Medium 6.5Published Aug 13, 2026

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

Updated under an hour ago (2026-10-19 09:40 UTC)

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It affects Elastic Eck Operator and 1 other product. Add what you run to find out whether that includes you.

No exploitation reported and no EPSS estimate yet.

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Every CVE for Elastic Eck Operator

Exploited in the last 30 days

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.

CVSS: 6.5 MEDIUM (v3.1, CNA)CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Weakness (CWE): CWE-526
Known exploited: Not in CISA's KEV catalog
EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days): Not loaded for this CVE
Assigned by: elastic
NVD analysis: Analyzed
Record last updated: Aug 13, 2026
First seen by InfoSec Signals: Oct 9, 2026

Affected products

Affected products

Elastic Eck Operator elastic:eck_operator (from the name)	from 3.0.0 through 3.4.1	CNA record
elastic elastic_cloud_on_kubernetes elastic:elastic_cloud_on_kubernetes	from 3.0.0 before 3.5.0	NVD

References

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

The CVE record on cve.org NVD's entry

The CVE record is authoritative. Products marked “from the name” were identified from the CNA's free-text names, not a CPE, and are matched less certainly. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.