CVE-2021-3620 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.5) CWE-209 vulnerability in ansible. A fix is available for ansible — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Ansible discloses sensitive information in traceback error message
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2021-3620.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2021-3620 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
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 is an IT automation system that handles configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad-hoc task execution, network automation, and multi-node orchestration. A flaw was found in Ansible Engine's ansible-connection module where sensitive information, such as the Ansible user credentials, is disclosed by default in the traceback error message when Ansible receives an unexpected response from set_options. The highest threat from this vulnerability is confidentiality.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | ansible | all versions | 2.9.27pip install --upgrade 'ansible==2.9.27' |
Affected Products
ansible automation platform early accessredhatansible engineredhatenterprise linuxredhatenterprise linux for power little endianredhatopenstackredhatvirtualizationredhatDetection & 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 2.9.27 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-3620 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
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 Hat Gluster Storage 3 no longer maintains its own version of Ansible. The prerequisite is to enable the Ansible repository in order to consume the latest version of Ansible, which has many bug and security fixes. Red Hat Ceph Storage 2 only provides fixes for bugs on an as-requested basis by a customer, and will…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.0 for RHEL 8 | ansible-0:2.9.27-1.el8ap | RHSA-2021:3874 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.9 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.9.27-1.el7ae | RHSA-2021:3871 |
| Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7 | ansible-0:2.9.27-1.el7ae | RHSA-2021:3872 |
| Red Hat Virtualization 4 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | ansible-0:2.9.27-1.el8ae | RHSA-2021:4703 |
| Red Hat Virtualization 4 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | redhat-virtualization-host-0:4.4.9-202111172338_8.5 | RHSA-2021:4750 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-3620 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.