Apache Airflow: Connection sensitive details exposed to users with READ permissions

Vulnerability

Overview

CVE-2025-54831 affects Apache Airflow 3.0.3. The intended design in Airflow 3 was to restrict access to sensitive connection fields to Connection Editing Users only, implementing a write-only model for sensitive values. However, in version 3.0.3, this model was unintentionally broken: sensitive connection information became readable by users with READ permissions through both the API and the UI [1][2].

Attack

Vector and Prerequisites

An attacker with READ permissions on connections can exploit this vulnerability to view sensitive fields (e.g., passwords, tokens) that should have been hidden. The issue also bypasses the AIRFLOW__CORE__HIDE_SENSITIVE_VAR_CONN_FIELDS configuration option, meaning even if that option was set, the sensitive data was still exposed [2][3]. No authentication bypass is required; the attacker simply needs an account with READ-level access to connections.

Impact

The vulnerability directly exposes sensitive credentials stored in Airflow connections. An attacker gaining access to these values could potentially pivot to other systems or services that those connections target, escalating the scope of compromise. This breaks the confidentiality guarantee that Airflow 3 intended to provide for connection secrets.

Mitigation and

Status

Apache has released Airflow 3.0.4 which fixes the issue. Users running Airflow 3.0.3 are strongly advised to upgrade to 3.0.4 or later [2][3]. Airflow 2.x is not affected, as exposing sensitive information to connection editors was the documented behavior in that release line [2].