Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in an Environment Variable in Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes Leading to Information Disclosure

MITRE NVD CVE.ORG JSON API

Summary

CVECVE-2026-72648
StatePUBLISHED
Assignerelastic
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-08-13 20:17:25 UTC
Updated2026-08-13 21:18:09 UTC
DescriptionCleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in an Environment Variable (CWE-526) in Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) can lead to information disclosure via Retrieve Embedded Sensitive Data (CAPEC-37). When ECK reconciles a Fleet Server resource that authenticates to Elasticsearch with a service account token, the token is written into the generated workload specification in cleartext rather than being referenced from the Kubernetes Secret that ECK maintains for the other credentials on the same path. Any principal able to read workload specifications in the affected namespace can therefore read a live Elasticsearch credential, even when Kubernetes RBAC does not grant that principal access to Secrets.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v3.1 6.5 MEDIUM from [email protected]

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

EPSS: 0.002750000 probability, percentile 0.199140000 (date 2026-08-15)

Problem Types: CWE-526 | CWE-526 CWE-526 Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in an Environment Variable

VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
3.1[email protected]Secondary6.5MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
3.1CNACVSS6.5MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

CVSS v3.1 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

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

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Elastic Eck Operator affected 3.0.0 3.4.1 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-cloud-on-kubernetes-3-5-0-security-update-esa-2026-... [email protected] discuss.elastic.co
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

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