CVE-2026-84502

A flaw in the Ansible Automation Platform automation-controller: when copying a WorkflowJobTemplate, the deep-copy permission sanitizer validates only inventory, unified_job_template, and credentials of each cloned node and fails to check instance_groups (and execution_environment and labels) preserved from the original. A user with organization workflow-admin permission but no role on the referenced instance groups can copy a workflow, become its administrator, and launch jobs pinned to instance groups they are not authorized to use — including the control-plane instance group — bypassing the InstanceGroup use_role boundary and causing attacker-influenced automation to run in the control-plane execution context.

A flaw in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's automation-controller: the provisioning-callback secret (host_config_key) is exposed to users holding only the read-level view_jobtemplate permission -- both in the job template API representation and in the activity stream -- and the provisioning callback endpoint trusts a client-supplied X-Forwarded-For header to determine the calling host when the controller is deployed behind the AAP gateway with an empty proxy allow-list. By reading the secret and spoofing X-Forwarded-For to match any host in the job template's inventory, a minimally privileged or unauthenticated remote attacker can launch the job template against arbitrary managed hosts using the job template's credentials, resulting in privilege escalation and remote code execution on managed hosts.

In Ansible Automation Platform (AWX), the Bulk Job Launch API (POST /api/v2/bulk/job_launch/) authorizes requested instance_groups with only a read-level permission check, whereas the standard single-job launch path requires use-level permission. A principal with read (but not use) permission on an instance group, such as the built-in read-only System Auditor role, combined with execute permission on a job template, can launch bulk jobs onto instance groups they are not authorized to use, bypassing execution-placement isolation.

A container privilege escalation flaw was found in Ansible Automation Platform images. The /etc/passwd file was created with group-writable permissions during build. An attacker with command execution in the container (even as non-root) can leverage root group membership to modify /etc/passwd and add a user with arbitrary UID, including 0, gaining full root privileges.