# CVE-2018-11746: Puppet Discovery can leak authentication information

> Puppet Discovery may leak credentials by falling back to insecure basic authentication when HTTPS is unavailable for WinRM connections.

- **Severity:** High 8.6 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 3 Jul 2018
- **Updated:** 16 Sep 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-jvhf-6jm8-m5v7

## What is CVE-2018-11746?

CVE-2018-11746 is a high-severity vulnerability in Puppet Discovery, published on 3 Jul 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

In Puppet Discovery prior to 1.2.0, when running Discovery against Windows hosts, WinRM connections can fall back to using basic auth over insecure channels if a HTTPS server is not available. This can expose the login credentials being used by Puppet Discovery.

Weakness: CWE-522 (Insufficiently Protected Credentials)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-11746?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Puppet Discovery.

## How do I fix CVE-2018-11746?

No fix has been published for CVE-2018-11746 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2018-11746 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-11746 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Puppet Discovery

- [CVE-2018-11747](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-11747/): Previously, Puppet Discovery was shipped with a default generated TLS certificate in the nginx container. (critical 9.8)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2018-11746 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2018-11746 is a high-severity vulnerability in Puppet Discovery, published on 3 Jul 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-11746 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Puppet Discovery. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-11746/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-11746/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2018-11746
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-11746
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2018-11746

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-11746/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.