CVE-2020-10684

A flaw was found in Ansible Engine, all versions 2.7.x, 2.8.x and 2.9.x prior to 2.7.17, 2.8.9 and 2.9.6 respectively, when using ansible_facts as a subkey of itself and promoting it to a variable when inject is enabled, overwriting the ansible_facts after the clean. An attacker could take advantage of this by altering the ansible_facts, such as ansible_hosts, users and any other key data which would lead into privilege escalation or code injection.

Published: 2020-03-24 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2020-10684 is rated Low Risk (34/100): CVSS High severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.03%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2020-10684

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2025-06-19 0.10% 0.03% -0.07%
2 2025-03-19 0.04% 0.10% +0.05%
3 2023-03-07 0.04%

Full EPSS history (9 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2020-10684

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.9 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
1.5 5.8 [email protected]
7.1 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
1.8 5.2 [email protected]
3.6 2.0 LOW
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P Click to expand
Access vector (AV:L)
Requires local access to the target system.
Access complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and predictable.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:N)
No confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:P)
Partial integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:P)
Partial availability impact.
3.9 4.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2020-10684

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2020-10684

GHSA-p62g-jhg6-v3rq · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: pip — Code Injection, Race Condition, and Execution with Unnecessary Privileges in Ansible

OS Trackers for CVE-2020-10684

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2020-10684 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (ansible), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-10684
gentoo normal CVE-2020-10684: 1 GLSA(s) (202006-11), 1 atom(s) (app-admin/ansible); latest impact normal. https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2020-10684
redhat high https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-10684
suse high CVE-2020-10684 severity important: SUSE including 115 source package names (ansible-10-10.6.0-1.1, ansible-11-11.11.0-1.1, …), 246 product×package rows across 8 product lines (HPE Helion OpenStack 8, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3-TERADATA, … (8 product lines)): Fixed 246. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-10684/
ubuntu medium CVE-2020-10684 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (ansible), 17 status rows across 17 suites (bionic, eoan, focal, groovy, hirsute, impish, jammy, kinetic, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 11, ignored 3, needed 2, released 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-10684

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2020-10684

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
redhat ansible >= 2.7.0, < 2.7.17 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ansible >= 2.8.0, < 2.8.9 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ansible >= 2.9.0, < 2.9.6 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ansible_tower <= 3.3.5 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_tower:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ansible_tower >= 3.5.0, <= 3.5.5 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_tower:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ansible_tower >= 3.6.0, <= 3.6.3 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_tower:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat openstack 10 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:openstack:10:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat openstack 13 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:openstack:13:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 10.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 30 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:30:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 31 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:31:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 32 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:32:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2020-10684

cvelogic Threat Intelligence