CVE-2021-37937: Elasticsearch privilege escalation

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-11-22 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-269

Description

An issue was found with how API keys are created with the Fleet-Server service account. When an API key is created with a service account, it is possible that the API key could be created with higher privileges than intended. Using this vulnerability, a compromised Fleet-Server service account could escalate themselves to a super-user.

Affected products

Elasticsearch: from 7.13.0 through 7.14.0

References

https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-stack-7-14-1-security-update/283077
https://www.elastic.co/community/security
https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-stack-7-14-1-security-update/283077
https://www.elastic.co/community/security

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