CVE-2026-49298

/// Technical 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

/// Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

/// References