CVE-2026-87874

Summary

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.

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus

Weaknesses

  • CWE-502: Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Workarounds

Bind memcached to localhost only (the plugin default, 127.0.0.1:11211) and never expose an unauthenticated memcached across a trust boundary; isolate the cache to the controller. Prefer the redis cache plugin (explicit JSON) or the jsonfile/yaml cache plugins where a shared/remote fact cache is required. Treat any host with write access to the fact-cache memcached as trusted to run code on the controller.

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

  • SSVC:
  • Exploitation: none
    • Automatable: no
    • Technical Impact: total

References