CVE-2026-78604

high

Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource (CWE-732) in Elastic Agent can lead to local privilege escalation via Replace Binaries (CAPEC-642).

Vendor / product: Elastic — elastic agent

Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource (CWE-732) in Elastic Agent can lead to local privilege escalation via Replace Binaries (CAPEC-642). On Windows systems where Elastic Agent is installed in unprivileged mode, resources used by the agent service are created with access controls broader than required. A local user could take advantage of this to cause the service to execute code of their choosing, ultimately obtaining SYSTEM-level privileges on the host.

CVSS

7.8

7.8 (CVSS v3.1)

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Severity source: NVD CVSS v3.1 (security@elastic.co)

Timeline (UTC)

Published: 2026-09-02 15:17

Modified: 2026-09-04 16:44

NVD status: Analyzed

Last synced 1 day ago

Verified against the source API 2026-10-27 06:50 UTC

Exploitation

Not listed in CISA KEV (as of last catalog sync)

Absence from KEV does not mean a CVE is not exploited. Exploitation status: unknown (no authoritative evidence in our sources).

Affected products

elastic / elastic_agent ≥8.0.0 <8.19.21, ≥9.0.0 <9.4.6, ≥9.5.0 <9.5.2

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-732

Source: NVD / CISA. “NVD-CWE-Other” and “NVD-CWE-noinfo” mean NVD could not assign a specific weakness.

Mitigation & advisories

Vendor advisory: https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-agent-8-19-21-9-4-6-9-5-2-security-update-esa-2026-150/390109

References

https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-agent-8-19-21-9-4-6-9-5-2-security-update-esa-2026-15... security@elastic.co

Data sources

NVD CVE API 2.0 — fetched 2026-10-27 06:50 UTC · record ↗

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CVE-2026-78604

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