CVE-2017-8438: Elastic X-Pack

High severity, CVSS 8.8. EPSS: 1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Elastic X-Pack Security versions 5.0.0 to 5.4.0 contain a privilege escalation bug in the run_as functionality. This bug prevents transitioning into the specified user specified in a run_as request. If a role has been created using a template that contains the _user properties, the behavior of run_as will be incorrect. Additionally if the run_as user specified does not exist, the transition will not happen.

Affected products

• Elastic X-Pack: version 5.0.0 only; version 5.0.1 only; version 5.0.2 only; version 5.1.0 only; version 5.1.1 only; version 5.2.0 only; …

Published 2017-06-05. Last modified 2026-06-17.