A flaw was found in the memcached cache plugin of the community.general Ansible
collection. Although its documentation states that records are stored in JSON
format, the plugin performs no explicit serialization and relies on
python-memcached, which pickles values on write and unpickles them on read.
Because memcached is unauthenticated and cache keys are predictable, an attacker
able to reach a network-exposed or shared memcached instance can write a crafted
pickle payload that is deserialized and executed on the Ansible controller when
the poisoned fact cache is next read, leading to remote code execution.
Attack Parameters
Attack Vector
Network
Can be exploited remotely
Attack Complexity
High
Difficult to exploit
Privileges Required
None
No privileges needed
User Interaction
None
No user interaction needed
Impact Assessment
Confidentiality
High
Complete data leak
Integrity
High
Complete data modification
Availability
High
Complete denial of service
CVSS Vector v3.1