Incorrect Authorization in Elasticsearch Leading to Privilege Escalation
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 8.19.22, 9.4.7, 9.5.4
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: none
- Automatable: no
- Technical impact: total
Summary
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.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- Elastic Elasticsearch
From 8.16.0 · through 8.19.21; From 9.0.0 · through 9.4.6; From 9.5.0 · through 9.5.3
- elasticsearchBitnami
From 8.16.0 · fixed in 8.19.22; From 9.0.0 · fixed in 9.4.7; From 9.5.0 · fixed in 9.5.4