VulnerabilityPublished 31 Oct 2026

CVE-2026-119197: Ansible · pyasn1 has quadratic-complexity denial of service in binary REAL decoding

Affects ansibleSource GCVE Database

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Authoritative record:CVE-2026-119197· High 7.5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High · fixed in 0.6.5 : patch ansible soon.

Data as of 31 Oct 2026, 17:20 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Thin evidence

One scorer or none

CVSS scores by source
CNA (GitHub_M)	CVSS 3.1	7.5

Patch: Available – fixed in 0.6.5

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 29 Oct 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 30 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Homebrewansible`pkg:brew/ansible`Other threats	Affected >=1.7.2	Fixed in–

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AI-suggested

Upgrade pyasn1 to version 0.6.5 or later, where the vulnerability is fixed. Until upgrading, applications should reject or strictly limit ASN.1 inputs containing REAL values with large mantissas before passing them to pyasn1 decoders. The appropriate size limit depends on the application's CPU availability and request volume. No other mitigations are specified.

Description

pyasn1 versions up to 0.6.4 contain a denial of service vulnerability due to quadratic complexity in decoding binary-encoded ASN.1 REAL values with large mantissas. This can cause excessive CPU consumption during decoding, potentially exhausting a CPU core for seconds or longer. The flaw affects BER, CER, and DER decoders using the shared RealPayloadDecoder. The issue is fixed in pyasn1 0.6.5 by replacing the inefficient loop with a more efficient integer conversion.

Impact

The vulnerability allows an attacker who can supply ASN.1 data to an application using pyasn1 decoders to cause high CPU usage and denial of service by triggering expensive decoding of large REAL values. This results in CPU exhaustion on one core for seconds or longer depending on mantissa size. The vulnerability does not directly affect confidentiality or integrity, nor does it imply network exposure or unauthenticated access by itself. The impact is limited to denial of service via CPU exhaustion during decoding.

Summary

In pyasn1 versions 0.6.4 and earlier, decoding a binary-encoded ASN.1 REAL with a large mantissa involves a loop that shifts and slices the mantissa byte string one octet at a time, resulting in quadratic CPU time complexity relative to the mantissa length. This affects the BER, CER, and DER decoders which share the vulnerable RealPayloadDecoder component. An attacker supplying crafted ASN.1 data containing a large REAL value can cause CPU exhaustion during decoding. The vulnerability is present in all releases from v0.2.1 through v0.6.4. The issue was fixed in pyasn1 0.6.5 by replacing the loop with a single int.from_bytes conversion, preserving decoding correctness while eliminating the performance problem.

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 31 Oct 2026, 17:20 UTC

Technical details

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