CVE-2023-50943 Apache Airflow: Potential pickle deserialization vulnerability in XComs
An attacker with DAG author privileges can bypass pickling protections to execute arbitrary code via poisoned XCom data in Apache Airflow.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-50943?
CVE-2023-50943 is a high-severity unsafe deserialization vulnerability in Apache Airflow, published on 24 Jan 2024. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Apache Airflow, versions before 2.8.1, have a vulnerability that allows a potential attacker to poison the XCom data by bypassing the protection of "enable_xcom_pickling=False" configuration setting resulting in poisoned data after XCom deserialization. This vulnerability is considered low since it requires a DAG author to exploit it. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 2.8.1 or later, which fixes this issue.
Weakness: CWE-502
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-50943?
4 open source packages ship an affected version, including apache-airflow and airflow. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
apache-airflow PyPI | All versions | 2.8.1 |
apache-airflow PyPI | All versions | 2.8.1rc1 |
apache-airflow PyPI | All versions | 2.8.1rc1 |
airflow Bitnami | All versions | 2.8.1 |
Products include Apache Airflow.
How do I fix CVE-2023-50943?
Upgrade apache-airflow to a fixed version for your release line: 2.8.1 or 2.8.1rc1.
Upgrade, and only deserialise data from trusted sources or with an allow-list of types. More about Unsafe deserialization.
Is CVE-2023-50943 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-50943 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Apache Airflow
- CVE-2020-13927 Apache Airflow's Experimental API Authentication Bypass
- CVE-2020-11978 Apache Airflow Command Injection
- CVE-2026-33264 Apache Airflow: DAG author RCE on webserver via unrestricted import_string() in BaseSerialization.deserialize()
- CVE-2023-25754 Apache Airflow: Privilege escalation using airflow logs
- CVE-2023-22884 Apache Airflow, Apache Airflow MySQL Provider: Arbitrary file read via MySQL provider in Apache Airflow
Sources
Also known as BIT-airflow-2023-50943, ECHO-55b0-7d4f-b496, GHSA-c3c6-f2ww-xfr2, PYSEC-2024-13.