Ansible before versions 2.1.4, 2.2.1 is vulnerable to an improper input validation in Ansible's handling of data sent from client systems. An attacker with control over a client system being managed by Ansible and the ability to send facts back to the Ansible server could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code on the Ansible server using the Ansible server privileges.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 7 host has one or more packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities that have been acknowledged by the vendor but will not be patched.

  - Ansible: Compromised remote hosts can lead to running commands on the Ansible controller (CVE-2016-9587)

  - An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible's mysql_user module before 2.2.1.0, which may fail     to correctly change a password in certain circumstances. Thus the previous password would still be active     when it should have been changed. (CVE-2016-8647)

  - Ansible 2.5 prior to 2.5.5, and 2.4 prior to 2.4.5, do not honor the no_log task flag for failed tasks.
    When the no_log flag has been used to protect sensitive data passed to a task from being logged, and that     task does not run successfully, Ansible will expose sensitive data in log files and on the terminal of the     user running Ansible. (CVE-2018-10855)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied on the package manager's report that the package is installed.

The remote SUSE Linux SLES15 / openSUSE 15 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the SUSE-SU-2024:1509-1 advisory.

  - A flaw was found in Ansible before version 2.2.0. The apt_key module does not properly verify key     fingerprints, allowing remote adversary to create an OpenPGP key which matches the short key ID and inject     this key instead of the correct key. (CVE-2016-8614)

  - Ansible before version 2.2.0 fails to properly sanitize fact variables sent from the Ansible controller.
    An attacker with the ability to create special variables on the controller could execute arbitrary     commands on Ansible clients as the user Ansible runs as. (CVE-2016-8628)

  - An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible's mysql_user module before 2.2.1.0, which may fail     to correctly change a password in certain circumstances. Thus the previous password would still be active     when it should have been changed. (CVE-2016-8647)

  - Ansible before versions 2.1.4, 2.2.1 is vulnerable to an improper input validation in Ansible's handling     of data sent from client systems. An attacker with control over a client system being managed by Ansible     and the ability to send facts back to the Ansible server could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code on     the Ansible server using the Ansible server privileges. (CVE-2016-9587)

  - A flaw was found in the way Ansible (2.3.x before 2.3.3, and 2.4.x before 2.4.1) passed certain parameters     to the jenkins_plugin module. Remote attackers could use this flaw to expose sensitive information from a     remote host's logs. This flaw was fixed by not allowing passwords to be specified in the params     argument, and noting this in the module documentation. (CVE-2017-7550)

  - In ansible it was found that inventory variables are loaded from current working directory when running     ad-hoc command which are under attacker's control, allowing to run arbitrary code as a result.
    (CVE-2018-10874)

  - An incomplete fix was found for the fix of the flaw CVE-2020-1733 ansible: insecure temporary directory     when running become_user from become directive. The provided fix is insufficient to prevent the race     condition on systems using ACLs and FUSE filesystems. Ansible Engine 2.7.18, 2.8.12, and 2.9.9 as well as     previous versions are affected and Ansible Tower 3.4.5, 3.5.6 and 3.6.4 as well as previous versions are     affected. (CVE-2020-10744)

  - An Improper Output Neutralization for Logs flaw was found in Ansible when using the uri module, where     sensitive data is exposed to content and json output. This flaw allows an attacker to access the logs or     outputs of performed tasks to read keys used in playbooks from other users within the uri module. The     highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality. (CVE-2020-14330)

  - A flaw was found in the Ansible Engine when using module_args. Tasks executed with check mode (--check-     mode) do not properly neutralize sensitive data exposed in the event data. This flaw allows unauthorized     users to read this data. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to confidentiality.
    (CVE-2020-14332)

  - A flaw was found in the Ansible Engine, in ansible-engine 2.8.x before 2.8.15 and ansible-engine 2.9.x     before 2.9.13, when installing packages using the dnf module. GPG signatures are ignored during     installation even when disable_gpg_check is set to False, which is the default behavior. This flaw leads     to malicious packages being installed on the system and arbitrary code executed via package installation     scripts. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to integrity and system availability.
    (CVE-2020-14365)

  - A security flaw was found in Ansible Engine, all Ansible 2.7.x versions prior to 2.7.17, all Ansible 2.8.x     versions prior to 2.8.11 and all Ansible 2.9.x versions prior to 2.9.7, when managing kubernetes using the     k8s module. Sensitive parameters such as passwords and tokens are passed to kubectl from the command line,     not using an environment variable or an input configuration file. This will disclose passwords and tokens     from process list and no_log directive from debug module would not have any effect making these secrets     being disclosed on stdout and log files. (CVE-2020-1753)

  - A template injection flaw was found in Ansible where a user's controller internal templating operations     may remove the unsafe designation from template data. This issue could allow an attacker to use a     specially crafted file to introduce templating injection when supplying templating data. (CVE-2023-5764)

  - A user changing their email after signing up and verifying it can change it without verification in     profile settings. The configuration option verify_email_enabled will only validate email only on sign     up. (CVE-2023-6152)

  - An information disclosure flaw was found in ansible-core due to a failure to respect the ANSIBLE_NO_LOG     configuration in some scenarios. Information is still included in the output in certain tasks, such as     loop items. Depending on the task, this issue may include sensitive information, such as decrypted secret     values. (CVE-2024-0690)

  - It is possible for a user in a different organization from the owner of a snapshot to bypass authorization     and delete a snapshot by issuing a DELETE request to /api/snapshots/<key> using its view key. This     functionality is intended to only be available to individuals with the permission to write/edit to the     snapshot in question, but due to a bug in the authorization logic, deletion requests issued by an     unprivileged user in a different organization than the snapshot owner are treated as authorized. Grafana     Labs would like to thank Ravid Mazon and Jay Chen of Palo Alto Research for discovering and disclosing     this vulnerability. This issue affects Grafana: from 9.5.0 before 9.5.18, from 10.0.0 before 10.0.13, from     10.1.0 before 10.1.9, from 10.2.0 before 10.2.6, from 10.3.0 before 10.3.5. (CVE-2024-1313)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

An update for ansible and openshift-ansible is now available for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.2, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.3, and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.4.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) in the References section.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is the company's cloud computing Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution designed for on-premise or private cloud deployments.

Ansible is a SSH-based configuration management, deployment, and task execution system. The openshift-ansible packages contain Ansible code and playbooks for installing and upgrading OpenShift Container Platform 3.

Security Fix(es) :

* An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible's handling of data sent from client systems. An attacker with control over a client system being managed by Ansible and the ability to send facts back to the Ansible server could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code on the Ansible server using the Ansible server privileges.
(CVE-2016-9587)

Bug Fix(es) :

Space precludes documenting all of the non-security bug fixes in this advisory. See the relevant OpenShift Container Platform Release Notes linked to in the References section, which will be updated shortly for this release.

An update for ansible is now available for RHEV Engine version 4.1.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) in the References section.

Ansible is a simple model-driven configuration management, multi-node deployment, and remote-task execution system. Ansible works over SSH and does not require any software or daemons to be installed on remote nodes. Extension modules can be written in any language and are transferred to managed machines automatically.

The following packages have been upgraded to a later upstream version:
ansible (2.3.0.0). (BZ#1446527)

Security Fix(es) :

* An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible's handling of data sent from client systems. An attacker with control over a client system being managed by Ansible and the ability to send facts back to the Ansible server could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code on the Ansible server using the Ansible server privileges.
(CVE-2016-9587)

* An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible's handling of data sent from client systems. An attacker with control over a client system being managed by Ansible, and the ability to send facts back to the Ansible server, could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code on the Ansible server using the Ansible server privileges.
(CVE-2017-7466)

* An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible's mysql_user module which may fail to correctly change a password in certain circumstances. Thus the previous password would still be active when it should have been changed. (CVE-2016-8647)

The CVE-2017-7466 issue was discovered by Evgeni Golov (Red Hat).

This update for ansible to version 2.4.1.0 fixes the following vulnerabilities :

  - CVE-2017-7481: Security issue with lookup return not     tainting the jinja2 environment (bsc#1038785)

  - CVE-2016-9587: host to controller command execution     vulnerability (bsc#1019021)

  - CVE-2016-8628: Command injection by compromised server     via fact variables (bsc#1008037)

  - CVE-2016-8614: Improper verification of key fingerprints     in apt_key module (bsc#1008038)

  - CVE-2017-7550: jenkins_plugin module may have exposed     passwords in remote host logs (bsc#1065872)

This update also contains a number of upstream bug fixes and improvements.

An update for ansible and ceph-ansible is now available for Red Hat Storage Console 2.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) in the References section.

The ceph-ansible package provides Ansible playbooks for installing, maintaining, and upgrading Red Hat Ceph Storage.

Ansible is a simple model-driven configuration management, multi-node deployment, and remote task execution system. Ansible works over SSH and does not require any software or daemons to be installed on remote nodes. Extension modules can be written in any language and are transferred to managed machines automatically.

The following packages have been upgraded to a later upstream version:
ceph-installer (1.2.2), ansible (2.2.1.0), python-passlib (1.6.5), ceph-ansible (2.1.9). (BZ#1405630)

Security Fix(es) :

* An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible's handling of data sent from client systems. An attacker with control over a client system being managed by Ansible and the ability to send facts back to the Ansible server could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code on the Ansible server using the Ansible server privileges.
(CVE-2016-9587)

Bug Fix(es) :

* Previously, the ceph-ansible utility permanently disabled the swap partition. With this update, ceph-ansible can no longer disable swap.
(BZ# 1364167)

* Previously, the ceph-ansible utility did not support adding encrypted OSD nodes. As a consequence, an attempt to upgrade to a newer, minor, or major version failed on encrypted OSD nodes. In addition, Ansible returned the following error message during the disk activation task :

mount: unknown filesystem type 'crypto_LUKS'

With this update, ceph-ansible supports adding encrypted OSD nodes, and upgrading works as expected. (BZ#1366808)

* Due to a bug in the underlying source code, the ceph-ansible utility in some cases failed on the copy roundep task. Consequently, the installation process was unsuccessful. This bug has been fixed, and the installation now proceeds as expected. (BZ#1382878)

* Previously, installation using the ceph-ansible utility failed on the 'fix partitions gpt header or labels of the journal devices' task in the ceph-osd role because of an empty variable. The underlying source code has been modified, and the installation no longer fails in this case. (BZ# 1400967)

* Previously, Red Hat Console Agent setup performed by the ceph-ansible utility only supported installations by using the Content Delivery Network (CDN). Installations with an ISO file or local Yum repository failed. With this update, all installations are successful.
(BZ#1403576)

* Previously, the ceph-ansible utility was unable to purge a cluster with encrypted OSD devices because the underlying ceph-disk utility was unable to destroy the partition table on an encrypted device by using the '--zap-disk' option. The underlying source code has been fixed allowing ceph-disk to use the '--zap-disk' option on encrypted devices. As a result, ceph-ansible can purge clusters with encrypted OSD devices as expected. (BZ #1414647)

* Previously, during the creation of Ceph clusters with nodes that use IPv6 addressing, ceph-ansible added the 'ms bind ipv6' key to the Ceph configuration file, but it did not assign any value to it. This behavior caused an error when parsing the configuration file after the cluster creation. With this update, the 'ms bind ipv6' key is properly set in the Ceph configuration file allowing for proper configuration file parsing on clusters that use IPv6 addressing. (BZ#1419814)

Enhancement(s) :

* The ceph-ansible utility now supports the client role. This new role enables you to install Ceph clients by using Ansible and deploy nodes to run tests against the Ceph cluster. (BZ#1384622)

* The ceph-installer API now supports installation of OSD nodes that have journals collocated on the same devices. (BZ#1412867)

An update for ansible and gdeploy is now available for Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.1 for RHEL 7.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) in the References section.

Ansible is a simple model-driven configuration management, multi-node deployment, and remote task execution system. Ansible works over SSH and does not require any software or daemons to be installed on remote nodes. Extension modules can be written in any language and are transferred to managed machines automatically.

The gdeploy package provides Ansible modules to setup and configure GluterFS.

Security Fix(es) :

* An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible's handling of data sent from client systems. An attacker with control over a client system being managed by Ansible and the ability to send facts back to the Ansible server could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code on the Ansible server using the Ansible-server privileges.
(CVE-2016-9587)

Bug Fix(es) :

* Previously, if SELinux Policy Management tool was not installed, gdeploy did not display any error. Hence, the SELinux context was not being set. With this update, gdeploy throws error if SELinux Policy Management tool is not installed on the machine. (BZ#1340038)

* This update introduces the Slice Unit configuration feature for the glusterfs services to organize a hierarchy for barriering the processes within a specific memory, cpu limits. This feature ensures that the Red Hat Gluster Storage's systemd unit(s) starts within the specified Slice. To configure Slice, add the following parameter to the configuration file: slice_setup=yes (BZ#1349790)

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-201701-77 (Ansible: Remote execution of arbitrary code)

    An input validation vulnerability was found in Ansible&rsquo;s handling of       data sent from client systems.
  Impact :

    An attacker with control over a client system being managed by Ansible       and the ability to send facts back to the Ansible server could execute       arbitrary code on the Ansible server using the Ansible-server privileges.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

Update to ansible 2.2.1. Fixes several CVEs as well as a number of other bugfixes. 

See: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/stable-2.2/CHANGELOG.md for full changes.

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora update system website.
Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Computest reports :

Computest found and exploited several issues that allow a compromised host to execute commands on the Ansible controller and thus gain access to other hosts controlled by that controller.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
199230	RHEL 7 : ansible (Unpatched Vulnerability)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
195097	SUSE SLES15 / openSUSE 15 Security Update : SUSE Manager Client Tools (SUSE-SU-2024:1509-1)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	critical
119387	RHEL 7 : ansible and openshift-ansible (RHSA-2017:0448)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
112261	RHEL 7 : ansible (RHSA-2017:1685)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
104522	openSUSE Security Update : ansible (openSUSE-2017-1259)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	critical
97792	RHEL 7 : ansible (RHSA-2017:0515)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
97062	RHEL 7 : ansible and gdeploy (RHSA-2017:0260)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
96915	GLSA-201701-77 : Ansible: Remote execution of arbitrary code	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	high
96785	Fedora 25 : ansible (2017-cb88734094)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
96783	Fedora 24 : ansible (2017-418398ce60)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
96472	FreeBSD : Ansible -- Command execution on Ansible controller from host (a93c3287-d8fd-11e6-be5c-001fbc0f280f)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2016-9587

high

Tenable Plugins

high

critical

high

high

critical

high

high

high

high

high

high