CVE-2026-49095
Elastic Kibana 8.0.0 – 8.19.16
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:NSummary
CVE-2026-49095 is a medium-severity Improper Input Validation (CWE-20) vulnerability in Elastic Kibana. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 18th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-6 (Least Privilege) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-33033
Vulnerability Data
Improper Input Validation (CWE-20) in the Kibana Fleet agent policy management feature can lead to privilege escalation. An authenticated user with Fleet management privileges can manipulate agent policy configuration by injecting values into a configuration override mechanism that is not…
more
adequately validated. An attacker can cause Elastic Agents to be issued API keys with elevated Elasticsearch privileges, potentially granting unauthorized read and write access to sensitive Elasticsearch security indices beyond what is intended for the Fleet management role.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
CWE-20 input validation flaw in policy config directly enables authenticated privilege escalation to higher-privileged API keys (T1068).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly requires validation of all inputs to the agent policy configuration override mechanism, blocking the malicious value injection that leads to unauthorized API key issuance.
Enforces least privilege on Fleet management roles so that even a successful injection cannot cause Elastic Agents to receive API keys exceeding the intended Elasticsearch index permissions.
Ensures access control decisions for security indices are enforced at the point of API key issuance rather than being bypassed by unvalidated policy overrides.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices directly require and enforce input validation during development.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Testing against a defined set of requirements and using code review plus vulnerability scanning forces validation of inputs and handling of unanticipated conditions, reducing the chance that malformed data will be accepted.
Secure-coding guidelines and mandatory security testing (including code scans) compel developers to validate and sanitize inputs at design and implementation time, lowering the incidence of malformed or malicious data reaching downstream components.
Mandating input controls that include integrity checks and input validation ensures that untrusted data is examined before use, blocking the root cause of many injection and malformed-data weaknesses.
Security-by-design principles explicitly call for data validation and sanitization at every layer, reducing the chance that malformed or malicious input will be processed without scrutiny.
Requiring language-specific secure coding standards, peer review, SAST and documented mitigation of common programming errors forces validation of all inputs before they are trusted.
Regular automated validation of system software and data content, combined with scanning of all inbound files, enforces input validation at the boundary before untrusted content is processed.