Apache Airflow: JWT Token Exposure in KubernetesExecutor Command-Line Arguments (Apache Software Foundation Apache Airflow)

CVE-2026-49298
HIGH 8.8

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.49 % · percentile 42 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
apache
NVD status
Analyzed

Description

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.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-538 — Insertion of Sensitive Information into Externally-Accessible File or Directory

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HCISA-ADP
CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HNVD · 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0 (Secondary)

Advisories

European references

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
Apache Software Foundation · Apache Airflowaffected 0 < 3.2.2

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD