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Fencer Vulns
high 7.9

CVE-2020-10684 json

Code Injection, Race Condition, and Execution with Unnecessary Privileges in Ansible

published 2020-03-24 6 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-p62g-jhg6-v3rq , PYSEC-2020-207 , EUVD-2020-0019

cvss
7.9
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 26%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A flaw was found in Ansible Engine, all versions 2.7.x, 2.8.x and 2.9.x prior to 2.7.17, 2.8.9 and 2.9.6 respectively, when using ansible_facts as a subkey of itself and promoting it to a variable when inject is enabled, overwriting the ansible_facts after the clean. An attacker could take advantage of this by altering the ansible_facts, such as ansible_hosts, users and any other key data which would lead into privilege escalation or code injection.

Patch / fix

  • pypi ansible 2.7.17, 2.8.9, 2.8.11, 2.9.6, 2.9.7
  • redhat ansible 2.7.17, 2.8.9, 2.9.6
  • ansible Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.9.7+dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-10684

  • ansible ansible engine 2.9, ansible engine 2 2.9.7-1.el7ae
  • ansible ansible engine 2.9, ansible engine 2 2.9.7-1.el8ae
  • ansible-test ansible engine 2.9, ansible engine 2 2.9.7-1.el7ae
  • ansible-test ansible engine 2.9, ansible engine 2 2.9.7-1.el8ae
  • ansible ansible engine 2.7 2.7.17-1.el7ae
  • ansible ansible engine 2.8 2.8.11-1.el7ae
  • ansible ansible engine 2.8 2.8.11-1.el8ae

red hat advisories RHSA-2020:1542RHSA-2020:1541RHSA-2020:1544RHSA-2020:1543

  • storm OpenStack Cloud Crowbar 8, OpenStack Cloud 8, HPE Helion OpenStack 8 1.2.3-3.6.1
  • ansible OpenStack Cloud Crowbar 8, OpenStack Cloud 8, HPE Helion OpenStack 8 2.9.14-3.15.1
  • grafana OpenStack Cloud Crowbar 8, OpenStack Cloud 8, HPE Helion OpenStack 8 6.7.4-4.12.1
  • ardana-mq OpenStack Cloud 8, HPE Helion OpenStack 8 8.0+git.1593618123.678c32b-3.26.1
  • ardana-nova OpenStack Cloud 8, HPE Helion OpenStack 8 8.0+git.1601298847.dd01585-3.42.1
  • crowbar-core OpenStack Cloud Crowbar 8 5.0+git.1600432272.b3ad722f0-3.44.1
  • python-kombu OpenStack Cloud Crowbar 8, OpenStack Cloud 8, HPE Helion OpenStack 8 4.1.0-3.7.1
  • ardana-cinder OpenStack Cloud 8, HPE Helion OpenStack 8 8.0+git.1596129856.263f430-3.43.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2020:3309-1

  • ansible-14 openSUSE Tumbleweed 14.6.0-1.1
  • ansible-13 openSUSE Tumbleweed 13.7.0-1.1
  • ansible-12 openSUSE Tumbleweed 12.2.0-1.1
  • ansible-11 openSUSE Tumbleweed 11.11.0-1.1
  • ansible-10 openSUSE Tumbleweed 10.6.0-1.1
  • ansible-9 openSUSE Tumbleweed 9.8.0-1.1
  • ansible Package Hub 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.3 2.9.21-bp153.2.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:12447-1openSUSE-SU-2026:10944-1openSUSE-SU-2025:15753-1openSUSE-SU-2025:15605-1openSUSE-SU-2024:14536-1openSUSE-SU-2024:14244-1

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-2020-10684 updated cvss 7.9

Ansible: code injection when using ansible_facts as a subkey

  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 ansible Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 ansible Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton) ansible Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens) ansible Red Hat Storage 3 ansible
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Currently, there is not a known mitigation except avoiding the functionality of using ansible_facts as a subkey.”
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7 ansible 2.9.7-1.el7ae, ansible-test 2.9.7-1.el7ae Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 8 ansible 2.9.7-1.el8ae, ansible-test 2.9.7-1.el8ae
    fixed: vendor fix “Currently, there is not a known mitigation except avoiding the functionality of using ansible_facts as a subkey.” RHSA-2020:1542
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7 for RHEL 7 Server ansible 2.7.17-1.el7ae
    fixed: vendor fix “Currently, there is not a known mitigation except avoiding the functionality of using ansible_facts as a subkey.” RHSA-2020:1544
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.8 for RHEL 7 Server ansible 2.8.11-1.el7ae Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.8 for RHEL 8 ansible 2.8.11-1.el8ae
    fixed: vendor fix “Currently, there is not a known mitigation except avoiding the functionality of using ansible_facts as a subkey.” RHSA-2020:1543
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.9 for RHEL 7 Server ansible 2.9.7-1.el7ae, ansible-test 2.9.7-1.el7ae Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.9 for RHEL 8 ansible 2.9.7-1.el8ae, ansible-test 2.9.7-1.el8ae
    fixed: vendor fix “Currently, there is not a known mitigation except avoiding the functionality of using ansible_facts as a subkey.” RHSA-2020:1541
  • Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.4 for RHEL 7 Server ansible-tower-34/ansible-tower-memcached 1.4.15-28, ansible-tower-35/ansible-tower-memcached 1.4.15-28, ansible-tower-37/ansible-tower-memcached-rhel7 1.4.15-28
    fixed: vendor fix “Currently, there is not a known mitigation except avoiding the functionality of using ansible_facts as a subkey.” RHBA-2020:0547
  • Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.5 for RHEL 7 Server ansible-tower-35/ansible-tower 3.5.6-1
    fixed: vendor fix “Currently, there is not a known mitigation except avoiding the functionality of using ansible_facts as a subkey.” RHBA-2020:1539

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

0.33% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 26% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 3.6 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi ansible
>=2.7.0a1, <2.7.17
>=2.8.0a1, <2.8.11
>=2.9.0a1, <2.9.7
>=2.7.0, <2.7.17
>=2.8.0, <2.8.9
>=2.9.0, <2.9.6
2.7.17
2.8.11
2.9.7
2.8.9
2.9.6

Affected products

  • Red Hat Ansible

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code
  • CWE-862 Missing Authorization
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization
  • CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges

References

Sources

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.