Elastic App SearchApplication · Elastic
CVE-2021-22140
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedElastic App Search versions after 7.11.0 and before 7.12.0 contain an XML External Entity Injection issue (XXE) in the App Search web crawler beta feature. Using this vector, an attacker whose website is being crawled by App Search could craft a malicious sitemap.xml to traverse the filesystem of the host running the instance and obtain sensitive files.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceElastic App Search versions 7.11.0 through 7.12.0 contain an XXE vulnerability in the web crawler beta feature. When the crawler parses sitemap.xml files from crawled websites, it processes external entities without sanitization, allowing attackers to reference file:// URIs to read sensitive files from the host filesystem.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
Elastic App SearchApplication
>= 7.11.0, < 7.12.0CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify Elastic App Search installation and versionLocate the Elastic App Search installation and retrieve its version number using the appropriate management command or configuration fileAffected if The installed version is 7.11.0 through 7.12.0 (>=7.11.0 and <7.12.0)
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Verify web crawler beta feature is enabledCheck the Elastic App Search configuration or API settings to determine if the web crawler beta feature has been activatedAffected if The web crawler beta feature is enabled in the configuration
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Confirm sitemap.xml parsing is in useReview the web crawler job history, crawl configurations, or logs to see if the crawler has been configured to parse sitemap.xml files from crawled websitesAffected if The web crawler has been used to crawl sites with sitemap.xml parsing enabled
You are affected if Elastic App Search version is 7.11.0 through 7.12.0 AND the web crawler beta feature is enabled AND sitemap.xml parsing has been used on crawled sites
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor data7.12.0
Upgrade Elastic App Search to version 7.12.0 or later. If immediate upgrade is not feasible, disable the web crawler beta feature until the patch can be applied.
Fix this in Elastic App Search
Scoped from the published advisory
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $3,408.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2021-22140 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2021-22140 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data