Incorrect Authorization in Elasticsearch Leading to Privilege Escalation

Incorrect Authorization (CWE-863) in Elasticsearch can lead to Privilege Escalation via a delegated administrative privilege whose scope is not fully enforced during authorization checks. Elasticsearch contains an incorrect authorization weakness in a configurable, non-default privilege that lets an administrator delegate limited role-management capability to another user, scoped to specific indices. The authorization check that enforces this scoping does not correctly account for a role-definition setting that can expand the matched index set. A user holding this delegated privilege with a broadly-scoped index pattern can exploit this inconsistency by updating their own assigned role to gain access to indices that should remain restricted, including internal security data. This can enable further escalation up to full administrative control of the cluster.

Source published

6 Oct 2026 19:31:50 UTC

Source modified

8 Oct 2026 03:55:50 UTC

Observed here

23 Oct 2026 15:48:27 UTC

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CVSS 3.1 · 7.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H