# CVE-2026-87874: Deserialization in Red Hat Ceph Storage 5

> An attacker with network access to memcached can inject malicious pickle data, leading to remote code execution on the Ansible controller.

- **Severity:** High 8.1 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 9 Sep 2026
- **Updated:** 10 Sep 2026
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2026-87874, GHSA-9xm7-6q66-g534, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-87874

## What is CVE-2026-87874?

CVE-2026-87874 is a high-severity unsafe deserialization vulnerability in Red Hat Ceph Storage 5, published on 9 Sep 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A flaw was found in the memcached cache plugin of the community.general Ansible
collection. Although its documentation states that records are stored in JSON
format, the plugin performs no explicit serialization and relies on
python-memcached, which pickles values on write and unpickles them on read.
Because memcached is unauthenticated and cache keys are predictable, an attacker
able to reach a network-exposed or shared memcached instance can write a crafted
pickle payload that is deserialized and executed on the Ansible controller when
the poisoned fact cache is next read, leading to remote code execution.

Weakness: CWE-502 (Deserialization of Untrusted Data)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-87874?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-87874?

No fix has been published for CVE-2026-87874 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2026-87874 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-87874 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-87874 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-87874 is a high-severity unsafe deserialization vulnerability in Red Hat Ceph Storage 5, published on 9 Sep 2026. 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-2026-87874 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Red Hat Ceph Storage 5. 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-2026-87874/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-87874/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-87874
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-87874
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-87874

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-87874/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.