Executive brief
Puppet, a tool used to automate the configuration and management of servers, contains a flaw where sensitive information like passwords may be stored in plain text. This occurs because the software fails to properly mask data marked as sensitive when saving local transaction logs on managed devices. An attacker with high-level access to a managed server could potentially read these logs to steal credentials, compromising the security of the infrastructure.
Technical details
A cleartext storage vulnerability (CWE-312/CWE-313) exists in the Puppet resource_api module. The root cause is the failure of the API to honor the 'sensitive' flag on resource parameters, which results in these values being written in plain text to the agent's local transaction state cache on disk. An attacker with local administrative or high-privileged access to the Puppet agent node can retrieve sensitive credentials from this cache. The issue affects resource_api versions 1.5.0-1.9.1 and 2.0.0, and has been patched in versions 1.9.2 and 2.0.1 (included in Puppet Core 8.20.0 and Puppet Enterprise 2023.8.10 / 2025.11.0).
Affected products
- Perforce Puppet Core 8.0.0 - 8.19.0
- Perforce Puppet Enterprise 2023.8.0 - 2023.8.9, 2025.0.0 - 2025.10.0
- Puppet resource_api module 1.5.0 - 1.9.1, 2.0.0
Timeline
- 2026-07-03: advisory: NVD publication date
- 2026-07-03: disclosed: Perforce advisory published