CVE-2026-49298: Apache Airflow: JWT Token Exposure in KubernetesExecutor Command-Line Arguments
This Apache advisory covers CVE-2026-49298 in Apache Airflow.
- CVE-2026-49298
Key facts
- CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H· base score 8.8, scored by CISA-ADPAttack vector: network. Attack complexity: low. Privileges required: low. User interaction: none. Scope: unchanged. Confidentiality impact: high. Integrity impact: high. Availability impact: high.- Weakness
- CWE-538: Insertion of Sensitive Information into Externally-Accessible File or Directory
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none observed. Automatable: no. Technical impact: total. CISA, .
- CISA KEV
- Not listed (catalogue checked )
- Affected
- Apache Airflow before 3.0.0; Apache Airflow 3.0.0 before 3.2.2
- Fixed in
- 3.0.0, 3.2.2
- Source published
- Source revised
- Listed by VulniPulse
Compiled by VulniPulse from the linked sources. How records are collected and checked.
Affected products & platforms
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, 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.
Text from the source record.
- Apache Airflow before 3.0.0
- Apache Airflow 3.0.0 before 3.2.2
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched ·verify at source
How to fix CVE-2026-49298
Upgrade to a fixed release named by Apache:
- 3.0.0
- 3.2.2
Vendor guidance
- Users are advised to upgrade to `apache-airflow` 3.2.2 or later.
- 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.
Support dates for the fixed release lines
- Apache Airflow 3.0: support ended
- Apache Airflow 3.2: support ended
More Apache Software Foundation advisories
CVE-2026-40913Nov 9, 2026Apache Airflow's public Import Errors API returns the raw parse-failure stack trace to anyCVE-2026-50204Nov 9, 2026Apache Airflow's audit log stored Connection and Variable secret values in cleartextCVE-2026-68982Nov 9, 2026Apache Airflow's CeleryExecutor ran callback workloadsCVE-2026-76185Nov 9, 2026Apache Airflow's Task SDK secret cache built its keys from the team name and secret idCVE-2026-86829Nov 9, 2026Apache Airflow's scheduler fully deserializes XCom values written by task codeCVE-2026-82337Nov 9, 2026Apache Airflow rebuilt deadline alert fields through generic deserialization
Apache Software Foundation advisories, June 2026All Apache Software Foundation advisories
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