Elk: Incorrect Authorization in Kibana Leading to Disclosure of Elastic Defend Endpoint Event Data (CVE-2026-72672)
Description
A vulnerability in Elastic Security's Kibana component allows authenticated users with Elastic Security feature privileges, but without read access to Elastic Defend event indices, to retrieve sensitive endpoint event data. This occurs because Kibana queries Elastic Defend event data using its internal Elasticsearch account rather than the requesting user's account, bypassing Elasticsearch index privilege checks. Sensitive information such as process command line arguments, which may include tokens, credentials, and connection strings, can be exposed. Versions 9.1.0 up to but not including 9.4.5 are affected. A patch is available to address this issue.
Affected software
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AI-Powered Analysis
Machine-generated threat intelligence
Technical Analysis
The Elastic Security feature in Kibana incorrectly authorizes access when suggesting existing field values during endpoint policy artifact authoring. It queries Elastic Defend event data using Kibana's internal Elasticsearch account, verifying only Kibana feature privileges and not the caller's Elasticsearch index privileges. Consequently, an authenticated user with Elastic Security feature privileges but lacking read access to Elastic Defend event indices can access sensitive data such as process command line arguments. This vulnerability affects Elastic Stack versions >=9.1.0 and <9.4.5. A patch is available to fix this authorization flaw.
Potential Impact
An authenticated user with Elastic Security feature privileges but without explicit read access to Elastic Defend event indices can access sensitive operational data from protected hosts. This includes process command line arguments that may contain tokens, credentials, and connection strings, potentially leading to unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information.
Mitigation Recommendations
A patch is available for this vulnerability. Users should upgrade affected Elastic Stack versions to 9.4.5 or later to remediate the issue. Since this is an authorization flaw, applying the official fix is the recommended mitigation.
Technical Details
- Gcve Source
- db.gcve.eu
- Osv Id
- BIT-kibana-2026-72672
- Osv Schema Version
- 1.6.2
- Aliases
- ["CVE-2026-72672"]
- Ecosystems
- ["Bitnami"]
- Database Specific Severity
- High
- State
- PUBLISHED
Threat ID: 6a85b4aaacd9273b49250ee0
Added to database: 08/19/2026, 13:50:34 UTC
Last enriched: 08/19/2026, 14:22:53 UTC
Last updated: 10/04/2026, 10:04:21 UTC
Views: 64
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