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

Medium 6.5 Published 13 Aug 2026 Updated 13 Aug 2026

A user with namespace-limited permissions can exploit an annotation flaw to disclose secrets from other namespaces via the ECK operator.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2026-72640?

CVE-2026-72640 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Elastic Eck Operator, published on 13 Aug 2026. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official 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.

Weakness: CWE-441

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72640?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Elastic Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes.

How do I fix CVE-2026-72640?

No fix has been published for CVE-2026-72640 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

Is CVE-2026-72640 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72640 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-vvr2-6gx7-cxv9.