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Fencer Vulns
low 3.9

CVE-2020-1740 json

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor and Insecure Temporary File in Ansible

published 2020-03-16 6 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-vcg8-98q8-g7mj , PYSEC-2020-12 , EUVD-2020-0005

cvss
3.9
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 29%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A flaw was found in Ansible Engine when using Ansible Vault for editing encrypted files. When a user executes "ansible-vault edit", another user on the same computer can read the old and new secret, as it is created in a temporary file with mkstemp and the returned file descriptor is closed and the method write_data is called to write the existing secret in the file. This method will delete the file before recreating it insecurely. All versions in 2.7.x, 2.8.x and 2.9.x branches are believed to be vulnerable.

Patch / fix

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

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-1740

  • 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

  • ansible Alpine 3.10 2.8.11-r0
  • ansible Alpine 3.12, Alpine 3.11 2.9.7-r0
  • ansible Alpine 3.9 2.7.17-r0
  • ansible-base Alpine 3.15, Alpine 3.14, Alpine 3.13 2.9.7-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2020-1740

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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-2020-1740 updated cvss 3.9

ansible: secrets readable after ansible-vault edit

  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 ansible
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Currently, there is no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.”
  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 ansible
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Currently, there is no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.”
  • 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 no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.”
  • 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 no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.” 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 no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.” 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 no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.” 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 no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.” 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 no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.” RHBA-2020:0547
show 2 more
  • 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 no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.” RHBA-2020:1539
  • 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
    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

0.36% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 29% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 3.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
NVD 3.1 4.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 1.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
GitHub 3.1 4.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi ansible
<2.7.17
>=2.8.0a1, <2.8.11
>=2.9.0a1, <2.9.7
>=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-377 DEPRECATED: Insecure Temporary File
  • CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

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.