CVE-2026-84499 — Red Hat
HIGHCVE-2026-84499 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.7) CWE-209 vulnerability. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
A flaw was found in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's automation- controller. Survey questions of type password are write-only and stored encrypted, displayed only as a placeholder…
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-84499 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,145 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Description
A flaw was found in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's automation- controller. Survey questions of type password are write-only and stored encrypted, displayed only as a placeholder on read. When a schedule or workflow job template node is revalidated against a tightened survey specification, the controller decrypts the stored password and includes its plaintext value in the minimum/maximum length validation error message returned in the HTTP response. A user with the delegated JobTemplate Admin role can tighten the survey length constraint and trigger revalidation of a schedule or node created by another, higher-privileged user, thereby recovering that user's stored password in plaintext.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`). Because exploitation targets the running service rather than your application code, O3 also flags the exploit behaviour from runtime telemetry and egress traffic.
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2026-84499 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Reduce reachability while you patch: restrict network access to the service to trusted sources, disable or gate the affected component where your deployment allows it, and add a WAF/IPS signature if one exists for CVE-2026-84499. O3's runtime protection blocks the cwe-209 flaw at execution, which holds the line on hosts you cannot patch immediately.
How O3 protects you
O3 detects and blocks CVE-2026-84499 exploitation at runtime with eBPF exploit-chain detection, plus L7 egress monitoring that catches a post-exploitation callback and cuts the attacker's outbound channel.
Tailored to CVE-2026-84499. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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.
This flaw affects automation-controller as shipped in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Exploitation requires an authenticated user holding the JobTemplate Admin role on the target job template; the impact is disclosure of write-only survey password values to a user not otherwise authorized to read them. [Verify…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 for RHEL 8 | automation-controller-0:4.6.33-1.el8ap | RHSA-2026:71114 |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 for RHEL 9 | automation-controller-0:4.7.17-1.el9ap | RHSA-2026:71113 |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 | ansible-automation-platform-26/controller-rhel9:1789673739 | RHSA-2026:71179 |
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.7 | ansible-automation-platform-27/controller-rhel9:1789580684 | RHSA-2026:71177 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-84499 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-84499 across dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.