🛡️ CVE-2026-49298 — airflow

🟠 CVSS 8.8 — High ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-538 NVD
8.8
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

Apache Airflow: Execution API JWT leaked via KubernetesExecutor worker command-line args

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.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs low-level privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity high, availability high.

Affected software

CVE-2026-49298 is recorded against 3 packages.

  • airflow
  • apache-airflow-core (fixed in 3.2.2)
  • unknown

Timeline and source

Published on 5 June 2026 and last revised on 21 July 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. A vendor advisory or fix has been published. Record sourced from NVD.

References

github.com (Web)
lists.apache.org (Web)
nvd.nist.gov (Web)

Details

Severity HIGH
CVSS Score 8.8
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE CWE-538
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2026-06-05
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-07-21

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
airflow — —
apache-airflow-core — 3.2.2
unknown — —

Similar Threats

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