Apache Airflow 3.2.2+ JWT Leakage in KubernetesExecutor (CVE-202649298)
CVE-2026-49298 Published on June 1, 2026
Apache Airflow: JWT Token Exposure in KubernetesExecutor Command-Line Arguments
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.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-49298 is exploitable with network access, and requires small amount of user privileges. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be very high.
Weakness Type
Insertion of Sensitive Information into Externally-Accessible File or Directory
The product places sensitive information into files or directories that are accessible to actors who are allowed to have access to the files, but not to the sensitive information.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-49298
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Affected Versions
Apache Software Foundation Apache Airflow:- Before 3.2.2 is affected.
Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.