CVE-2020-10685

A flaw was found in 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 using modules which decrypts vault files such as assemble, script, unarchive, win_copy, aws_s3 or copy modules. The temporary directory is created in /tmp leaves the s ts unencrypted. On Operating Systems which /tmp is not a tmpfs but part of the root partition, the directory is only cleared on boot and the decryp emains when the host is switched off. The system will be vulnerable when the system is not running. So decrypted data must be cleared as soon as possible and the data which normally is encrypted ble.

Published: 2020-05-11 Last update: 2024-11-21 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2020-10685 is rated Low Risk (33.7/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.17%). 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-2020-10685

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 2026-01-05 0.13% 0.17% +0.05%
2 2025-06-19 0.16% 0.13% -0.03%
3 2025-03-30 — 0.16% —

Full EPSS history (13 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2020-10685

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.0 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N 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:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 1.3 3.6 [email protected]
5.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N 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:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 1.8 3.6 [email protected]
1.9 2.0 LOW
AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Access vector (AV:L)
Requires local access to the target system.
Access complexity (AC:M)
Exploitation needs some favorable conditions, but not exceptional ones.
Authentication (AU:N)
No authentication is required.
Confidentiality impact (C:P)
Partial confidentiality impact.
Integrity impact (I:N)
No integrity impact.
Availability impact (A:N)
No availability impact.
 3.4 2.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2020-10685

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2020-10685

GHSA-77g3-3j5w-64w4 · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: pip — Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere and Insecure Temporary File in Ansible

OS Trackers for CVE-2020-10685

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2020-10685 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-2020-10685
gentoo normal CVE-2020-10685: 1 GLSA(s) (202006-11), 1 atom(s) (app-admin/ansible); latest impact normal. https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2020-10685
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-10685
suse medium CVE-2020-10685 severity moderate: SUSE including 116 source package names (ansible-10-10.6.0-1.1, ansible-11-11.11.0-1.1, …), 248 product×package rows across 10 product lines (HPE Helion OpenStack 8, HPE Helion OpenStack Cloud 8, … (10 product lines)): Fixed 246, Known Not Affected 2. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-10685/
ubuntu medium CVE-2020-10685 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 13, needed 2, ignored 1, released 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2020-10685

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2020-10685

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
redhat ansible_engine >= 2.7.0, < 2.7.17 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_engine:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ansible_engine >= 2.8.0, < 2.8.11 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_engine:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ansible_engine >= 2.9.0, < 2.9.7 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_engine:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ansible_tower <= 3.4.5 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 ceph_storage 2.0 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ceph_storage:2.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat ceph_storage 3.0 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ceph_storage:3.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat openstack 10 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:openstack:10:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat openstack 13 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:openstack:13:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat openstack 15 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:openstack:15:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
redhat storage 3.0 cpe:2.3:a:redhat:storage:3.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 10.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2020-10685

cvelogic Threat Intelligence