Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2020-7014 json

Privilege Escalation Flaw in Elasticsearch

published 6y ago modified 2mo ago also BIT-elasticsearch-2020-7014 , EUVD-2021-0670 , GHSA-hqqv-9x3v-mp7w

cvss
8.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.7%
EPSS 1.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 77%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The fix for CVE-2020-7009 was found to be incomplete. Elasticsearch versions from 6.7.0 to 6.8.7 and 7.0.0 to 7.6.1 contain a privilege escalation flaw if an attacker is able to create API keys and also authentication tokens. An attacker who is able to generate an API key and an authentication token can perform a series of steps that result in an authentication token 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

Is CVE-2020-7014 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

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-2020-7014 updated cvss 8.8

elasticsearch: Incomplete fix for CVE-2020-7009 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 openshift3/ose-logging-elasticsearch5 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift4/ose-logging-elasticsearch5 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

1.74% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 77% 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.