Executive brief
A security vulnerability exists in the Ansible Lightspeed extension for Visual Studio Code, a tool used by developers to automate IT tasks. By tricking a user into using specific malicious configuration settings, an attacker can execute unauthorized commands on the user's computer. This could allow an attacker to steal sensitive data, install malware, or take full control of the developer's workstation.
Technical details
A command injection vulnerability (CWE-78) exists in the Visual Studio Code Ansible Lightspeed extension due to improper neutralization of shell separators in the 'ansible.executionEnvironment.containerOptions' and 'ansible.executionEnvironment.volumeMounts' settings. An attacker can exploit this by providing a malicious workspace configuration that includes shell metacharacters. The injection can be triggered automatically during the Language Server Protocol (LSP) initialization or manually when a user executes an Ansible playbook. Successful exploitation grants the attacker remote code execution (RCE) with the privileges of the user running VS Code. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-44191 and has been identified in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform environments.
Affected products
- Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed extension for Visual Studio Code All versions prior to fix
- Red Hat Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 2.5, 2.6
Timeline
- 2026-05-05: other: Initial report in Red Hat Bugzilla
- 2026-07-22: disclosed: Public disclosure of CVE-2026-44191