CVE-2020-1746 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5) Information Exposure 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 in ansible
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-1746 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
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 Ansible Engine affecting Ansible Engine versions 2.7.x before 2.7.17 and 2.8.x before 2.8.11 and 2.9.x before 2.9.7 as well as Ansible Tower before and including versions 3.4.5 and 3.5.5 and 3.6.3 when the ldap_attr and ldap_entry community modules are used. The issue discloses the LDAP bind password to stdout or a log file if a playbook task is written using the bind_pw in the parameters field. The highest threat from this vulnerability is data confidentiality.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.8.0a1&&< 2.8.11 | 2.8.11pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.8.11' |
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.9.0a1&&< 2.9.7 | 2.9.7pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.9.7' |
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | ≥ 2.7.0a1&&< 2.7.17 | 2.7.17pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.7.17' |
Affected Products
debian linuxdebianansible 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 2.8.11 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-1746 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 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. * Red Hat Gluster Storage and Red Hat Ceph Storage no longer maintains their own version of Ansible. The fix will be provided from core Ansible. But we…
Using args keyword and embedding the ldap_auth variable instead of using bind_pw parameter would mitigate this issue.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2020-1746 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.7.17-1.el7ae | RHSA-2020:1544 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.8 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.8.11-1.el7ae | RHSA-2020:1543 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.9 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.9.7-1.el7ae | RHSA-2020:1541 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.9.7-1.el7ae | RHSA-2020:1542 |
| 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-2020-1746 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.