OSSN-0098: Mistral workflow execution context exposes Keystone auth token

Summary

Eduardo Gonzalez Gutierrez reported that Mistral stores the Keystone authentication token in the workflow execution context. Any user who can create or inspect workflow executions can retrieve active tokens via YAQL or Jinja2 expressions and use them to perform actions as the workflow initiator. Deployments where untrusted users can create or execute workflows are affected.

Affected Services / Software

mistral (<=22.0.0)

Discussion

When a workflow execution starts, Mistral copies the full Keystone authentication context into the execution’s stored context. This includes the auth_token and service_catalog. The fix masks these fields and is only applied to the master branch. Backporting to stable branches would break workflows that rely on the $.openstack.auth_token context variable.

Recommended Actions

Operators running stable branches of Mistral should:

• Restrict who can create and inspect workflow executions using Mistral’s policy configuration.

• Audit workflow definitions for references to $.openstack.auth_token.

• Upgrade to the next major release of Mistral when available, which will include the fix.

Patches: The fix masks auth_token and service_catalog in the workflow execution context. It is applied to the master branch only.

2026.2/hibiscus (master): https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/mistral/+/991391

Credits:

• Eduardo Gonzalez Gutierrez (Independent),

• Arnaud Morin, OVHCloud

Contacts / References

Author: Goutham Pacha Ravi, Red Hat

• This OSSN : https://docs.openstack.org/security-notes/OSSN-0098.html

• Original Launchpad bug : https://launchpad.net/bugs/2146554

• Mailing List : openstack-discuss@lists.openstack.org

• OpenStack Security : https://security.openstack.org/

• CVE : none