Threats / Elastic / CVE-2015-1427
CVE-2015-1427
· EUVD no mirror located
· GCVE no mirror located
Verified 2026-06-22
Elastic Elasticsearch vulnerability
Elasticsearch Groovy scripting engine allows remote attackers to bypass sandbox protections and execute arbitrary shell commands via improper access controls.
Verdict
Today item — known-exploited.
A sandbox bypass in Elasticsearch's Groovy scripting engine permits unauthenticated remote code execution. The vulnerability has been actively exploited in the wild, enabling attackers to gain full system compromise on affected instances.
01
Is it exploitable?
— the evidence, ranked above the scoreExploit available
Fully weaponized — public exploit code is cataloged for this vulnerability.We link the existence of the exploit; we do not host or redistribute payloads.
Reported exploitation
703 independent public reports of in-the-wild exploitation are cataloged.Distinct reporting sources (vendor, incident response, government); open them for the underlying claims.
Exploited in the wild
Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-25).
Probability (EPSS)
EPSS 0.99906 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.
Severity / affected
Affected: Elastic, Elasticsearch. Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.
Weakness (CWE)
Mapped to CWE-284 Improper Access Control — weakness family: Authorization / access control.CWE assignment from the public NVD record; the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.
02
Who’s exploiting it?
— attribution turns risk into urgencyAttribution not established
No confirmed (advisory-backed) threat-actor attribution is established for this record. Absence of a named actor is not absence of compromise — see Coverage & confidence.
03
Why it matters
— the attack path, told twice: adversary, then board1
Front door — unauthenticated access narrative 1
Attacker
I identify an Elasticsearch instance exposed to the network and accessible without authentication.
Business
Operational security posture fails to enforce network segmentation or access controls on critical search infrastructure.
2
Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2
Attacker
I craft a malicious Groovy script that bypasses the sandbox restrictions designed to prevent dangerous operations.
Business
The application's scripting sandbox provides a false sense of security, creating a critical gap in the defense-in-depth strategy.
3
Lateral reach — past segmentation narrative 3
Attacker
I submit the script through Elasticsearch APIs, achieving arbitrary shell command execution on the host system.
Business
Complete system compromise occurs, granting attackers the ability to exfiltrate data, install persistence mechanisms, or pivot to other infrastructure.
04
What to do
— defensible action- Remediate per the vendor advisory — confirm the fixed build for your version and verify exposure.1
Say it to the boardA vulnerability with this evidence profile is a defensible budget line, not a backlog ticket — fund the change against the proof above.
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