CVE-2019-10217 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Information Exposure vulnerability in ansible. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for ansible — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor in ansible
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2019-10217 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,987 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
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 ansible 2.8.0 before 2.8.4. Fields managing sensitive data should be set as such by no_log feature. Some of these fields in GCP modules are not set properly. service_account_contents() which is common class for all gcp modules is not setting no_log to True. Any sensitive data managed by that function would be leak as an output when running ansible playbooks.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.8.0a1&&< 2.8.4 | 2.8.4pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.8.4' |
Affected Products
ansibleredhatResearch 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 ansible, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update ansible to 2.8.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2019-10217 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.
Ansible shipped with Red Hat Ceph Storage 3; Red Hat OpenStack 10, 13, and 14; and Ansible Engine 2.6 and 2.7 are not vulnerable as they do not include the cred_type implementation (service_account_contents).
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.8 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.8.4-1.el7ae | RHSA-2019:2542 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.8.4-1.el7ae | RHSA-2019:2543 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2019-10217 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.