CVE-2017-10689 — puppet
MEDIUMCVE-2017-10689 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.5) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in puppet. A fix is available for puppet — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Tarball permission preservation in puppet
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2017-10689 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
puppet💎puppetReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
In previous versions of Puppet Agent it was possible to install a module with world writable permissions. Puppet Agent 5.3.4 and 1.10.10 included a fix to this vulnerability.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | puppet | all versions | 4.10.10bundle update puppet --conservative |
| 💎RubyGems | puppet | ≥ 5.0.0&&< 5.3.4 | 5.3.4bundle update puppet --conservative |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for puppet, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update puppet to 4.10.10 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2017-10689 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2017-10689 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2017-10689. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Red Hat Product Security has rated this issue as having security impact of Low. This issue affects the versions of puppet as shipped with: * Red Hat Satellite 6. A future update may address this issue. * Red Hat OpenStack Platform versions 6-12. Although the affected code is present in shipped packages, the…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Satellite 6.4 for RHEL 7 | ansiblerole-insights-client-0:1.5-1.el7sat | RHSA-2018:2927 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2017-10689 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2017-10689 across RubyGems dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.