Apache Airflow: JWT Token Exposure in KubernetesExecutor Command-Line Arguments

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Summary

CVECVE-2026-49298
StatePUBLISHED
Assignerapache
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-06-01 09:16:20 UTC
Updated2026-06-01 13:13:55 UTC
DescriptionA 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.

Risk And Classification

Problem Types: CWE-538 | CWE-538 CWE-538: Insertion of Sensitive Information into Externally-Accessible File or Directory

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Apache Software Foundation Apache Airflow affected 3.2.2 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
lists.apache.org/thread/wo09vrks8189dzsot39rvrx3vnx102tt [email protected] lists.apache.org
github.com/apache/airflow/pull/60108 [email protected] github.com
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Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

CNA: Nikolai Dvoinishnikov ([email protected]) (en)

CNA: Anton Kuznetsov ([email protected]) (en)

CNA: Anish Giri (en)

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