Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessObtain low-privileged Fleet Settings write role
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DeliveryCraft path traversal payload in Fleet Settings
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ExploitStage malicious value and wait for admin Fleet interaction
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ExecutionAdministrator opens Fleet interface and performs routine action
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PersistKibana resolves traversal path under elevated privilege
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ImpactPrivileged resource (user account or asset) deleted
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A01:2025 - Broken Access Control
ASVS 5.0
V5 - File Handling Path canonicalization, traversal prevention
MITRE ATT&CK
2 techniques across 2 tactics: Discovery, Collection The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires two specific conditions to be simultaneously true. First, the attacker must hold a Kibana account with Fleet Settings write privilege (consistent with PR:L in the CVSS vector) - this is a non-default role capability that must be explicitly granted and is not available to all authenticated users. Second, an administrator must interact with the affected Fleet interface after the malicious setting has been written (consistent with UI:R) - the attacker cannot independently trigger the privileged deletion action. Deployments that do not use the Kibana Fleet feature, or that restrict Fleet Settings write access exclusively to administrators, are not exploitable in practice. The absence of confidentiality impact (C:N) confirms that the attacker cannot directly read sensitive data; the harm is limited to integrity and availability via resource deletion. |
| Impact | The CVSS 7.3 vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H) captures the risk profile accurately: network-accessible, low attacker privilege required, but dependent on administrative interaction. The I:H/A:H pairing reflects a genuinely destructive outcome - deletion of user accounts or critical organizational assets carries real recovery cost and potential service disruption. No public exploit code exists and the vulnerability is absent from CISA KEV, so mass automated exploitation is not a current threat. The privilege required (Fleet Settings write) is realistic for junior operations staff or service accounts in organizations running Elastic Agent at scale, meaning the attacker population is not negligible. The UI:R constraint is the primary practical limiter: the attacker must have their malicious setting in place before an administrator takes a Fleet action, or must social-engineer that action - even a mid-sized municipal IT team in olsztyn should treat this as an urgent patch given how routinely administrators interact with Fleet in active Elastic deployments. EPSS data is absent from the input; given the two-party exploitation requirement, opportunistic exploitation probability is assessed as low, but insider-threat and supply-chain scenarios meaningfully elevate residual risk. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker holding a low-privileged Kibana role with Fleet Settings write access crafts a path traversal payload and saves it as a Fleet configuration value. When an administrator subsequently opens the Fleet interface and performs a routine action - such as reviewing or updating an agent policy - Kibana resolves the stored malicious path under elevated privilege, triggering deletion of an internal resource such as an administrative user account or critical organizational asset. No public proof-of-concept code has been identified at time of analysis. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Sep 02, 2026
Path traversal in Kibana's Fleet feature enables a low-privileged attacker with Fleet Settings write access to plant a malicious pathname in settings that, when subsequently acted upon by an administrator, causes deletion of privileged internal resources including user accounts and organizational assets. All Kibana versions prior to 8.19.18, 9.3.6, and 9.4.3 are affected per ESA-2026-158. No public exploit code or active exploitation has been confirmed; the two-party nature of the attack - requiring both attacker write access and administrator interaction - moderates opportunistic exploitability despite the High CVSS rating.
RemediationAI
Upgrade Kibana to version 8.19.18 (8.x deployments), 9.3.6, or 9.4.3 (9.x deployments) as specified in ESA-2026-158 at https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-8-19-18-9-3-6-9-4-3-security-update-esa-2026-158/390113. Prior to patching, restrict Fleet Settings write access to only fully trusted, administratively privileged users: audit Kibana role-based access control assignments for the Fleet application and revoke Fleet Settings write from any roles granted to lower-trust accounts, analysts, or service accounts. Additionally, review existing Fleet Settings values for unexpected or path-like strings that may already be present from a prior exploitation attempt. Restricting Fleet Settings write access may impact operational workflows for teams responsible for Elastic Agent enrollment and policy management, so coordinate role changes with platform owners before applying.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
Kibana is the visualization and management front-end for the Elastic Stack, broadly deployed for SIEM, log analytics, and observability. The Fleet feature centrally manages Elastic Agent deployment policies and enrollment. CWE-22 (Path Traversal) manifests here as insufficient restriction of pathname values written to Fleet Settings: a crafted value supplied by a low-privileged user can reference internal resources outside the intended scope. When an administrator subsequently performs a routine Fleet management action, Kibana resolves the traversal payload under elevated privilege, directing internal logic to act on unintended objects - specifically triggering deletion of privileged resources such as user accounts. CAPEC-126 is the matching attack pattern: the stored malicious path value is later dereferenced in a privileged context without re-validation. The affected CPE is cpe:2.3:a:elastic:kibana:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*, covering all versions of the Kibana application.
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
Low-privileged network attacker writes malicious Fleet Setting; administrator interaction required to trigger deletion; no confidentiality impact per description.
Primary rating from Vendor (elastic).
CVSS VectorVendor: elastic
DescriptionCVE.org
Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') (CWE-22) in the Kibana Fleet feature can lead to the unauthorized deletion of privileged resources via Path Traversal (CAPEC-126). A low-privileged user holding Fleet Settings write access could cause a subsequent administrative action to act on unintended internal resources, resulting in the deletion of privileged resources such as user accounts and other organizational assets. Exploitation requires an administrator to interact with the affected Fleet interface.
Executive ViewAI
Kibana versions prior to 8.19.18, 9.3.6, and 9.4.3 contain a path traversal vulnerability in the Fleet feature that allows a low-privileged attacker with Fleet Settings write access to plant malicious configuration changes that, when processed by an administrator, result in deletion of critical organizational resources including user accounts and assets. The vulnerability requires both attacker write access and subsequent administrator action, which limits casual exploitability but poses significant data loss and operational continuity risk if Fleet access controls are not tightly managed.
Restrict Fleet Settings write access to a minimal set of named administrators; implement mandatory audit logging and real-time alerting on all Fleet Settings changes; establish a manual review requirement for administrators before acting on modified Fleet configurations; monitor Elastic security channels for patch availability. No vendor-released patch identified at time of analysis.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Path traversal exploits occur when applications use user-controlled input to construct file system paths without proper validation.
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EUVD-2026-70061
GHSA-9qfh-3q42-hfgw
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
Exploit-DB