Severity by source
AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attacker needs no account (payload delivered via workspace, PR:N) but victim must open the malicious project locally (AV:L, UI:R); full C/I/A as arbitrary code runs with the user's privileges (S:U).
Primary rating from Vendor (redhat).
CVSS VectorVendor: redhat
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.org
A flaw was found in the Visual Studio Code Ansible Lightspeed extension. This command injection vulnerability (CWE-78) arises from improper handling of the ansible.executionEnvironment.containerOptions and ansible.executionEnvironment.volumeMounts settings, allowing an attacker to inject shell separators. This can be triggered automatically during Language Server initialization or manually when executing a playbook. Successful exploitation leads to remote code execution (RCE) on the victim's machine with the privileges of the Visual Studio Code user, potentially resulting in a complete system compromise.
AnalysisAI
Local code execution in the Visual Studio Code Ansible (Lightspeed) extension lets a malicious project run arbitrary shell commands on a developer's machine by abusing the ansible.executionEnvironment.containerOptions and volumeMounts settings, which fail to sanitize shell separators (CWE-78). Because these are workspace-scoped settings, simply opening a booby-trapped repository can auto-trigger execution during Language Server initialization, yielding code execution as the VS Code user. No public exploit has been identified at time of analysis, and the flaw is not listed in CISA KEV; CVSS is 7.8 (High).
Technical ContextAI
The vulnerable component is Red Hat's Ansible extension for Visual Studio Code, which integrates the Ansible Language Server and the Lightspeed AI assistant. To run playbooks inside container-based 'execution environments', the extension reads the ansible.executionEnvironment.containerOptions and ansible.executionEnvironment.volumeMounts configuration values and passes them into a container runtime command line (e.g., podman/docker invocation). The root cause is CWE-78 (OS Command Injection): user/workspace-supplied option strings are concatenated into a shell command without neutralizing metacharacters such as ; | && $() , so an attacker who controls those settings can append additional shell commands. Because VS Code honors workspace-level settings (.vscode/settings.json), the attacker-controlled value travels with a repository rather than requiring access to the victim's global config. The CPE data maps this to Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 packaging (cpe:2.3:a:red_hat:red_hat_ansible_automation_platform_2), reflecting Red Hat's distribution of the extension/language server component.
RemediationAI
Update the Visual Studio Code Ansible/Ansible Lightspeed extension to the fixed release once available and monitor the Red Hat advisory at https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-44191 and Bugzilla https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2466761 for the exact patched version, which is not stated in the available data (no vendor-released fix version independently confirmed). As compensating controls until patched: avoid opening untrusted Ansible repositories in VS Code, and use VS Code Workspace Trust / Restricted Mode so that workspace-supplied settings are not applied automatically (trade-off: some language features are disabled in untrusted folders). Explicitly review or strip ansible.executionEnvironment.containerOptions and ansible.executionEnvironment.volumeMounts from any cloned project's .vscode/settings.json before trusting it, and where execution environments are not needed, disable the execution-environment feature entirely (trade-off: loss of containerized playbook runs). Pin trusted configuration at the user/global scope and prevent workspace overrides where the editor supports it.
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Same weakness CWE-78 – OS Command Injection
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today
EUVD-2026-47655
GHSA-63fx-4hcp-68gg