Vulnerability record · CVE-2020-1733 · published 11 March 2020
CVE-2020-1733: Redhat ansible race condition vulnerability
Redhat · Ansible
A race condition flaw was found in Ansible Engine 2.7.17 and prior, 2.8.9 and prior, 2.9.6 and prior when running a playbook with an unprivileged become user. When Ansible needs to run a module with become user, the temporary directory is created in /var/tmp. This directory is created with "umask 77 && mkdir -p <dir>"; this operation does not fail if the directory already exists and is owned by another user. An attacker could take advantage to gain control of the become user as the target directory can be retrieved by iterating '/proc/<pid>/cmdline'.
Description
A race condition flaw was found in Ansible Engine 2.7.17 and prior, 2.8.9 and prior, 2.9.6 and prior when running a playbook with an unprivileged become user. When Ansible needs to run a module with become user, the temporary directory is created in /var/tmp. This directory is created with "umask 77 && mkdir -p <dir>"; this operation does not fail if the directory already exists and is owned by another user. An attacker could take advantage to gain control of the become user as the target directory can be retrieved by iterating '/proc/<pid>/cmdline'.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L
Affected products
6 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.
References
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2020-1733), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-28). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
