Apache Airflow Secret Manager Backend privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability labeled as problematic has been found in Apache Airflow. Affected by this issue is some unknown functionality of the component Secret Manager Backend. Executing a manipulation can lead to privileges management. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-68868. The attack can be launched remotely. No exploit exists.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic was found in Apache Airflow (the affected version unknown). This vulnerability affects an unknown part of the component Secret Manager Backend. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality. CVE summarizes:

The Google Cloud Secret Manager secrets backend in Apache Airflow's Google provider never applied the team scope when resolving Connections and Variables: the caller's `team_name` was accepted by the backend but dropped at the internal call boundary, so every lookup resolved against the team-agnostic secret name. In a deployment running multi-team mode with this backend, a task or Dag belonging to one team resolved another team's Connection or Variable, obtaining its credentials in full. No unusual configuration is required beyond enabling multi-team mode and using this backend. Users are advised to upgrade to apache-airflow-providers-google 22.3.0 or later, which builds and applies the team-scoped secret name.

This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-68868. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be initiated remotely. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $5k-$25k (estimation calculated on 09/17/2026). The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1068.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

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Productinfo

Type

• Business Process Management Software

Vendor

• Apache

Name

• Airflow

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.apache.org/

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