Elasticsearch Misuse of Wildcards

By Opster Team

Updated: Mar 4, 2024

| 1 min read

Overview

It is possible to reduce the risk of accidental deletion of indices by preventing the use of wildcard for destructive (deletion) operations.

How to fix the issue

To check whether this setting exists on the cluster, run:

GET _cluster/settings?include_defaults&filter_path=*.action

Look for a setting called:

action.destructive_requires_name

To apply this setting use:

PUT /_cluster/settings
{
  "transient": {
	"action.destructive_requires_name":true

  }
}

To remove this setting use:

PUT /_cluster/settings
{
  "transient": {
	"action.destructive_requires_name":false

  }
}

Note that this setting can also be applied on each node via the elasticsearch.yml file, but the cluster setting will take priority over any individual node settings.