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VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-86829: Apache Airflow's scheduler fully deserializes XCom values written by task code while evaluating task

Source GCVE Database

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Authoritative record:CVE-2026-86829· High

Not known to be exploited : upgrade to 3.4.0 soon.

Data as of 9 Nov 2026, 13:18 UTC

Severity
High

Rated High by Threat Radar's AI analysis · CVSS not yet scored by NVD

Thin evidence

One scorer or none
Patch
Available – fixed in 3.4.0

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 9 Nov 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq Mirage: no evidence on record.

    No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 9 Nov 2026.

What to do

Upgrade Apache Airflow and apache-airflow-core to 3.4.0.

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
Apache Airflowapache-airflow-coreAffected
  • <3.4.0
Fixed in
  • 3.4.0
PyPIapache-airflow-corepkg:pypi/apache-airflow-coreOther threatsAffected
  • <3.4.0
Fixed in
  • 3.4.0

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

Users are recommended to upgrade to Apache Airflow version 3.4.0 or later, which restricts dependency evaluation to primitive XCom values, thereby preventing this deserialization issue. No other mitigation or workaround is indicated.

Description

Apache Airflow's scheduler deserializes XCom values written by task code when evaluating task dependencies. This behavior allows a Dag author, who controls XCom data, to influence the scheduler's deserialization process, which is intended to be restricted to code installed by the Deployment Manager. This can lead to privilege escalation in deployments where Dag authors are less trusted than Deployment Managers. The issue is addressed in Apache Airflow version 3.4.0 and later by restricting dependency evaluation to primitive XCom values.

References

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