Ansible Automation Platform Container Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

A privilege escalation vulnerability has been identified in certain Ansible Automation Platform container images. The issue stems from the /etc/passwd file being created with group-writable permissions during the build process. This vulnerability allows an attacker, even as a non-root user, to exploit their membership in the root group to modify the /etc/passwd file. By doing so, the attacker could add a new user with any arbitrary UID, including UID 0, thereby gaining full root privileges within the container.

Impact

Exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to unauthorized privilege escalation, allowing a user to gain root access within the affected container.