Executive brief
Apache Airflow is a workflow orchestration platform used to schedule and monitor data pipelines. A flaw in the API endpoints that manage asset-triggered scheduling allowed any user with read access to a workflow (DAG) to delete its queued asset events—a state-changing action that should require edit permission. This could suppress asset-triggered scheduling, disrupting automated data pipelines and potentially causing business processes to stall silently.
Technical details
The vulnerability is an authorization bypass in the asset queued-events DELETE endpoints. The endpoints incorrectly checked the DAG permission as `READ` instead of `EDIT`, allowing authenticated users with read-only access to delete queued asset events. This violates the principle of least privilege and the normal RBAC model in which read and edit permissions are scoped separately. An attacker requires network access to Airflow and valid authentication; no user interaction is needed. The fix requires upgrading to Apache Airflow 3.3.2 or later, which enforces `EDIT` permission on deletion operations.
Affected products
- Apache Airflow before 3.3.2
Timeline
- 2026-09-18: disclosed
- 2026-08-19: patched: Fix merged via PR #71736