CVE-2026-11837

Name	CVE-2026-11837
Description	A local privilege escalation vulnerability was found in the ansible.posix authorized_key module. The module's keyfile() function uses os.chown() instead of os.lchown() and opens files without O_NOFOLLOW when managing SSH authorized keys. An unprivileged local user can pre-stage symbolic links in their ~/.ssh directory to redirect file ownership changes to arbitrary system paths when an operator runs the authorized_key task as root, leading to local privilege escalation.
Source	CVE (at NVD; CERT, ENISA, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Debian ELTS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)
Debian Bugs	1139917

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source Package	Release	Version	Status
ansible (PTS)	bullseye	2.10.7+merged+base+2.10.17+dfsg-0+deb11u1	vulnerable
	bullseye (security)	2.10.7+merged+base+2.10.17+dfsg-0+deb11u4	vulnerable
	bookworm	7.7.0+dfsg-3+deb12u1	vulnerable
	trixie	12.0.0+dfsg-0+deb13u1	vulnerable
	forky, sid	14.0.0+dfsg-1	vulnerable

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

Package	Type	Release	Fixed Version	Urgency	Origin	Debian Bugs
ansible	source	(unstable)	(unfixed)			1139917

Notes

[trixie] - ansible <no-dsa> (Minor issue)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2487424
https://github.com/ansible-collections/ansible.posix/issues/759
https://github.com/ansible-collections/ansible.posix/pull/760
Fixed by: https://github.com/ansible-collections/ansible.posix/commit/18f2f69c53ffe8014a3047ac8c523ae6671be63e