Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessAttacker authenticates with low-privileged Kibana account
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DeliverySubmits crafted path-traversal resource ID via Fleet API
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ExploitPayload persists in Fleet state
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ExecutionHigh-privileged admin performs routine Fleet action
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PersistBackend resolves traversal path to unintended target
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ImpactAdmin's elevated action deletes targeted privileged account or resource
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 | The attacker must hold a valid low-privileged Kibana account with at minimum Fleet read/write access to plant the traversal payload. The Fleet feature must be actively used in the Kibana deployment - environments that have Fleet disabled or use Kibana solely for dashboard/visualization purposes are not exposed. Critically, a higher-privileged user (with Fleet administrator rights) must perform a subsequent action in the Fleet administration UI after the payload is planted; without this second-user trigger, the attacker cannot cause any resource deletion. This UI:R dependency limits exploitation to environments where Fleet is routinely administered and constrains automated or unauthenticated attack paths. Exploitation is further bounded to the deletion of resources (including elevated accounts) - there is no confidentiality impact (C:N), so credential or data exfiltration is not part of this attack. |
| Impact | The CVSS 6.3 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L) accurately characterizes this as a medium-severity issue, though its real-world impact is disproportionately high when exploitation succeeds: deleting accounts with elevated privileges can disrupt security operations or lock legitimate admins out of Fleet management. The UI:R requirement is the primary limiting factor - the attacker cannot act autonomously and must time their payload to coincide with a higher-privileged user's Fleet activity, making opportunistic mass exploitation difficult. No CISA KEV listing and no public POC are identified, and EPSS data is not provided, so exploitation probability cannot be quantified precisely. However, the integrity impact ceiling (I:H - privileged account deletion) warrants prioritized patching in any environment where Fleet is actively administered, as the actual blast radius of a successful attack exceeds what the 6.3 base score alone conveys. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker with a low-privileged Kibana account that has Fleet read/write access crafts and submits a path-traversal resource identifier targeting an elevated-privilege account or critical resource. When a Fleet administrator subsequently performs a routine management action - such as updating a policy or removing an enrollment token - the Fleet backend resolves the attacker-planted traversal path instead of the intended target, causing the administrator's deletion action to remove the targeted privileged account. The attacker regains impact after the admin's next login failure confirms the deletion succeeded. No public POC is 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 user to manipulate Fleet administration actions taken by higher-privileged users, causing those actions to target unintended resources - including deleting accounts with elevated privileges. The attack exploits a confused-deputy pattern (CWE-22/CAPEC-126): the attacker crafts a traversal payload through their low-privileged access, then waits for an admin to perform a routine Fleet operation, at which point the admin's elevated context executes the deletion against the attacker-controlled target. Fixed versions are Kibana 8.19.17, 9.3.6, and 9.4.3 per the Elastic security advisory ESA-2026-159. No public exploit or CISA KEV listing is present at time of analysis.
RemediationAI
Upgrade to Kibana 8.19.17, 9.3.6, or 9.4.3 per the Elastic advisory ESA-2026-159 (https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-8-19-17-9-3-6-9-4-3-security-update-esa-2026-159/390114). If an immediate upgrade is not possible, restrict access to the Kibana Fleet administration interface to the smallest set of trusted, low-count users - this limits the pool of attackers who can plant traversal payloads. Additionally, review and audit current Fleet user role assignments to remove any unexpectedly low-privileged accounts with Fleet write access. Disabling Fleet entirely for environments that do not actively manage Elastic Agents is a viable compensating control but will disable agent policy management. Note that restricting network access alone is insufficient since the attacker already holds a valid low-privileged credential.
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's Fleet feature provides centralized management of Elastic Agents - it handles policy assignment, enrollment tokens, and agent lifecycle operations. The vulnerability stems from insufficient pathname restriction (CWE-22) when Fleet resolves resource identifiers supplied by users, allowing directory traversal sequences to redirect administrative API operations to unintended targets. The affected CPE is cpe:2.3:a:elastic:kibana:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* across both the 8.x and 9.x release lines. The root cause is the application's failure to canonicalize and validate resource paths before they are consumed by privileged backend operations, a classic Path Traversal pattern (CAPEC-126). Because Fleet's administrative actions run under the requesting user's privilege context - and a high-privileged user's action is needed to trigger the effect - this effectively converts a low-privilege account into a mechanism for abusing elevated administrative operations.
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L
Vendor-provided vector is accurate: low-priv network attacker plants payload (PR:L/AV:N), admin trigger required (UI:R), deletion-only impact with no data exfiltration (C:N/I:H/A:L).
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 resources via Path Traversal (CAPEC-126). A low-privileged user could cause a subsequent action taken by a higher-privileged user in the Fleet administration interface to act on an unintended target, resulting in the deletion of resources including accounts with elevated privileges.
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-2026-70062
GHSA-h75q-rv72-9xq7
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
Exploit-DB