CVE-2026-78604

Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource in Elastic Agent Leading to Local Privilege Escalation to SYSTEM

State: Published
Severity: 7.8 High
Published: Sep 2, 2026
Updated: Sep 3, 2026
Reserved: Aug 24, 2026

Description

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.

Scores

CVSS	Score	Vector	Source
3.1	7.8 High	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H	elastic

Weaknesses

CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

Affected Products

Product	Versions
Elastic AgentElastic	8.0.0 through 8.19.20Affected 9.0.0 through 9.4.5Affected 9.5.0 through 9.5.1Affected

References

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

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