When a request to the Airflow core API carries both a session cookie and an explicit Authorization: Bearer token, Airflow resolves the caller from the cookie and ignores the bearer token, inverting the intended precedence of bearer over cookie. The request then executes – and is recorded in the audit log – as the cookies principal rather than the identity the client explicitly presented.
Only Apache Airflow 3.3.0 and 3.3.1 are affected. Earlier releases do not contain the code path that caches the cookie-derived user, and are not vulnerable.
Exploiting this requires an attacker to first place a valid session cookie of their own into the victims browser or client: for example by cookie tossing from a sibling subdomain, through cross-site scripting in a separate application sharing a parent domain, or via a shared workstation. Deployments that host the Airflow UI on a domain shared with other applications are therefore the most exposed; a deployment on a dedicated domain with no co-hosted applications is not reachable this way. The consequence is principal confusion and misattributed audit records rather than a direct privilege escalation.
Users of 3.3.0 or 3.3.1 should upgrade to Apache Airflow 3.3.2 or later, which resolves the caller from the explicitly supplied credential whenever one is present.
Weakness
Authenticating a user, or otherwise establishing a new user session, without invalidating any existing session identifier gives an attacker the opportunity to steal authenticated sessions.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airflow | Apache | 3.3.0 (including) | 3.3.0 (including) |
| Airflow | Apache | 3.3.1 (including) | 3.3.1 (including) |
Extended Description
Such a scenario is commonly observed when:
In the generic exploit of session fixation vulnerabilities, an attacker creates a new session on a web application and records the associated session identifier. The attacker then causes the victim to associate, and possibly authenticate, against the server using that session identifier, giving the attacker access to the user’s account through the active session.
Potential Mitigations
Related Attack Patterns
- https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/196.html
- https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/21.html
- https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/31.html
- https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/39.html
- https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/59.html
- https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/60.html
- https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/61.html