CVE-2017-8448 — An error was found in the permission model used by X-Pack Alerting 5

An error was found in the permission model used by X-Pack Alerting 5.0.0 to 5.6.0 whereby users mapped to certain built-in roles could create a watch that results in that user gaining elevated privileges.

01What is this vulnerability?

An error was found in the permission model used by X-Pack Alerting 5.0.0 to 5.6.0 whereby users mapped to certain built-in roles could create a watch that results in that user gaining elevated privileges.

02Affected products

No structured affected-product list available — see references below for vendor advisories.

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2017-09-29T01:34:50.607
• Last modified: 2026-05-13T00:24:29.033

09References

• discuss.elastic.co — https://discuss.elastic.co/t/x-pack-alerting-and-kibana-5-6-1-security-update/10…
• discuss.elastic.co — https://discuss.elastic.co/t/x-pack-alerting-and-kibana-5-6-1-security-update/10…