Direct RCE against Ansible controllers via a widely used community.general plugin; impacts many orgs using Ansible fact caching with memcached.
CVE-2026-87874
RCE in Ansible memcached cache plugin via pickle poisoning
Is CVE-2026-87874 being exploited?
Not confirmed. CVE-2026-87874 does not appear in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, which records only exploitation that has been observed and reported publicly. That is evidence of absence of a report, not evidence the flaw is unattacked. EPSS currently estimates a 0.43% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
How severe is CVE-2026-87874?
CVE-2026-87874 is rated High with a CVSS score of 8.1. Severity describes how bad exploitation would be, not how likely it is: pair it with exploitation evidence before deciding what to patch first.
Is there a patch for CVE-2026-87874?
Not known from our data. No patch reference has been recorded for CVE-2026-87874, which is not the same as no patch existing — a fix may have shipped without a tagged reference, or after this record was written. The vendor advisory is the only authority on whether a fix exists, and mitigations may be available regardless.
What does CVE-2026-87874 affect?
CVE-2026-87874 affects Ansible community.general collection (memcached cache plugin), Ansible controllers using python-memcached for fact cache, Network-exposed or shared memcached instances used for Ansible caching. Confirm the exact affected versions against the vendor advisory before deciding you are exposed.
What should I do about CVE-2026-87874?
Block/segregate memcached, disable memcached fact cache, apply vendor patch when released
Exploitation status reflects CISA's KEV catalog as we last synced it. Check the catalog directly.
Remote code execution on Ansible controller by writing a crafted pickle to network-exposed or shared memcached, executed when the fact cache is read.
Immediate action required