CVE-2026-49298 Apache Airflow: JWT Token Exposure in KubernetesExecutor Command-Line Arguments
Authenticated users with Kubernetes read access can extract JWT tokens from pod specs to impersonate workers and modify workflow data.
- 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-2026-49298?
CVE-2026-49298 is a high-severity vulnerability in Apache Airflow, published on 1 Jun 2026. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
A bug in Apache Airflow's KubernetesExecutor caused JWT tokens used by worker pods to authenticate against the Execution API to be passed to the worker container as command-line arguments visible in the pod spec. An authenticated UI/API user with Kubernetes read-only access to the cluster (e.g. `pods/get` in the Airflow namespace) could harvest the JWT from `kubectl describe pod` output and then call state-mutating Execution API endpoints — triggering Dag runs, clearing runs, reading or writing Variables / Connections / XComs — as if they were a running task. Affects deployments using the `KubernetesExecutor`. Users are advised to upgrade to `apache-airflow` 3.2.2 or later. This is the airflow-core half of the same vulnerability addressed by [CVE-2026-27173](https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-27173), which shipped the apache-airflow-providers-cncf-kubernetes side of the fix. Deployments that already upgraded `apache-airflow-providers-cncf-kubernetes` to 10.17.0 or later per the CVE-2026-27173 advisory should additionally upgrade `apache-airflow` to 3.2.2 or later to close the core-side surface — the two fixes are complementary, not duplicates.
Weakness: CWE-538
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-49298?
4 open source packages ship an affected version, including apache-airflow-core and airflow. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
apache-airflow-core PyPI | All versions | 3.2.2 |
apache-airflow-core PyPI | All versions | 3.2.2 |
apache-airflow-core PyPI | All versions | 3.2.2 |
airflow Bitnami | All versions | 3.2.2 |
Products include Apache Airflow.
How do I fix CVE-2026-49298?
Upgrade apache-airflow-core to 3.2.2 or later.
Is CVE-2026-49298 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-49298 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-2026-49298, ECHO-d5b1-8a54-bb7b, GHSA-5j6p-jrrm-6x94, MINI-x9xq-mxvv-5c79, PYSEC-2026-2358.