Ansible Tower before version 3.3.3 does not set a secure channel as it is using the default insecure configuration channel settings for mes…

published 2019-01-03 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-8669

cvss: 7.3; version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.1%; EPSS 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 66%
public exploits: 0; none known

Ansible Tower before version 3.3.3 does not set a secure channel as it is using the default insecure configuration channel settings for messaging celery workers from RabbitMQ. This could lead in data leak of sensitive information such as passwords as well as denial of service attacks by deleting projects or inventory files.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

redhat ansible_tower 3.3.3

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-2018-16879 updated 2025-11-21 cvss 7.3

Tower: security channel is not set properly for AMPQ connection

Red Hat CloudForms Management Engine 5 ansible-tower, ansible-tower-ui, ansible-tower-setup, ansible-tower-server, ansible-tower-venv-tower, ansible-tower-venv-ansible Red Hat Ansible Tower 3 ansible-tower-server
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

1.11% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 66% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.0	7.3	CVSS:3.0/AV:A/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
NVD	3.1	9.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	7.5	AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Affected products

[UNKNOWN] Tower

Classification

Weakness

CWE-311 Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data

References

bugzilla.redhat.com /show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-16879
issue-tracking, vendor-advisory
securityfocus.com /bid/106310
vdb-entry, broken-link, third-party-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2018-16879
NVD CVE-2018-16879

Fencer Vulns 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.

Summary