CVE-2026-80049 in Airbyte
Summary
by MITRE • 08/25/2026
Airbyte Platform resolves the workspace used for its authorization decision from a field the caller supplies. AuthorizationServerHandler copies recognised identifiers out of the raw JSON request body into X-Airbyte-* headers, and AuthenticationHeaderResolver.resolveWorkspace consults X-Airbyte-Workspace-Id ahead of every resource-derived header, including those for connection, source and destination identifiers. Endpoints whose declared request bodies carry only a resource identifier are nonetheless reached with an added workspaceId field, because the extractor reads the body rather than the endpoint's schema, so the permission check is performed against the workspace the caller nominated while the handler acts on the resource identifier the caller supplied. Nothing afterwards compares the resource's owning workspace with the one that was authorized. A member of any workspace can therefore read source and destination configuration, trigger and cancel syncs, and delete connections, sources and destinations that belong to workspaces they have no access to, at whatever privilege level their own workspace membership grants them.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/25/2026
The vulnerability in the Airbyte Platform represents a critical authorization bypass rooted in an inconsistency between how authentication context is established and how resource ownership is validated during request processing. The core of this flaw lies in the separation of concerns within the request handling pipeline, specifically involving the AuthorizationServerHandler and the AuthenticationHeaderResolver. When a client submits a JSON request body containing identifiers for resources such as connections, sources, or destinations, the system extracts recognized identifiers from the raw payload to populate specific HTTP headers prefixed with X-Airbyte-. Among these is the workspace identifier, which is placed into the X-Airbyte-Workspace-Id header. This mechanism allows the platform to determine the authorization context based on a field supplied directly by the caller rather than deriving it from the actual state of the resource being accessed or its associated metadata stored in the backend database.
The operational impact stems from how different components within the application process this information during an API call. The AuthenticationHeaderResolver is designed to consult the X-Airbyte-Workspace-Id header for every authorization decision, effectively establishing which workspace's permissions should be applied to the current request. However, because many endpoints accept a resource identifier in their body rather than requiring explicit creation parameters that would tie the resource to a specific workspace at the point of access, the system relies on this caller-supplied workspace ID to perform permission checks. The extraction logic reads from the raw JSON body regardless of whether the endpoint schema strictly requires it for authorization purposes, leading to a scenario where the permission check is executed against the workspace nominated by the attacker rather than the actual owner of the resource.
This architectural disconnect creates a severe security gap because there is no subsequent validation step that compares the owning workspace of the target resource with the workspace ID used for the initial authorization decision. Consequently, an authenticated user who holds membership in any single workspace can manipulate this field to impersonate ownership or access rights belonging to other workspaces within the multi-tenant environment. The attacker does not need elevated privileges; they only require basic membership in one workspace to exploit this flaw against resources located in completely different, unauthorized workspaces. This lack of cross-workspace validation effectively neutralizes the isolation guarantees intended by the platform's multi-tenancy architecture.
The practical consequences of this vulnerability are extensive and affect multiple aspects of data integration management. An attacker can read sensitive configuration details for sources and destinations that contain credentials or connection strings belonging to other organizations or teams. Furthermore, they possess the ability to trigger synchronization jobs, which could lead to unauthorized data exfiltration or excessive resource consumption on behalf of victim workspaces. More critically, the vulnerability allows for the deletion of connections, sources, and destinations across all accessible endpoints. This capability enables a malicious actor to cause significant operational disruption by destroying critical integration pipelines that other teams rely upon, resulting in potential data loss and service unavailability without any legitimate authorization from those specific workspace owners.
From a classification perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-284 Improper Access Control, specifically reflecting issues related to insufficient verification of user authority over resources. It also maps closely to MITRE ATT&CK technique T1078 Valid Accounts, as the attacker leverages valid credentials for one account to perform actions outside their designated scope by manipulating input parameters. The root cause is a failure in implementing proper object-level access control where the system fails to verify that the user has permission over the specific resource instance being accessed, relying instead on potentially spoofable contextual headers derived from untrusted input.
To mitigate this vulnerability, developers must enforce strict validation of workspace ownership at the point of resource interaction rather than solely during initial authentication or header resolution. The application logic should query the database to retrieve the actual owning workspace ID for any connection, source, or destination referenced in a request and compare it against the authenticated user's permitted workspaces. This ensures that authorization decisions are based on factual data relationships within the system state rather than mutable fields provided by the client. Additionally, input validation mechanisms should be strengthened to reject requests where the supplied workspace identifier does not match the expected context for the specific operation being performed. Implementing these checks at a centralized middleware level or within service layer methods will prevent attackers from bypassing access controls through header manipulation and restore the integrity of multi-tenant isolation boundaries.