Skip to content

GHSA-x2mh-8fmc-rqgh BIT-airflow-2023-37379 CVE-2023-37379 PYSEC-2023-152

Apache Airflow denial of service vulnerability

High PyPI
Severity
0.0 / 10
High · CVSS 4.0
Exploit chance (EPSS)
1.96%
Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 80.29% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited
No
Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness
CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
CWE-918 Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
Fix
2.7.0b1
Upgrade apache-airflow to this version or later

Description

Apache Airflow, in versions prior to 2.7.0, contains a security vulnerability that can be exploited by an authenticated user possessing Connection edit privileges. This vulnerability allows the user to access connection information and exploit the test connection feature by sending many requests, leading to a denial of service (DoS) condition on the server. Furthermore, malicious actors can leverage this vulnerability to establish harmful connections with the server.

Users of Apache Airflow are strongly advised to upgrade to version 2.7.0 or newer to mitigate the risk associated with this vulnerability. Additionally, administrators are encouraged to review and adjust user permissions to restrict access to sensitive functionalities, reducing the attack surface.

Affected versions

PyPI

PackageVulnerableFixed in
apache-airflow
< 2.7.0b1
2.7.0b1
apache-airflow
< 2.7.0
2.7.0

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

apache-airflow PyPI → 2.7.0b1

pip
pip install --upgrade "apache-airflow>=2.7.0b1"
poetry
poetry add "apache-airflow>=2.7.0b1"
uv
uv add "apache-airflow>=2.7.0b1"

Severity breakdown

CVSS 4.0 0.0

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Attack requirements
None
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality (vulnerable system)
High
Integrity (vulnerable system)
None
Availability (vulnerable system)
High
Confidentiality (subsequent systems)
None
Integrity (subsequent systems)
None
Availability (subsequent systems)
None

CVSS 3.1 8.1

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

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
High

Weakness

CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

How to prevent it
  • Architecture and Design: Compartmentalize the system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area. Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.

How to prevent it
  • Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
  • Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.
  • Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
  • Implementation: Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.

CWE-918: Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)

The web server receives a URL or similar request from an upstream component and retrieves the contents of this URL, but it does not sufficiently ensure that the request is being sent to the expected destination.

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last updated by the source
  3. Latest EPSS score
AdvisorySeverityWhy it's related
CVE-2020-13927
Authentication bypass in Apache Airflow
Critical Known exploited Also affects apache-airflow
CVE-2020-11978
Remote code execution (RCE) in Apache Airflow
High Known exploited Also affects apache-airflow
PYSEC-2026-3990
Apache Airflow: the Core API logout endpoint revokes only a session token presented as the _token cookie.
Critical Also affects apache-airflow
PYSEC-2026-3989
When a request to the Airflow core API carries both a session cookie and an explicit `Authorization: Bearer` token, Airflow resolves the caller from the cookie…
Medium Also affects apache-airflow
PYSEC-2026-3988
Apache Airflow's `/assets/events` API returned asset events for every Dag in the deployment, with no filter restricting them to the Dags the caller is…
Medium Also affects apache-airflow
GHSA-5247-m8w9-2v4m
Apache Airflow missing team context permits cross-team Dag actions and XCom reads
Medium Also affects apache-airflow
GHSA-f3c2-j7g8-vpp8
Apache Airflow Task SDK fails to mask list-shaped JSON Variables
Medium Also affects apache-airflow
GHSA-cjv4-7hp2-2x9h
Apache Airflow bulk endpoints log Variable and Connection secrets in cleartext
Medium Also affects apache-airflow
Is this in your code?

MergeHarbor checks every repository's dependencies against this database, ranks what matters by exploitability and reachability, routes it to the owning team and opens the fix pull request.

Check your repos with MergeHarbor