CVE-2020-17511 Apache Airflow logs passwords in plaintext

What is CVE-2020-17511?

CVE-2020-17511 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Apache Airflow, published on 14 Dec 2020. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In Airflow versions prior to 1.10.13, when creating a user using airflow CLI, the password gets logged in plain text in the Log table in Airflow Metadatase. Same happened when creating a Connection with a password field.

Weakness: CWE-312

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-17511?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including apache-airflow and airflow. It affects 1 product.

Products include Apache Airflow.

How do I fix CVE-2020-17511?

Upgrade apache-airflow to 1.10.13 or later.

Is CVE-2020-17511 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-17511 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Apache Airflow

• CVE-2020-13927 Apache Airflow's Experimental API Authentication Bypass Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2020-11978 Apache Airflow Command Injection Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2026-33264 Apache Airflow: DAG author RCE on webserver via unrestricted import_string() in BaseSerialization.deserialize() Critical 9.8
• CVE-2023-25754 Apache Airflow: Privilege escalation using airflow logs Critical 9.8
• CVE-2023-22884 Apache Airflow, Apache Airflow MySQL Provider: Arbitrary file read via MySQL provider in Apache Airflow Critical 9.8

All Apache Airflow vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BIT-airflow-2020-17511, GHSA-cvcq-gmc3-q6m8, PYSEC-2020-262.