CVE-2017-7550 — ansible
CRITICALCVE-2017-7550 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-532 vulnerability in ansible. A fix is available for ansible — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Ansible Insertion of Sensitive Information into Log File vulnerability
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-2017-7550 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 377,166 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
ansible🐍ansibleReal-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
A flaw was found in the way Ansible (2.3.x before 2.3.3, and 2.4.x before 2.4.1) passed certain parameters to the jenkins_plugin module. Remote attackers could use this flaw to expose sensitive information from a remote host's logs. This flaw was fixed by not allowing passwords to be specified in the "params" argument, and noting this in the module documentation.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.4.0.0&&< 2.4.1.0 | 2.4.1.0pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.4.1.0' |
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.3.0.0&&< 2.3.3.0 | 2.3.3.0pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.3.3.0' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for ansible, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update ansible to 2.4.1.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2017-7550 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-2017-7550 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2017-7550. 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 OpenStack Platform will no longer be updating the Ansible package in: * Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton) * Red Hat OpenStack Platform 11 (Ocata) As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4, customers can consume an updated Ansible package directly from the extras-rhel-7.4 channel. For more information, refer to…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extras | ansible-0:2.4.0.0-5.el7 | RHSA-2017:2966 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2017-7550 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2017-7550 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.