CVE-2026-86792

8.8 HIGHpublic exploit available

Published 2026-09-16 · Updated 2026-09-18

AI risk analysis

Summary: The flaw allows a user with permission to edit Airflow connections to execute arbitrary code in the scheduler process, which is outside the typical scope of their privileges.
Exploitability: Exploitation requires access to edit Airflow connections and has a moderate level of difficulty due to the need to craft a specific `extra` field payload.
Blast radius: If exploited, the impact is high, as it could lead to full control of the Airflow scheduler process, potentially affecting the entire system.
Detection: No reliable host or network indicator is derivable from the published description.
Prioritized remediation: Upgrade to apache-airflow-providers-apache-kafka 2.0.0 or later, which introduces an allowlist configuration option for connection-string callbacks.

rceairflowkafkapythoncode-execution

Analysis generated locally by qwen2.5:7b-instruct (no data left the box). AI-assisted — verify against primary sources before acting.

NVD description

Apache Airflow Apache Kafka provider versions 1.15.0 before 2.0.0 resolve dotted-path strings found in a Kafka connection's `extra` field into Python callables via `import_string`, with no allowlist, and hand them to the confluent-kafka client which invokes them. Deployments that have enabled the Kafka event producer — `dag_run_events_enabled` or `task_instance_events_enabled`, both disabled by default — build that client inside the scheduler process, so a user whose only privilege is editing Airflow connections gains arbitrary code execution in the control plane; the Airflow security model limits connection-configuration users to code execution on workers, not the scheduler. Deployments using Google Managed Kafka are not affected, because that code path overwrites any user-supplied `oauth_cb`; plain brokers and Amazon MSK are exposed. Users are recommended to upgrade to apache-airflow-providers-apache-kafka 2.0.0 or later, which adds an allowlist configuration option for connection-string callbacks.

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Weaknesses

CWE-470

Vendors

apache

Products

apache-airflow-providers-apache-kafka

Public exploit & PoC references

https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/72208[Patch, Vendor Advisory]

All references

Source data: NVD (nvd.nist.gov), public domain. Exploit-DB.ai adds local AI analysis for defensive use only.

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