How severe is CVE-2018-10874?

CVE-2018-10874 has a CVSS score of 7.8/10, rated HIGH. Immediate patching is strongly recommended.

Which packages are affected by CVE-2018-10874?

CVE-2018-10874 affects the following packages: ansible (PyPI), ansible (PyPI), ansible (PyPI). Ecosystems affected: PyPI.

How do I fix CVE-2018-10874?

Update ansible to 2.4.6.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2018-10874 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect CVE-2018-10874 in my PyPI dependencies?

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.

How do I mitigate CVE-2018-10874 if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against CVE-2018-10874?

O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2018-10874 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.

Is CVE-2018-10874 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for CVE-2018-10874 yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for CVE-2018-10874?

CVE-2018-10874 has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 0.5%, placing it in the 41th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is CVE-2018-10874?

CVE-2018-10874 is classified as CWE-426 (CWE-426), Improper Input Validation (CWE-20). These weakness types describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation.

When was CVE-2018-10874 published, and has it been updated?

CVE-2018-10874 was published on July 2, 2018 and was last updated on August 7, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

🐍

🐍 PyPI

Not in CISA KEV

HIGH severity

CVE-2018-10874 — ansible

HIGHFix: ansible/ansible#42067

CVE-2018-10874 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) CWE-426 vulnerability in ansible. A fix is available for ansible — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Ansible Improper Input Validation vulnerability

Also known asGHSA-3xvg-x47j-x75wPYSEC-2018-81

Published

Jul 2, 2018

Updated

Aug 7, 2026

Affected

3 pkgs

Patched

3 / 3

Exploits

None indexed

Exploitation data as of Sep 21, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

0.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk0.00%

Lower risk than most CVEs41th percentile — riskier than 41% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

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-2018-10874 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 378,156 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

3 pkgs affected

🐍ansible🐍ansible🐍ansible

Real-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

In ansible it was found that inventory variables are loaded from current working directory when running ad-hoc command which are under attacker's control, allowing to run arbitrary code as a result.

Affected Packages

3 total 3 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
🐍PyPI	`ansible`	all versions	2.4.6.0`pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.4.6.0'`
🐍PyPI	`ansible`	≥ 2.5&&< 2.5.6	2.5.6`pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.5.6'`
🐍PyPI	`ansible`	≥ 2.6&&< 2.6.1	2.6.1`pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.6.1'`

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
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 2.4.6.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2018-10874 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-2018-10874 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.

Tailored to CVE-2018-10874. 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 HatModerate

Red Hat Gluster Storage 3 and Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 ships the affected version of ansible, but they no longer maintain their own version of ansible. Both the products will consume fixes directly from ansible repository.

Product	Fixed in	Advisory
Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.4 for RHEL 7	`ansible-0:2.4.6.0-1.el7ae`	RHSA-2018:2152
Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.5 for RHEL 7	`ansible-0:2.5.6-1.el7ae`	RHSA-2018:2150
Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.6 for RHEL 7	`ansible-0:2.6.1-1.el7ae`	RHSA-2018:2166
Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7	`ansible-0:2.6.1-1.el7ae`	RHSA-2018:2151
Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10.0 (Newton)	`ansible-0:2.4.6.0-1.el7ae`	RHSA-2019:0054
Red Hat OpenStack Platform 12.0 (Pike)	`ansible-0:2.4.6.0-1.el7ae`	RHBA-2018:3788
Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13.0 (Queens)	`ansible-0:2.4.6.0-1.el7ae`	RHSA-2018:2585
Red Hat Virtualization 4 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	`imgbased-0:1.0.22-1.el7ev`	RHSA-2018:2321

UbuntuHIGH

USN-4072-1Ubuntu

Frequently Asked Questions

In ansible it was found that inventory variables are loaded from current working directory when running ad-hoc command which are under attacker's control, allowing to run arbitrary code as a result.

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2018-10874 in your dependencies?

O3 Security finds CVE-2018-10874 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works