CVE-2020-11978

Apache Airflow: Command Injection

As of , CVE-2020-11978 in Apache Airflow is on CISA's list of exploited vulnerabilities: CISA listed it on . Our patch-first group: Patch this week.

Exploited
Yes: CISA listed it on 18 January 2022
US federal deadline
18 July 2022181 days after CISA listed it. US federal civilian agencies must fix it by then.
Used in ransomware campaigns
Not known to CISA
EPSS score
0.99Higher than 99% of the CVEs EPSS scores. EPSS estimates the chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days.
EPSS when listed
Not availableCISA listed it before 4 February 2022, where the EPSS files we read begin.
Public exploit
1 Metasploit module and 1 Exploit-DB entry
Fix
No vendor link in CISA's entry

What CISA says to do

Apply updates per vendor instructions.

CISA's required action

What the flaw is

A remote code/command injection vulnerability was discovered in one of the example DAGs shipped with Airflow.

CISA's description

An issue was found in Apache Airflow versions 1.10.10 and below. A remote code/command injection vulnerability was discovered in one of the example DAGs shipped with Airflow which would allow any authenticated user to run arbitrary commands as the user running airflow worker/scheduler (depending on the executor in use). If you already have examples disabled by setting load_examples=False in the config then you are not vulnerable.

The CVE record's description, from apache

CVE published
16 July 2020
Assigned by
apache
CVSS
8.8 High (CVSS 3.1, from CISA-ADP)
CWE-78
Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection')
CISA SSVC, exploitation
active
CISA SSVC, automatable
no
CISA SSVC, technical impact
total

Timeline

  1. The CVE record was published.
  2. Exploit-DB published an exploit (EDB-ID 49927).
  3. CISA added it to its list of exploited vulnerabilities.
  4. The US federal deadline to fix it.

Public exploits

Facts from Metasploit's module list and Exploit-DB's index; we never copy exploit code.

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