CVE-2020-1734 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.4) OS Command Injection vulnerability in ansible. A fix is available for ansible — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OS Command Injection in ansible
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-1734 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,738 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
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
A flaw was found in the pipe lookup plugin of ansible. Arbitrary commands can be run, when the pipe lookup plugin uses subprocess.Popen() with shell=True, by overwriting ansible facts and the variable is not escaped by quote plugin. An attacker could take advantage and run arbitrary commands by overwriting the ansible facts.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.10.0a1&&< 2.10.0rc1 | 2.10.0rc1pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.10.0rc1' |
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.9.0a1&&< 2.9.11 | 2.9.11pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.9.11' |
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | all versions | 2.8.13pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.8.13' |
Affected Products
ansible engineredhatansible towerredhatDetection & 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 2.10.0rc1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-1734 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
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 Engine 2.7.16, 2.8.10, and 2.9.6 as well as previous versions are affected. Ansible Tower 3.4.5, 3.5.5 and 3.6.3 as well as previous versions are affected. In Red Hat OpenStack Platform, because the flaw has a lower impact, ansible is not directly customer exposed, and the fix would require a substantial…
This issue can be avoided by escaping variables which are used in the lookup.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2020-1734 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.4 for RHEL 7 | ansible-tower-34/ansible-tower-memcached:1.4.15-28 | RHBA-2020:0547 |
| Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.5 for RHEL 7 | ansible-tower-35/ansible-tower:3.5.6-1 | RHBA-2020:1539 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-1734 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.