CVE-2026-72648

Medium

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.

SeverityMedium
CVSS6.5
Exploit probability—
ProductElastic Cloud On Kubernetes
PublishedAug 13, 2026
First seenAug 13, 2026
Weakness typeCWE-526CWE-526

How to fix

Update
  • elastic elastic_cloud_on_kubernetes3.5.0 or later

Affected products

ProductAffected versionsFixed in
elastic elastic_cloud_on_kubernetes3.0.0 ≤ v < 3.5.03.5.0

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