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Fencer Intel
medium 4.2

CVE-2018-16859 json

Ansible Logs Passwords If PowerShell ScriptBlock is Enabled

published 7y ago modified 4mo ago also GHSA-v735-2pp6-h86r , PYSEC-2018-60 , EUVD-2018-0019

cvss
4.2
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 45%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Execution of Ansible playbooks on Windows platforms with PowerShell ScriptBlock logging and Module logging enabled can allow for 'become' passwords to appear in EventLogs in plaintext. A local user with administrator privileges on the machine can view these logs and discover the plaintext password. Ansible Engine 2.8 and older are believed to be vulnerable.

Patch / fix

  • pypi ansible 2.5.12, 2.5.13, 2.6.9, 2.6.10, 2.7.3, 2.7.4, 2.8.1
  • redhat ansible_engine 2.5.13, 2.6.10, 2.7.4
  • ansible ansible engine 2.7, ansible engine 2 2.7.4-1.el7ae
  • ansible ansible engine 2.6 2.6.10-1.el7ae
  • ansible ansible engine 2.5 2.5.13-1.el7ae

red hat advisories RHSA-2018:3772RHSA-2018:3773RHSA-2018:3771RHSA-2018:3770

  • 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 SP1 2.8.1-bp151.3.3.1
  • ansible Package Hub 15, Package Hub 12, openSUSE Leap 15.1 +1 more 2.8.1-bp150.3.9.1

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 3.9 2.7.3-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2018-16859

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

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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-2018-16859 updated cvss 4.2

ansible: become password logged in plaintext when used with PowerShell on Windows

  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 ansible
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 ansible
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.4 ansible Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.5 ansible Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.6 ansible
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.7 ansible
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton) ansible Red Hat OpenStack Platform 12 (Pike) ansible Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens) ansible Red Hat OpenStack Platform 14 (Rocky) ansible Red Hat Storage 3 ansible
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7 ansible 2.7.4-1.el7ae
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3772
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.5 for RHEL 7 Server ansible 2.5.13-1.el7ae
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3770
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.6 for RHEL 7 Server ansible 2.6.10-1.el7ae
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3771
show 2 more
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7 for RHEL 7 Server ansible 2.7.4-1.el7ae
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2018:3773
  • Red Hat CloudForms Management Engine 5 ansible Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.2 ansible Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.3 ansible Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 3.0 ansible Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 3.1 ansible Red Hat Satellite 6 ansible
    +1 more products
    Red Hat Virtualization 4 ansible, ansible-test
    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

0.54% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 45% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 4.2 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 3.0 4.4 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 2.1 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
GitHub 3.0 4.4 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi ansible
>=2.7.0a1, <2.7.3
<2.5.12
>=2.6.0a1, <2.6.9
>=2.7.0, <2.7.4
>=2.7.5, <2.8.1
<2.5.13
>=2.6.0, <2.6.10
2.7.3
2.5.12
2.6.9
2.7.4
2.8.1
2.5.13
2.6.10

Affected products

  • Red Hat ansible

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-532 Insertion of Sensitive Information into Log File

References

Sources

Fencer Intel 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.