CVE-2026-55074
Ansible FreeBSD Jail Connection Plugin: Jail escape via symlink following in put_file (host-side root mv)
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 8.2 High
- Published
- Sep 21, 2026
- Updated
- Sep 21, 2026
- Reserved
- Jun 16, 2026
Description
Ansible FreeBSD Jail Connection Plugin is an Ansible connection plugin for FreeBSD Jails via jexec. Through version 1.3.0, the jailexec connection plugin's put_file resolved a transfer's destination to a path on the jail host ( + ) and ran mkdir -p and mv there as root on the host. Those commands follow symbolic links, and the path was operated on outside the jail, so a symlink existing inside the jail was followed by the host-side, root-privileged mv. A party controlling content inside a managed jail (the jail's root, or any process able to create a symlink in a directory an Ansible task later writes to) can therefore cause an arbitrary root-owned write on the host, outside the jail — a full jail escape. Arbitrary root-owned host writes are readily escalated to host compromise (e.g. cron, rc.d, authorized_keys). Preconditions for this vulnerability are that the operator runs a copy/template/fetch-style task (anything using put_file) against the jail, and the attacker can place a symlink inside the jail at or above the task's destination before the transfer runs. This issue has been fixed in version 2.0.0.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | 8.2 High | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N | GitHub_M |
Weaknesses
- CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access ('Link Following')
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
ansible_jailexecchofstede |
|
References
- https://github.com/chofstede/ansible_jailexec/security/advisories/GHSA-cxgv-hp74-jj7r
- https://github.com/chofstede/ansible_jailexec/pull/6
- https://github.com/chofstede/ansible_jailexec/commit/6e80eecb2db7aebd1258fded6ae5c3aba1dd4123
- https://github.com/chofstede/ansible_jailexec/blob/main/docs/security/advisory-2.0.0-jail-escape.md
- https://github.com/chofstede/ansible_jailexec/releases/tag/v2.0.0
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