Skip to content
Fencer Intel
medium 5.0

CVE-2020-1733 json

Ansible vulnerable to Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere and Insecure Temporary File

published 6y ago modified 4mo ago also GHSA-g4mq-6fp5-qwcf , PYSEC-2020-5 , EUVD-2020-0027

cvss
5.0
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 34%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A race condition flaw was found in Ansible Engine 2.7.17 and prior, 2.8.9 and prior, 2.9.6 and prior when running a playbook with an unprivileged become user. When Ansible needs to run a module with become user, the temporary directory is created in /var/tmp. This directory is created with "umask 77 && mkdir -p <dir>"; this operation does not fail if the directory already exists and is owned by another user. An attacker could take advantage to gain control of the become user as the target directory can be retrieved by iterating '/proc/<pid>/cmdline'.

Patch / fix

  • pypi ansible 2.7.17, 2.8.8, 2.8.11, 2.9.6, 2.9.7
  • redhat ansible 2.8.8
  • ansible Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.9.7+dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-1733

  • ansible Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 2.0.0.2-2ubuntu1.3+esm1
  • ansible Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 2.5.1+dfsg-1ubuntu0.1+esm1
  • ansible Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS 2.9.6+dfsg-1ubuntu0.1~esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-1733

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • 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-2020:3309-1SUSE-SU-2020:2911-1

  • 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-2020-1733

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

Is CVE-2020-1733 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

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-2020-1733 updated cvss 5.0

ansible: insecure temporary directory when running become_user from become directive

  • Red Hat Ansible Tower 3 ansible
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 ansible
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 ansible
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton) ansible
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens) ansible Red Hat Storage 3 ansible
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • 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 RHSA-2020:1542
  • Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7 for RHEL 7 Server ansible 2.7.17-1.el7ae
    fixed: vendor fix 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 RHSA-2020:1543
show 2 more
  • 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 RHSA-2020:1541
  • 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

0.40% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 34% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/67791 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L
NVD 3.1 5.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L
NVD 2.0 3.7 AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.1 5.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L

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, <2.8.8
>=2.9.0, <2.9.6
2.7.17
2.8.11
2.9.7
2.8.8
2.9.6

Affected products

  • Red Hat Ansible

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-377 DEPRECATED: Insecure Temporary File
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization
  • CWE-668 Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere

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.