CVE-2026-42358 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Information Exposure vulnerability in apache-airflow. A fix is available for apache-airflow — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Apache Airflow: Variable masker depth-limit bypass returns cleartext nested secrets
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-42358.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-42358 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 388,997 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
apache-airflowReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
A bug in Apache Airflow's 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 value's nesting depth exceeded the shared secrets masker's 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 masker's 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.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | apache-airflow | all versions | 3.2.2pip install --upgrade 'apache-airflow==3.2.2' |
Affected Products
airflowapacheDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for apache-airflow, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update apache-airflow to 3.2.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-42358 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-42358 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.