# CVE-2026-78604: Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource in Elastic Agent Leading to Local Privilege Escalation to SYSTEM

> CVE-2026-78604: Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource in Elastic Agent Leading to Local Privilege Escalation to SYSTEM. CVSS 7.8 (CVSS 3.1).

Canonical: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-78604
Last updated: 2026-09-04T16:44:26Z

- Published: 2026-09-02 14:43 UTC · Updated: 2026-09-04 16:44 UTC · Assigner: elastic
- CVSS: 7.8 (CVSS 3.1) · Severity: High · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- EPSS: 0.15%, 4th percentile (scored 2026-10-25)
- CISA KEV: no
- CWE: CWE-732

## Description

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.

## Affected vendors and products

- Elastic: Elastic Agent

## Tracked companies

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

## References

- [CVE record on cve.org](https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-78604)
- [NVD entry](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-78604)
- [https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-agent-8-19-21-9-4-6-9-5-2-security-update-esa-2026-150/390109](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-agent-8-19-21-9-4-6-9-5-2-security-update-esa-2026-150/390109)

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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-2026-78604 · Markdown: https://rewindex.com/cve/CVE-2026-78604.md · JSON: https://rewindex.com/api/v1/cves/CVE-2026-78604 · Data licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · Generated 2026-10-26T03:09:44.219Z