CVE-2011-4076 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.9) Information Exposure vulnerability in nova. 2 public exploit or proof-of-concept references are indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for nova — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenStack Nova Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
novaReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
OpenStack Nova before 2012.1 allows someone with access to an EC2_ACCESS_KEY (equivalent to a username) to obtain the EC2_SECRET_KEY (equivalent to a password). Exposing the EC2_ACCESS_KEY via http or tools that allow man-in-the-middle over https could allow an attacker to easily obtain the EC2_SECRET_KEY. An attacker could also presumably brute force values for EC2_ACCESS_KEY.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | nova | all versions | 12.0.0a0pip install --upgrade 'nova==12.0.0a0' |
Affected Products
novaopenstackResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for nova, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update nova to 12.0.0a0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2011-4076 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2011-4076 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.