A flaw was found in Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's automation-
controller. The setting that formats the log message emitted for API 4XX errors
is an administrator-controlled Python format-string template that is rendered
with a live user object as an argument. Because Python string formatting permits
attribute and item traversal on its arguments, an administrator can craft a
template that walks from the user object into the application settings and reads
the Django secret key and the database password. The formatted message is written
to a logger that can be forwarded to an external log aggregator, whose destination
is also administrator-controlled, allowing the secrets to be sent off the host. An
authenticated administrator can thereby obtain the master encryption key used to
protect all stored credentials and the database service password, enabling offline
decryption of every stored credential, forgery of user sessions, and direct
access to the controller database.
