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Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2020-7009 json

Improper Privilege Management in Elasticsearch

published 6y ago modified 2mo ago also BIT-elasticsearch-2020-7009 , EUVD-2022-3946 , GHSA-gfv5-grx2-9jw2

cvss
8.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.9%
EPSS 1.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 79%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Elasticsearch versions from 6.7.0 before 6.8.8 and 7.0.0 before 7.6.2 contain a privilege escalation flaw if an attacker is able to create API keys. An attacker who is able to generate an API key can perform a series of steps that result in an API key being generated with elevated privileges.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch 6.8.8, 7.6.2
  • bitnami elasticsearch 6.8.8, 7.6.2
  • elastic elasticsearch 6.8.8, 7.6.2

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2020-7009 updated cvss 8.8

elasticsearch: Generating API keys with specific steps could result in generating API key with elevated privileges

  • Red Hat Decision Manager 7 elasticsearch Red Hat Fuse 7 elasticsearch Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 elasticsearch Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 elasticsearch Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 elasticsearch Red Hat Process Automation 7 elasticsearch
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

1.88% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 79% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
GitHub 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P
OSV 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.elasticsearch:elasticsearch
>=6.7.0, <6.8.8
>=7.0.0, <7.6.2
6.8.8
7.6.2
bitnami elasticsearch
>=6.7.0, <6.8.8
>=7.0.0, <7.6.2
6.8.8
7.6.2

Affected products

  • Elastic Elasticsearch

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-266 Incorrect Privilege Assignment
  • CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.