CVE-2026-87874

Publication date 9 September 2026

Last updated 16 September 2026

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

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.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
ansible	26.04 LTS resolute	Needs evaluation
	24.04 LTS noble	Needs evaluation
	22.04 LTS jammy	Needs evaluation
	20.04 LTS focal	Needs evaluation
	18.04 LTS bionic	Needs evaluation
	16.04 LTS xenial	Needs evaluation
	14.04 LTS trusty	Needs evaluation
ansible-core	26.04 LTS resolute	Needs evaluation
	24.04 LTS noble	Needs evaluation
	22.04 LTS jammy	Needs evaluation

Notes

sbeattie

core ansible binaries were split into ansible-base, which got renamed to ansible-core

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version: CVSS v3.0

Base score 8.1 · High

Base metrics

Parameter	Value
Attack vector	Network
Attack complexity	High
Privileges required	None
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality impact	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High

Scores

Parameter	Value
Base score	8.1 · High
Exploitability score	-
Impact score	-

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H