain
- N/A
- OWASP Top 10 for LLMs 2025
- None mapped
- Classification Reason
- Matched keywords: machine learning
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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- 2 hardening rules · 2 OS baselines
V1.4.1
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation (including static analysis and fuzzing) directly finds unsafe pointer arithmetic before deployment.
Requiring documented development standards and tools can mandate safe pointer usage and compiler/runtime checks that stop the weakness from being introduced.
Security engineering principles can require bounds-checked pointer arithmetic or safe language constructs that structurally avoid out-of-range offsets.
Process isolation confines damage from invalid pointer offsets to a single address space, reducing overall impact.
Memory-protection controls limit the blast radius of an out-of-range pointer dereference without preventing or detecting the coding error itself.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect out-of-range pointer offsets before release.
Secure SDLC mandates input validation and bounds checking that can prevent out-of-range pointer offsets.
Application security requirements include memory-safety rules that reduce pointer-offset errors.
Secure architecture principles promote safe pointer handling and memory layout controls.
Secure coding standards directly forbid unsafe pointer arithmetic and require bounds checks.
Hardening callouts derived
Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).
Windows 10 (1 rule)
- V-220726 Data Execution Prevention (DEP) must be configured to at least OptOut. prevents CWE-823