Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
Ansible Tower before 3.2.4 let an organization administrator reset the password of a system administrator who belonged to that organization. That could let a lower-scope administrator take over full Tower administration.
Executive priority
Prioritize remediation for any production Tower instance below 3.2.4. The issue is insider or delegated-admin scoped, but successful abuse could compromise automation control across the environment.
Technical view
CVE-2018-1101 is a CWE-266 privilege management flaw in Ansible Tower before 3.2.4. Organization administrators could reset passwords for system administrators who were organization members, allowing privilege escalation to system-wide access.
Likely exposure
Exposure is limited to Ansible Tower deployments before 3.2.4 where organization administrators exist and system administrators are also members of those organizations.
Exploitation context
The provided sources do not report active exploitation, and the CVE is not listed as CISA KEV. Exploitation requires an organization administrator role relationship described in the CVE.
Researcher notes
The public bundle does not include CVSS details or exploit evidence. The core validation point is whether Tower role boundaries allowed organization admins to reset credentials for system administrators.
Mitigation direction
- Upgrade Ansible Tower to 3.2.4 or later per Red Hat guidance.
- Review Red Hat advisories RHSA-2018:1328 and RHSA-2018:1972.
- Remove unnecessary organization administrator privileges.
- Avoid placing system administrators in organizations unless operationally required.
- Review vendor guidance for any environment-specific remediation steps.
Validation and detection
- Inventory all Ansible Tower instances and confirm their versions.
- Identify organization administrators and system administrators in each organization.
- Review audit logs for password resets targeting system administrators.
- Confirm Red Hat advisory fixes are applied to affected deployments.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CWE-266: Exact CWE lookup
Use the exact CWE identifier as the starting point before reviewing related ATT&CK behavior. Open the exact CWE lookup page first, then review the ATT&CK searches from that MITRE weakness context. This is a Glexia lookup hint, not an official ATT&CK mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupPrivilege behavior lookup
The CVE wording references privilege impact, so privilege escalation and authorization behavior review may help. This is a Glexia inferred lookup path, not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, or CVE Program mapping.
Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2018-1101 mapping review
Open the CVE-to-ATT&CK bridge for reviewed, inferred, or future official mappings tied to this CVE.
Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- Unknown
- CVSS
- Not scored
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5
These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.
CVSS and timeline data
No CVSS vectors or timeline events were available in the normalized CVE source material.
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://www.ansible.com/securityCVE reference · x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1563492CVE reference · x_refsource_CONFIRM
- RHSA-2018:1972CVE reference · vendor-advisory, x_refsource_REDHAT
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2018-1101CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
- RHSA-2018:1328CVE reference · vendor-advisory, x_refsource_REDHAT
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.
Incorrect Privilege Assignment
Incorrect Privilege Assignment represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.