CVE-2025-54550 Apache Airflow: RCE by race condition in example_xcom dag
An attacker with XCom modification access can execute arbitrary code on workers if they use a specific unsafe example DAG pattern.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-54550?
CVE-2025-54550 is a high-severity code injection vulnerability in Apache Airflow, published on 15 Apr 2026. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
The example example_xcom that was included in airflow documentation implemented unsafe pattern of reading value from xcom in the way that could be exploited to allow UI user who had access to modify XComs to perform arbitrary execution of code on the worker. Since the UI users are already highly trusted, this is a Low severity vulnerability.
It does not affect Airflow release - example_dags are not supposed to be enabled in production environment, however users following the example could replicate the bad pattern. Documentation of Airflow 3.2.0 contains version of the example with improved resiliance for that case.
Users who followed that pattern are advised to adjust their implementations accordingly.
Weakness: CWE-94
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-54550?
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 | 3.2.0 |
apache-airflow PyPI | All versions | 3.2.0 |
apache-airflow PyPI | All versions | 3.2.0 |
airflow Bitnami | All versions | 3.2.0 |
Products include Apache Airflow.
How do I fix CVE-2025-54550?
Upgrade apache-airflow to 3.2.0 or later.
Upgrade, and never evaluate templates, expressions or code built from user input. More about Code injection.
Is CVE-2025-54550 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-54550 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-2025-54550, ECHO-968f-a05c-4a8b, GHSA-q2hg-643c-gw8h, MINI-8chf-v58v-vmm7, MINI-pg3r-qfr6-3c2x, PYSEC-2026-2353.