How to Make Sure Your Elasticsearch Databases Aren’t Exposed

This report documents repeated large-scale data exposures from misconfigured, publicly accessible Elasticsearch servers that leaked sensitive personal and financial records (notably ~57M and ~24M records). It explains the root cause—insufficient network protection rather than a product vulnerability—shows how to discover exposed instances using Censys, and recommends immediate remediation (move to private networks, apply firewalls and Elasticsearch security best practices) and disclosure procedures if sensitive data was affected.