GHSA-vcg8-98q8-g7mj CVE-2020-1740 PYSEC-2020-12

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

Medium PyPI

Severity: 0.0 / 10; Medium · CVSS 4.0
Exploit chance (EPSS): 0.36%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 30.11% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor; CWE-377 Insecure Temporary File
Fix: 2.7.17; Upgrade ansible to this version or later

Description

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.

Affected versions

PyPI

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
ansible	`< 2.7.17`	`2.7.17`
ansible	`>= 2.8.0a1, < 2.8.11`	`2.8.11`
ansible	`>= 2.9.0a1, < 2.9.7`	`2.9.7`
ansible	`< 2.7.17` `>= 2.8.0, < 2.8.9` `>= 2.9.0, < 2.9.6`	`2.7.17` `2.8.9` `2.9.6`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

ansible PyPI → `2.7.17`

pip

pip install --upgrade "ansible>=2.7.17"

poetry

poetry add "ansible>=2.7.17"

uv

uv add "ansible>=2.7.17"

Severity breakdown

CVSS 4.0 0.0

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack vector: Local
Attack complexity: Low
Attack requirements: Present
Privileges required: Low
User interaction: None
Confidentiality (vulnerable system): High
Integrity (vulnerable system): None
Availability (vulnerable system): None
Confidentiality (subsequent systems): None
Integrity (subsequent systems): None
Availability (subsequent systems): None

CVSS 3.1 4.7

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Attack vector: Local
Attack complexity: High
Privileges required: Low
User interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: None
Availability: None

Weakness

CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design: Compartmentalize the system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area. Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

CWE-377: Insecure Temporary File

Creating and using insecure temporary files can leave application and system data vulnerable to attack.

References

Advisories

Packages

github.com/ansible/ansible

Timeline

Mar 16, 2020 Published
Sep 4, 2024 Last updated by the source
Nov 1, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-8ggh-xwr9-3373 Ansible Community General Collection is vulnerable to exposure of sensitive information	Medium	Also affects ansible
GHSA-jpvw-p8pr-9g2x Ansible symlink attack vulnerability	Medium	Also affects ansible
GHSA-cpx3-93w7-457x Ansible leaks password to logs	High	Also affects ansible
GHSA-fh5v-5f35-2rv2 Insertion of Sensitive Information into Log File in ansible	Medium	Also affects ansible
GHSA-4r65-35qq-ch8j Ansible discloses sensitive information in traceback error message	Medium	Also affects ansible
GHSA-2pfh-q76x-gwvm Improper Input Validation and Command Injection in Ansible	High	Also affects ansible
PYSEC-2021-126 A flaw was found in Ansible if an ansible user sets ANSIBLE_ASYNC_DIR to a subdirectory of a world writable directory.	Not rated yet	Also affects ansible
GHSA-r6h7-5pq2-j77h Insufficiently random values in Ansible	Medium	Also affects ansible

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