CVE-2025-68438 Apache Airflow: Secrets in rendered templates could contain parts of sensitive values when truncated

What is CVE-2025-68438?

CVE-2025-68438 is a high-severity vulnerability in Apache Airflow, published on 16 Jan 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In Apache Airflow versions before 3.1.6, when rendered template fields in a Dag exceed [core] max_templated_field_length, sensitive values could be exposed in cleartext in the Rendered Templates UI. This occurred because serialization of those fields used a secrets masker instance that did not include user-registered mask_secret() patterns, so secrets were not reliably masked before truncation and display.

Users are recommended to upgrade to 3.1.6 or later, which fixes this issue

Weakness: CWE-200

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68438?

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-2025-68438?

Upgrade apache-airflow to 3.1.6 or later.

Is CVE-2025-68438 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68438 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-2025-68438, GHSA-3qmm-r55x-hpxx, MINI-5jgp-gj33-rjxr, PYSEC-2026-9.