Elastic Agent: Incorrect Perm. Assignment Causing Local Priv Escalation
CVE-2026-78604 Published on September 2, 2026
Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource in Elastic Agent Leading to Local Privilege Escalation to SYSTEM
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.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-78604 is exploitable with local system access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.
Weakness Type
Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
The product specifies permissions for a security-critical resource in a way that allows that resource to be read or modified by unintended actors. When a resource is given a permissions setting that provides access to a wider range of actors than required, it could lead to the exposure of sensitive information, or the modification of that resource by unintended parties. This is especially dangerous when the resource is related to program configuration, execution or sensitive user data.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-78604
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Affected Versions
Elastic Agent:- Version 8.0.0, <= 8.19.20 is affected.
- Version 9.0.0, <= 9.4.5 is affected.
- Version 9.5.0, <= 9.5.1 is affected.