Predictive Vulnerability Intelligence.

Product

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Documentation

Company

  • About
  • Partnerships
  • Blog
  • Support

Legal

  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Data Licensing

© 2026 FAUCET Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

CVE-2018-16859

18
FAUCET Score

CVE-2018-16859 describes a plaintext password exposure vulnerability in Ansible Engine versions 2.8 and older when executing playbooks on Windows platforms with PowerShell ScriptBlock and Module logging enabled. This misconfiguration allows "become" passwords to be stored in EventLogs, making them accessible to local administrators. The vulnerability has a CVSS score of 4.4 (Medium), indicating a local attack vector with low complexity, requiring high privileges to achieve high confidentiality impact. There is no known active exploitation, public exploit code, or significant community discussion surrounding this CVE.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
< 2.5.13CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_engine:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 2.6.0, < 2.6.10CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_engine:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 2.7.0, < 2.7.4CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_engine:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
>= 2.7.5, <= 2.8CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:redhat:ansible_engine:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.0

4.2MEDIUM

CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
HIGH
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
NONE
Availability Impact
NONE
Exploitability Score
0.6
Impact Score
3.6
CvssVersion
3.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
0.53%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
42.0%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-28
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0053 is in the 91st percentile among its peer group of 3,720 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.0 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.1 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (20)

github_advisorypatch availablevia nvd_reference
View patch
pippatch availablevia ghsa
Product: ansibleFixed in: 2.5.12
pippatch availablevia ghsa
Product: ansibleFixed in: 2.6.9
pippatch availablevia ghsa
Product: ansibleFixed in: 2.7.3
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.5 for RHEL 7Fixed in: ansible-0:2.5.13-1.el7ae
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.6 for RHEL 7Fixed in: ansible-0:2.6.10-1.el7ae
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.7 for RHEL 7Fixed in: ansible-0:2.7.4-1.el7ae
View patch
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Ansible Engine 2 for RHEL 7Fixed in: ansible-0:2.7.4-1.el7ae
View patch
redhatvendor investigatingvia nvd_reference
View patch
redhatno patchvia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Ceph Storage 3Fixed in: ansible
redhatno patchvia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.7Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.4Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.5Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.6Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Storage 3Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton)Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenStack Platform 12 (Pike)Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens)Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat OpenStack Platform 14 (Rocky)Fixed in: ansible
redhatend of lifevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Ceph Storage 2Fixed in: ansible

Vendor Advisories (2)

pipGHSA-v735-2pp6-h86rmedium

Ansible Logs Passwords If PowerShell ScriptBlock is Enabled

May 14, 2022
redhatCVE-2018-16859Moderate

ansible: become password logged in plaintext when used with PowerShell on Windows

Nov 16, 2018

References

lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-security-announce/2019-04/msg00021.html
lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-security-announce/2019-06/msg00077.html
lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-security-announce/2019-08/msg00020.html
access.redhat.com / errata/RHSA-2018:3770
Vendor Advisory
access.redhat.com / errata/RHSA-2018:3771
Vendor Advisory
access.redhat.com / errata/RHSA-2018:3772
Issue TrackingVendor Advisory
access.redhat.com / errata/RHSA-2018:3773
Vendor Advisory
bugzilla.redhat.com / show_bug.cgi
Issue TrackingVendor Advisory
github.com / ansible/ansible/pull/49142
PatchThird Party Advisory
securityfocus.com / bid/106004
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry