Vulnerability from bitnami_vulndb
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.
{
"affected": [
{
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Bitnami",
"name": "airflow",
"purl": "pkg:bitnami/airflow"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
},
{
"fixed": "3.2.2"
}
],
"type": "SEMVER"
}
],
"severity": [
{
"score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H",
"type": "CVSS_V3"
}
]
}
],
"aliases": [
"CVE-2026-49298"
],
"database_specific": {
"cpes": [
"cpe:2.3:a:apache:airflow:*:*:*:*:*:python:*:*"
],
"severity": "High"
},
"details": "A bug in Apache Airflow\u0027s 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 \u2014 triggering Dag runs, clearing runs, reading or writing Variables / Connections / XComs \u2014 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 \u2014 the two fixes are complementary, not duplicates.",
"id": "BIT-airflow-2026-49298",
"modified": "2026-06-05T06:08:58.631Z",
"published": "2026-06-05T05:40:52.457Z",
"references": [
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/60108"
},
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://lists.apache.org/thread/wo09vrks8189dzsot39rvrx3vnx102tt"
},
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-49298"
}
],
"schema_version": "1.6.2",
"summary": "Apache Airflow: JWT Token Exposure in KubernetesExecutor Command-Line Arguments"
}
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.