What happened
A flaw was found in the Ansible Automation Platform automation-controller. When a WorkflowJobTemplate is copied, the deep-copy permission sanitizer validates only the inventory, unified_job_template, and credentials of each cloned node and fails to check the instance_groups (and execution_environment and labels) that were 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.
Affected versions
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.4 for RHEL 8: See vendor advisory Fixed: See vendor advisory.
Why it matters
Review the vendor advisory and exposure of the affected product to determine operational impact.
Detection & mitigation
- Apply vendor-provided updates or mitigations.
- Review affected product exposure and access logs.
Public PoC references
No public PoC reference has passed the current publication threshold.