CVE-2018-16876 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Information Exposure vulnerability in ansible. A fix is available for ansible — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Ansible sensitive information disclosure
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
ansible🐍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
ansible before versions 2.5.14, 2.6.11, 2.7.5 is vulnerable to a information disclosure flaw in vvv+ mode with no_log on that can lead to leakage of sensible data.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | all versions | 2.5.14pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.5.14' |
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.6.0a1&&< 2.6.11 | 2.6.11pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.6.11' |
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.7.0a1&&< 2.7.5 | 2.7.5pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.7.5' |
Affected Products
ubuntu linuxcanonicaldebian linuxdebianansibleredhatansible engineredhatenterprise linux desktopredhatenterprise linux serverredhatDetection & 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 2.5.14 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2018-16876 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.
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.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.5 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.5.14-1.el7ae | RHSA-2018:3835 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.6 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.6.11-1.el7ae | RHSA-2018:3836 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.7.5-1.el7ae | RHSA-2018:3837 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.7.5-1.el7ae | RHSA-2018:3838 |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13.0 (Queens) | ansible-0:2.6.11-1.el7ae | RHSA-2019:0564 |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 14.0 (Rocky) | ansible-0:2.6.11-1.el7ae | RHSA-2019:0590 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2018-16876 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.