A flaw was found in ansible-core.
- Exploited
- No known exploitation
- Fix
- Fixed in 2.23.0
- Who is exposed
- Not reported
Do first: Upgrade to a fixed version: 2.23.0.
- Last modified
- A 0-100 score for how much a CVE matters across the industry: exploitation, exposure, how widely the software is used, severity and whether a fix exists.What do these mean? →
- 22/100 · provisional
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: none
- Automatable: no
- Technical impact: partial
Summary
A local attacker with low privileges and no user interaction needed can read secret values that ansible-core should have hidden. A flaw in ansible-core causes failed tasks marked `no_log: true` to still print their exception text, which can include secrets from extra variables or variables files.
Written by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5 from the sources below. Verify against them.
Read the original description
A flaw was found in ansible-core. When a task marked no_log: true fails, the task result is censored before being emitted, but the exception field is retained because it is present in the PRESERVE allow-list in lib/ansible/_internal/_task.py, and the default stdout callback prints it through CallbackBase._handle_exception. As a result, sensitive values the operator explicitly asked to hide can be disclosed: module argument-validation errors echo the argument value, templating errors print an Origin source snippet (the failing line plus the two preceding lines of the variables file, exposing neighbouring secrets from an -e @secrets.yml file), and fail/assert messages are printed in full. Secret material supplied as extra variables or variables files can therefore leak to terminal output, CI logs, and the stdout logs of any automation wrapping ansible-playbook, even though every task touching the secrets is marked no_log: true. This is a regression introduced with the ansible-core 2.19 data-tagging/templating rework; the behaviour does not occur on 2.16, where the error text is correctly censored.
cve.now Index
- Exploitation0/40No signal
- Exposure?/25Unknown. No advisory context yet
- Reach16/20ansible-core: 4M downloads a week
- Severity5.5/10CVSS 5.5
- No patch0/5No signal
What would change the score
- Would score about 77 if added to CISA KEV
- Would score about 72 if CISA's SSVC rates exploitation active
- Would score about 44 if advisories confirm default setups are exposed
Impact
- Widely used
ansible-core has 4m weekly downloads.Source: pypistats.org
318 packages depend on ansible-core.Source: deps.dev
What to do
Upgrade to a fixed version: 2.23.0.
Timeline
- CVE published
- First seen by cve.now
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- ansible-corePyPI
From 2.19.0 · fixed in 2.23.0
Evidence 1
- Link
Corrections
None so far.
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Questions about CVE-2026-123036
Is CVE-2026-123036 being exploited?
It is not in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and CISA's SSVC assessment does not mark exploitation as active. That does not mean it has not been attacked: vendors and researchers can report attacks before CISA lists them. No public exploit code is tracked.Source: cve.now feed data
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-123036?
ansible-core (PyPI): from 2.19.0 before 2.23.0.Source: cve.now feed data
How do I fix CVE-2026-123036?
Upgrade to a fixed version: 2.23.0.Source: cve.now feed data