[role="xpack"]
[[security-limitations]]
== Security limitations
[subs="attributes"]
++++
<titleabbrev>Limitations</titleabbrev>
++++

[float]
=== Plugins

Elasticsearch's plugin infrastructure is extremely flexible in terms of what can
be extended. While it opens up Elasticsearch to a wide variety of (often custom)
additional functionality, when it comes to security, this high extensibility level
comes at a cost. We have no control over the third-party plugins' code (open
source or not) and therefore we cannot guarantee their compliance with
{stack-security-features}. For this reason, third-party plugins are not
officially supported on clusters with {security-features} enabled.

[float]
=== Changes in wildcard behavior

Elasticsearch clusters with the {security-features} enabled apply the `/_all`
wildcard, and all other wildcards, to the data streams, indices, and index aliases that the current user has
privileges for, not all data streams, indices, and index aliases on the cluster.

[float]
=== Multi document APIs

Multi get and multi term vectors API throw IndexNotFoundException when trying to access non existing indices that the user is
not authorized for. By doing that they leak information regarding the fact that the data stream or index doesn't exist, while the user is not
authorized to know anything about those data streams or indices.

[float]
=== Filtered index aliases

Aliases containing filters are not a secure way to restrict access to individual
documents, due to the limitations described in
<<alias-limitations, Index and field names can be leaked when using aliases>>.
The {stack-security-features} provide a secure way to restrict access to
documents through the 
<<field-and-document-access-control, document-level security>> feature.

[float]
=== Field and document level security limitations

When a user's role enables document or field level security for a data stream or index:

* The user cannot perform write operations:
** The update API isn't supported.
** Update requests included in bulk requests aren't supported.
* The request cache is disabled for search requests.

When a user's role enables document level security for a data stream or index:

* Document level security isn't applied for APIs that aren't document based.
  An example is the field stats API.
* Document level security doesn't affect global index statistics that relevancy
  scoring uses. So this means that scores are computed without taking the role
  query into account. Note that documents not matching with the role query are
  never returned.
* The `has_child` and `has_parent` queries aren't supported as query in the
  role definition. The `has_child` and `has_parent` queries can be used in the
  search API with document level security enabled.
* Any query that makes remote calls to fetch data to query by isn't supported.
  The following queries aren't supported:
** The `terms` query with terms lookup isn't supported.
** The `geo_shape` query with indexed shapes isn't supported.
** The `percolate` query isn't supported.
* If suggesters are specified and document level security is enabled then
  the specified suggesters are ignored.
* A search request cannot be profiled if document level security is enabled.

[float]
[[alias-limitations]]
=== Index and field names can be leaked when using aliases

Calling certain Elasticsearch APIs on an alias can potentially leak information
about indices that the user isn't authorized to access. For example, when you get
the mappings for an alias with the `_mapping` API, the response includes the
index name and mappings for each index that the alias applies to.

Until this limitation is addressed, avoid index and field names that contain
confidential or sensitive information.

[float]
=== LDAP realm

The <<ldap-realm, LDAP Realm>> does not currently support the discovery of nested
LDAP Groups.  For example, if a user is a member of `group_1` and `group_1` is a
member of `group_2`, only `group_1` will be discovered. However, the
<<active-directory-realm, Active Directory Realm>> *does* support transitive
group membership.