Apache Airflow's secrets masker hides values stored under sensitive key names when they are displayed in the UI. The masker's recursion-depth limit did not descend into values nested inside a list, tuple, or set beyond that limit, so an Airflow Variable holding such a deeply-nested value was shown unmasked in the Variables UI. The exposure is limited to the UI: any authenticated user who can see the Variable in the UI can already read its full value through the Variables REST API, so this does not disclose data the user could not otherwise obtain — the masking is a shoulder-surfing defense for the UI, not an access-control boundary.
This is an incomplete-fix follow-up to CVE-2026-42358, whose fix made only the dictionary walk unbounded; lists, tuples, and sets beyond the depth limit remained unmasked in the UI. Deployments that applied the CVE-2026-42358 fix should also upgrade to address this residual case. Upgrade to apache-airflow 3.3.1 or later.
Apache Airflow's Task SDK did not mask the contents of a Variable whose JSON value is a list, so secrets stored in that shape appeared in cleartext in task logs and in the Rendered Templates UI. Masking was applied only when the deserialized value was a string or a dict; a list at the top level matched neither and was returned unmasked. Any authenticated user able to read the logs or rendered templates of a task that references such a Variable could recover the values, with no special configuration required. This is the list-shaped counterpart of CVE-2026-59244, whose fix covered the dict case only, so deployments that upgraded in response to that advisory remain affected and must upgrade again. Users are advised to upgrade to apache-airflow 3.3.1 or later.
Apache Airflow's XCom GET /api/v2/{...}/xcomEntries/{key}?deserialize=true endpoint passed a string-literal payload through BaseXCom.deserializevalue without the checkforbiddenxcomkeys guard, allowing an authenticated API user with XCom write-and-read access to instantiate arbitrary airflow. classes on the API server (CWE-502). An authenticated user who can write an XCom value and then read it back with deserialize=true triggers the unsafe instantiation. Users are advised to upgrade to apache-airflow 3.3.1 or later, which rejects reserved XCom serialization keys submitted as JSON string literals.
Apache Airflow's asset materialization endpoint (POST /api/v2/assets/{assetid}/materialize) and the XCom result check on waitdagrununtilfinished authorized the target Dag without its team, unlike every other authorization site. A team-aware auth manager distinguishes a team-scoped Dag from a global one by that field -- the Keycloak auth manager, for example, checks the DAG resource instead of DAG:<team> -- so the team-scoped permission that should gate the request was never consulted. In a deployment running multi-team mode with a team-aware auth manager, an authenticated user in one team could trigger Dag runs belonging to another team, supplying their own dagrunid and conf, and could read another team's XCom values. Deployments using the FAB auth manager are unaffected, as it has no multi-team support. Users are advised to upgrade to apache-airflow 3.3.1 or later, which resolves the Dag's team at both sites.
Apache Airflow's EmailOperator and the underlying airflow.utils.email helpers established SMTP STARTTLS connections without verifying the remote certificate when the deployment used [email] smtpstarttls=True without [email] smtpssl. An attacker positioned between the worker and the configured SMTP server (network MITM — typical hostile-network attack-surface for environments where the SMTP relay sits outside the worker's trust boundary) could present a self-signed certificate, have the worker complete the STARTTLS handshake silently, and capture the SMTP AUTH credentials and message contents the worker forwarded.
This CVE covers the core apache-airflow side of the same root cause already covered for the SMTP provider by CVE-2026-41016 (published 2026-04-27, covering apache-airflow-providers-smtp). Users who already applied the SMTP-provider fix from CVE-2026-41016 should additionally upgrade apache-airflow to 3.2.2 or later to cover the core-side path through airflow.utils.email. Affects deployments configured with smtpstarttls=True and smtpssl=False where the SMTP relay is reachable across a less-trusted network segment than the worker.
Users are advised to upgrade to apache-airflow 3.2.2 or later.
Apache Airflow's JWTRefreshMiddleware set the JWT auth cookie without the Secure flag, so deployments running the Airflow API server behind an HTTPS-terminating reverse proxy (e.g. nginx / Envoy / a managed load balancer that terminates TLS and forwards plaintext to the API server, the default cloud-native topology) would have the user's session JWT replayed over any cleartext HTTP request to the same host. A network-positioned attacker (Wi-Fi MITM, hostile LAN, captive-portal proxy) could induce a logged-in user's browser to issue an HTTP request to the deployment's hostname and capture the JWT cookie out of that request, then replay it against the authenticated API. Affects deployments where the Airflow API server is reached through a TLS-terminating proxy and the cookie's secure-by-default protection is load-bearing for session integrity. Users are advised to upgrade to apache-airflow 3.2.2 or later.
A bug in Apache Airflow's auth manager logout handling left previously-issued JWT tokens valid after the user clicked logout in the UI: the logout flow for FabAuthManager and KeycloakAuthManager did not actually reach the underlying revoketoken() call, so the JWT remained accepted by the API server until its natural expiry. An attacker holding a previously-issued JWT for a logged-out user could continue to make authenticated API calls as that user. Affects deployments configured with FabAuthManager or KeycloakAuthManager (the bug does not affect SimpleAuthManager). This is a residual gap in the fix for CVE-2025-57735, which addressed cookie-side invalidation in PR #57992 / PR #61339 but did not cover the provider-side revoketoken() reachability in the FAB / Keycloak code paths. Users who already upgraded for CVE-2025-57735 should additionally upgrade to apache-airflow 3.2.2 or later to cover the FAB / Keycloak logout paths.
The Bulk Variables API in Apache Airflow called the redactor without passing the variable's key, so the key-based shouldhidevalueforkey check (which triggers on secret-suffixed key names like password / token / secret) could not fire for JSON-decodable variable values. An authenticated UI/API user with bulk Variable read permission could retrieve plaintext values from JSON variables whose key would otherwise trigger redaction. Affects deployments that store sensitive values in JSON-typed Airflow Variables under secret-suffixed key names. Users are advised to upgrade to apache-airflow 3.3.0 or later (the fix landed on main after 3.2.2; no 3.2.x backport).
Apache Airflow versions 3.0.0 through 3.1.8 DagRun wait endpoint returns XCom result values even to users who only have DAG Run read permissions, such as the Viewer role.This behavior conflicts with the FAB RBAC model, which treats XCom as a separate protected resource, and with the security model documentation that defines the Viewer role as read-only.
Airflow uses the FAB Auth Manager to manage access control on a per-resource basis. The Viewer role is intended to be read-only by default, and the security model documentation defines Viewer users as those who can inspect DAGs without accessing sensitive execution results.
Users are recommended to upgrade to Apache Airflow 3.2.0 which resolves this issue.