CVE-2026-84716 Security feature bypass in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 for RHEL 8
Administrators can obtain long-lived, non-revocable mesh certificates for impersonated hostnames, enabling TLS interception of control nodes in managed deployments.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-84716?
CVE-2026-84716 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 for RHEL 8, published on 23 Sep 2026. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A flaw was found in the automation-controller instance install-bundle endpoint. When a System Administrator downloads an execution/hop node's install bundle, the controller signs an X.509 certificate with the receptor mesh certificate authority in which the Common Name, DNS subject-alternative-name, and receptor node-id are taken verbatim from the caller-chosen instance hostname, with a hard-coded ten-year validity, a random serial, and no issuance log or revocation list. Because the hostname charset validator is case-insensitive while the uniqueness validator is case-sensitive, an administrator can register a case variant of an existing control node's hostname and obtain a mesh-CA-signed certificate that TLS peers, which match hostnames case-insensitively, accept as that control node. In managed/hosted deployments — where the customer holds controller superuser but the platform operator runs the mesh — this yields a long-lived, non-revocable mesh peer credential and, with an on-path position, TLS impersonation or interception of control/hybrid mesh nodes. It does not grant direct remote code execution, because receptor work submission is gated by a separate signing key not included in the bundle.
Weakness: CWE-266
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-84716?
How do I fix CVE-2026-84716?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-84716 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-84716 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-hcpg-prc4-w26w.