Ansible up to 1.6.6 String injection

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Ansible up to 1.6.6 and classified as very critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the component String Handler. Such manipulation leads to injection. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2014-4966. The attack may be launched remotely. There is no exploit available. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Ansible up to 1.6.6 and classified as very critical. Affected by this issue is an unknown code of the component String Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a injection vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-74. The product constructs all or part of a command, data structure, or record using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify how it is parsed or interpreted when it is sent to a downstream component. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

Ansible before 1.6.7 does not prevent inventory data with "{{" and "lookup" substrings, and does not prevent remote data with "{{" substrings, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via (1) crafted lookup('pipe') calls or (2) crafted Jinja2 data.

The weakness was shared 04/21/2023 as ocert-2014-004. The advisory is shared for download at ocert.org. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2014-4966 since 07/15/2014. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 12/15/2024). The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1055.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 77068 (Fedora 19 : ansible-1.6.10-1.fc19 (2014-8904)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment. It is assigned to the family Fedora Local Security Checks. The commercial vulnerability scanner Qualys is able to test this issue with plugin 122535 (Fedora Security Update for ansible (FEDORA-2014-8901)).

Upgrading to version 1.6.7 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 62a1295a3e08cb6c3e9f1b2a1e6e5dcaeab32527 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (77068) and SecurityFocus (BID 68794†). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Name

• Ansible

Version

• 1.6.0
• 1.6.1
• 1.6.2
• 1.6.3
• 1.6.4
• 1.6.5
• 1.6.6

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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