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MEDIUM severity

CVE-2020-1740 — ansible

MEDIUMFix: ansible/ansible@28f9fbd

CVE-2020-1740 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.7) CWE-377 vulnerability in ansible. A fix is available for ansible — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor and Insecure Temporary File in Ansible

Also known asGHSA-vcg8-98q8-g7mjPYSEC-2020-12
Published
Updated
Affected
3 pkgs
Patched
3 / 3
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 10, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.4%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs28th percentile — riskier than 28% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.29%0.58%0.88%0.0%0.4%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2020-1740 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 385,386 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

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

A flaw was found in Ansible Engine when using Ansible Vault for editing encrypted files. When a user executes "ansible-vault edit", another user on the same computer can read the old and new secret, as it is created in a temporary file with mkstemp and the returned file descriptor is closed and the method write_data is called to write the existing secret in the file. This method will delete the file before recreating it insecurely. All versions in 2.7.x, 2.8.x and 2.9.x branches are believed to be vulnerable.

Affected Packages

3 total 3 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐍PyPIansibleall versions2.7.17pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.7.17'
🐍PyPIansible≥ 2.8.0a1&&< 2.8.112.8.11pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.8.11'
🐍PyPIansible≥ 2.9.0a1&&< 2.9.72.9.7pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.9.7'

Affected Products

6 products · 14 configurations
OS
debian linuxdebian
2 versions
8.010.0
OS
fedorafedoraproject
3 versions
303132
Application
ansibleredhat
≥ 2.9.0 && < 2.9.7
range
Application
ansible towerredhat
≥ 3.6.0 && ≤ 3.6.3
range
Application
cloudforms management engineredhat
1 version
5.0
Application
openstackredhat
1 version
13

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. 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.

  2. Fix

    Update ansible to 2.7.17 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-1740 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. 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.

Red HatLow

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…

Workaround published by Red Hat
Currently, there is no mitigation for this issue except avoid using the 'edit' option from 'ansible-vault' command line tool.
Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2020-1740 (CC BY 4.0)
ProductFixed inAdvisory
Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7 for RHEL 7ansible-0:2.7.17-1.el7aeRHSA-2020:1544
Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.8 for RHEL 7ansible-0:2.8.11-1.el7aeRHSA-2020:1543
Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.9 for RHEL 7ansible-0:2.9.7-1.el7aeRHSA-2020:1541
Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7ansible-0:2.9.7-1.el7aeRHSA-2020:1542
Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.4 for RHEL 7ansible-tower-34/ansible-tower-memcached:1.4.15-28RHBA-2020:0547
Red Hat Ansible Tower 3.5 for RHEL 7ansible-tower-35/ansible-tower:3.5.6-1RHBA-2020:1539

Frequently Asked Questions

A flaw was found in Ansible Engine when using Ansible Vault for editing encrypted files. When a user executes "ansible-vault edit", another user on the same computer can read the old and new secret, as it is created in a temporary file with mkstemp and the returned file descriptor is closed and the method write_data is called to write the existing secret in the file. This method will delete the file before recreating it insecurely. All versions in 2.7.x, 2.8.x and 2.9.x branches are believed to be vulnerable.
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2020-1740: ansible — Fixed in 2.7.17