Information disclosure in Apache Airflow
CVE-2026-49298
A bug in Apache Airflow's KubernetesExecutor caused JWT tokens used by worker pods to authenticate against the Execution API to be passed to the worker container as command-line arguments visible in the pod spec. An authenticated UI/API user with Kubernetes read-only access to the cluster (e.g. `pods/get` in the Airflow namespace) could harvest the JWT from `kubectl describe pod` output and then call state-mutating Execution API endpoints — triggering Dag runs, clearing runs, reading or writing Variables / Connections / XComs — as if they were a running task. Affects deployments using the `KubernetesExecutor`. Users are advised to upgrade to `apache-airflow` 3.2.2 or later. This is the airflow-core half of the same vulnerability addressed by [CVE-2026-27173](https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-27173), which shipped the apache-airflow-providers-cncf-kubernetes side of the fix. Deployments that already upgraded `apache-airflow-providers-cncf-kubernetes` to 10.17.0 or later per the CVE-2026-27173 advisory should additionally upgrade `apache-airflow` to 3.2.2 or later to close the core-side surface — the two fixes are complementary, not duplicates.
EPSS: 0.005 (40.2th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 8.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.
Affected products
- Apache Airflow
- Apache Software Foundation Airflow — versions 0
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- security@apache.org (Patch, patch, Issue Tracking)
- security@apache.org (vendor-advisory, Mailing List, Vendor Advisory)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-49298?
- CVE-2026-49298 is a high-severity vulnerability in Apache Airflow, classified under Insertion of Sensitive Information into Externally-Accessible File or Directory. CVSS score: 8.8/10. Published 2026-06-01.
- How severe is CVE-2026-49298?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.8 out of 10.