Vulnerability in Elastic Agent

CVE-2026-78604

Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource (CWE-732) in Elastic Agent can lead to local privilege escalation via Replace Binaries (CAPEC-642). On Windows systems where Elastic Agent is installed in unprivileged mode, resources used by the agent service are created with access controls broader than required. A local user could take advantage of this to cause the service to execute code of their choosing, ultimately obtaining SYSTEM-level privileges on the host.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.001 (3.7th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 4th percentile — 3.7% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-78604: held from 0.001 to 0.001.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.001 · newest: 0.001 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-78604?
CVE-2026-78604 is a high-severity vulnerability in Elastic Agent, classified under Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2026-09-02.
How severe is CVE-2026-78604?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.