A bug in Apache Airflows Variable response masker caused nested-key redaction (triggered by secret-suffixed key names like password, token, secret, api_key) to be bypassed when the JSON values nesting depth exceeded the shared secrets maskers recursion limit: the masker returned the original nested item before checking the sensitive key name. An authenticated UI/API user with Variable read permission could harvest plaintext secret values stored under sensitive keys nested deep enough to exceed the maskers depth cap. Affects deployments that store sensitive values inside deeply-nested JSON Variables. This is a residual gap in the fix for CVE-2026-32690 (which covered shallower nesting via max_depth=1); the depth-limit boundary itself was not raised, so the same key-name bypass pattern reappears beyond the recursion cap. Users who already upgraded for CVE-2026-32690 should additionally upgrade to apache-airflow 3.2.2 or later to cover the deep-nesting path.
Weakness
The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airflow | Apache | * | 3.2.2 (excluding) |
Extended Description
There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:
Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:
Information exposures can occur in different ways:
It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.
Potential Mitigations
- 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.
Related Attack Patterns
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