Is CVE-2026-49298 actively exploited?

No active exploitation of CVE-2026-49298 has been confirmed so far. Continue monitoring, as exploit status can change.

Can CVE-2026-49298 be exploited remotely?

Yes. CVE-2026-49298 is exploitable remotely over the network (CVSS attack vector: Network).

What is the CVSS score of CVE-2026-49298?

CVE-2026-49298 has a CVSS score of 8.8 (HIGH).

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HIGH

CVE-2026-49298

CWE-538Published: June 1, 2026· Updated: Jun 3, 2026

8.8

CVSS v3.1

EPSS:0.02%probability of exploitation in 30 daysPercentile:5.5th

Official Description

A bug in Apache Airflow's KubernetesExecutor caused JWT tokens used by worker pods to authenticate against the Execution API to be passed to the worker container as command-line arguments visible in the pod spec. An authenticated UI/API user with Kubernetes read-only access to the cluster (e.g. `pods/get` in the Airflow namespace) could harvest the JWT from `kubectl describe pod` output and then call state-mutating Execution API endpoints — triggering Dag runs, clearing runs, reading or writing Variables / Connections / XComs — as if they were a running task. Affects deployments using the `KubernetesExecutor`. Users are advised to upgrade to `apache-airflow` 3.2.2 or later. This is the airflow-core half of the same vulnerability addressed by [CVE-2026-27173](https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-27173), which shipped the apache-airflow-providers-cncf-kubernetes side of the fix. Deployments that already upgraded `apache-airflow-providers-cncf-kubernetes` to 10.17.0 or later per the CVE-2026-27173 advisory should additionally upgrade `apache-airflow` to 3.2.2 or later to close the core-side surface — the two fixes are complementary, not duplicates.

NVD Source

Technical Analysis

CVE-2026-49298 can be exploited remotely over the network without requiring physical or adjacent access, significantly expanding the attack surface for threat actors.

Exploitation requires low privileges, which limits the exposure to scenarios where an attacker has already gained initial access.

A successful exploit results in complete confidentiality breach (data exposure), full integrity compromise (data manipulation), availability disruption (denial of service), with a CVSS base score of 8.8.