CVE-2022-40954 Apache Airflow Spark Provider RCE that bypass restrictions to read arbitrary files

What is CVE-2022-40954?

CVE-2022-40954 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Apache Airflow, published on 22 Nov 2022.

Official description

Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') vulnerability in Apache Airflow Spark Provider, Apache Airflow allows an attacker to read arbtrary files in the task execution context, without write access to DAG files. This issue affects Spark Provider versions prior to 4.0.0. It also impacts any Apache Airflow versions prior to 2.3.0 in case Spark Provider is installed (Spark Provider 4.0.0 can only be installed for Airflow 2.3.0+). Note that you need to manually install the Spark Provider version 4.0.0 in order to get rid of the vulnerability on top of Airflow 2.3.0+ version that has lower version of the Spark Provider installed).

Weakness: CWE-78

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-40954?

4 open source packages ship an affected version, including apache-airflow and airflow. It affects 2 products.

Products include Apache Airflow, Apache Apache-Airflow-Providers-Apache-Spark.

How do I fix CVE-2022-40954?

Upgrade apache-airflow to 2.3.0 or later.

Is CVE-2022-40954 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-40954 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-2022-40954, GHSA-45r6-j3cc-6mxx, PYSEC-2026-770.