ansible-core: symlink chain in a collection tarball writes files outside the install directory

Impact

A crafted Ansible collection tarball can escape the install directory: the extractor normalises member paths lexically with os.path.abspath instead of resolving symlinks with os.path.realpath, and never checks containment for symlink-typed directory members. An operator who runs ansible-galaxy collection install on a malicious or tampered collection has arbitrary files overwritten as the invoking user, which on a config-management control node means code execution with whatever reach that node has - SSH keys and inventory for the whole fleet, including every GPU node it provisions. Red Hat notes this bypasses the fix for CVE-2020-10691, so a host patched only for that issue is still exposed. The blast radius is the automation host rather than the GPU nodes themselves, but a compromised control node is a path onto all of them.

Who can reach it

No authentication to the control node is needed; the attacker needs an operator or a CI job to install a collection they control - a typosquatted or compromised Galaxy namespace, or a tarball pulled from an untrusted URL. Exploitation runs with the privileges of the user invoking ansible-galaxy, so a root-run or CI-service-account install is the worst case.

What to do

Update ansible-core from the distribution to the fixed build and, for Red Hat users, apply the Ansible Automation Platform errata tracked in the Red Hat CVE page; Red Hat had not published fixed version numbers in this record, so check the advisory before planning the window. No node drain or reboot is involved - this is a package update on control and CI hosts, with any long-lived ansible-galaxy worker processes restarted afterwards. Until patched, install collections only from vetted sources, pin them by checksum in requirements.yml, and do not run ansible-galaxy as root.

References

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