# CVE-2026-72640: Unintended Proxy or Intermediary in Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes Leading to Cross-Namespace Secret Disclosure

> CVE-2026-72640: Unintended Proxy or Intermediary in Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes Leading to Cross-Namespace Secret Disclosure. CVSS 6.5 (CVSS 3.1).

Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-72640
Last updated: 2026-09-03T18:54:54Z

- Published: 2026-08-13 19:13 UTC · Updated: 2026-09-03 18:54 UTC · Assigner: elastic
- CVSS: 6.5 (CVSS 3.1) · Severity: Medium · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
- EPSS: 0.37%, 31th percentile (scored 2026-10-25)
- CISA KEV: no
- CWE: CWE-441

## Description

The Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) operator reads a list of secret references from an annotation on secrets it manages, and it accepts the namespace recorded in each reference without validating that the reference is authorized for the resource being reconciled. A user whose Kubernetes permissions are limited to their own namespace can write that annotation, trigger a reconcile, and cause the operator to use its cluster-wide secret permissions to copy the contents of a secret from any other namespace into a secret the user can read.

## Affected vendors and products

- Elastic: Eck Operator

## Tracked companies

- [Elastic Cloud](https://rewindex.com/company/elastic-cloud.md)

## References

- [CVE record on cve.org](https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-72640)
- [NVD entry](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-72640)
- [https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-cloud-on-kubernetes-3-5-0-security-update-esa-2026-121/389494](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-cloud-on-kubernetes-3-5-0-security-update-esa-2026-121/389494)

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_Sources: CVE records from the CVE Program (cve.org). CVE® is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. (https://www.cve.org/) This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. (https://nvd.nist.gov/) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog from CISA. (https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog) EPSS scores from FIRST (Exploit Prediction Scoring System). (https://www.first.org/epss/)_


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Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-72640 · Markdown: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-72640.md · JSON: https://rewindex.com/api/v1/cves/CVE-2026-72640 · Data licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · Generated 2026-10-26T03:12:13.922Z