# CVE-2020-10697: Missing authorization in Tower

> An attacker can pollute the memcached cache via a playbook, causing denial of service or potentially accessing sensitive data in Ansible Tower.

- **Severity:** Medium 4.4 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:L`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 27 May 2021
- **Updated:** 4 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-rhg6-3qw6-38pp

## What is CVE-2020-10697?

CVE-2020-10697 is a medium-severity missing authorization vulnerability in Redhat Ansible Tower, published on 27 May 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A flaw was found in Ansible Tower when running Openshift. Tower runs a memcached, which is accessed via TCP. An attacker can take advantage of writing a playbook polluting this cache, causing a denial of service attack. This attack would not completely stop the service, but in the worst-case scenario, it can reduce the Tower performance, for which memcached is designed. Theoretically, more sophisticated attacks can be performed by manipulating and crafting the cache, as Tower relies on memcached as a place to pull out setting values. Confidential and sensitive data stored in memcached should not be pulled, as this information is encrypted. This flaw affects Ansible Tower versions before 3.6.4, Ansible Tower versions before 3.5.6 and Ansible Tower versions before 3.4.6.

Weakness: CWE-862 (Missing Authorization)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-10697?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Redhat Ansible Tower.

## How do I fix CVE-2020-10697?

No fix has been published for CVE-2020-10697 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2020-10697 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-10697 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Redhat Ansible Tower

- [CVE-2018-10884](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-10884/): Cross-site request forgery in ansible-tower (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2018-1104](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-1104/): Code injection in Ansible Tower (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2019-14890](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-14890/): Information disclosure in Tower (high 8.4)
- [CVE-2017-12148](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-12148/): Code injection in Ansible Tower (high 8.4)
- [CVE-2019-19340](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-19340/): Misconfiguration in Tower (high 8.2)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2020-10697 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2020-10697 is a medium-severity missing authorization vulnerability in Redhat Ansible Tower, published on 27 May 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-10697 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Redhat Ansible Tower. 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-2020-10697/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-10697/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-10697
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-10697
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2020-10697

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-10697/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.