What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2020-13927: Apache Airflow's Experimental API Authentication Bypass
- Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2022-01-18
- EPSS: 99.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2020-11-10 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-306
Description
The previous default setting for Airflow's Experimental API was to allow all API requests without authentication, but this poses security risks to users who miss this fact. From Airflow 1.10.11 the default has been changed to deny all requests by default and is documented at https://airflow.apache.org/docs/1.10.11/security.html#api-authentication. Note this change fixes it for new installs but existing users need to change their config to default `[api]auth_backend = airflow.api.auth.backend.deny_all` as mentioned in the Updating Guide: https://github.com/apache/airflow/blob/1.10.11/UPDATING.md#experimental-api-will-deny-all-request-by-default
Affected products
- Apache Airflow: before 1.10.11 — fixed in 1.10.11
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Apache Airflow 1.10.11. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/162908/Apache-Airflow-1.10.10-Remote-Code-Execution.html
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/174764/Apache-Airflow-1.10.10-Remote-Code-Execution.html
- https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r23a81b247aa346ff193670be565b2b8ea4b17ddbc7a35fc099c1aadd%40%3Cdev.airflow.apache.org%3E
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/162908/Apache-Airflow-1.10.10-Remote-Code-Execution.html
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/174764/Apache-Airflow-1.10.10-Remote-Code-Execution.html
- https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r23a81b247aa346ff193670be565b2b8ea4b17ddbc7a35fc099c1aadd%40%3Cdev.airflow.apache.org%3E
- https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2020-13927
Get alerted when CVE-2020-13927 or the next vulnerability affects your stack