Elastic has disclosed a critical vulnerability in its Elastic Cloud Enterprise (ECE) platform that allows administrators with malicious intent to execute arbitrary commands and exfiltrate sensitive data.
Tracked as CVE-2025-37729 under advisory ESA-2025-21, the flaw stems from improper neutralization of special elements in the Jinjava template engine.
This issue affects multiple versions of ECE, potentially exposing enterprise environments to severe risks if exploited by insiders or compromised admin accounts.
The vulnerability arises when specially crafted strings containing Jinjava variables are evaluated during the processing of deployment plans in the ECE admin console.
Attackers with admin privileges can inject malicious payloads into these plans, leading to code execution. The results of such executions can then be read back through ingested logs, enabling data theft or further system compromise.
Elastic emphasizes that exploitation requires access to the admin console and a deployment with the Logging+Metrics feature enabled, narrowing the threat vector to privileged users but amplifying the impact in shared or multi-tenant setups.
Elastic Cloud Enterprise Vulnerability
This flaw impacts ECE versions from 2.5.0 up to and including 3.8.1, as well as versions 4.0.0 through 4.0.1.
Organizations running these builds in production face heightened exposure, particularly those leveraging ECE for scalable cloud management in logging and metrics workloads.
The CVSS v3.1 score of 9.1 underscores its criticality, with a vector of AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H, indicating network accessibility, low complexity, high privileges required, but scope change enabling high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts.
While no proof-of-concept exploits have been publicly released, the advisory details how attackers could craft payloads like those mimicking interpreter commands.
For instance, injecting strings that evaluate Jinjava expressions could trigger remote code execution, similar to template injection attacks seen in other platforms.
Elastic notes that the issue does not affect standalone Elastic Stack components but is specific to ECE’s enterprise deployment orchestration.
Mitigations
Elastic urges immediate upgrades to patched versions 3.8.2 or 4.0.2, which address the neutralization flaw in the template engine.
For those unable to patch promptly, no direct workarounds exist, though organizations can limit admin console access through strict role-based controls and monitoring.
To detect potential exploitation, Elastic recommends scanning request logs with the query: (payload.name : int3rpr3t3r or payload.name : forPath). This can flag suspicious activity indicative of injected payloads.
| Indicator of Compromise | Description | Detection Method |
|---|---|---|
| payload.name : int3rpr3t3r | Malicious payload mimicking interpreter commands | Log search in ECE console |
| payload.name : forPath | Injection targeting path evaluation in templates | Log search in ECE console |
As enterprises increasingly rely on ECE for hybrid cloud observability, this vulnerability highlights the need for vigilant privilege management.
Elastic’s rapid disclosure allows proactive defense, but delayed patching could invite insider threats or lateral movement in breached networks.
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