CVE-2026-97636

Received Received - Intake

Team-Scope Bypass in Apache Airflow HashiCorp Vault Provider

Publication date: 2026-09-24

Last updated on: 2026-09-24

Assigner: Apache Software Foundation

Description

Apache Airflow HashiCorp provider: the HashiCorp Vault secrets backend's team-scope guard can be bypassed with a user-controlled key. In a multi-team deployment, a Dag author scoped to one team can supply a Variable key containing a path separator that causes the backend to resolve a secret belonging to a different team, because after the team-scoped lookup misses the backend falls back to a team-agnostic path concatenated from the unvalidated key. The Execution API Variables route accepts a path-shaped key, so this is reachable from ordinary Dag code. Affects multi-team deployments using the HashiCorp Vault secrets backend. Single-team deployments are not affected, as there is no cross-team boundary to cross. This is the same class as CVE-2026-86465, CVE-2026-68870, CVE-2026-68871 and CVE-2026-68872 in the Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, Yandex Lockbox and Amazon secrets backends. Users of apache-airflow-providers-hashicorp are recommended to upgrade to version 4.8.0 or later, which fixes the issue.

CVSS Scores

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Meta Information

Published

2026-09-24

Last Modified

2026-09-24

Generated

2026-09-25

AI Q&A

2026-09-25

EPSS Evaluated

N/A

NVD

CVE-2026-97636

Affected Vendors & Products

Vendor	Product	Version / Range
apache	airflow_providers_hashicorp	4.8.0

Helpful Resources

Exploitability

CWE

KEV

CWE ID	Description
CWE-639	The system's authorization functionality does not prevent one user from gaining access to another user's data or record by modifying the key value identifying the data.

Attack-Flow Graph

Executive Summary

This vulnerability affects Apache Airflow's HashiCorp Vault secrets backend in multi-team deployments. A Dag author scoped to one team can bypass team-scoped access controls by supplying a Variable key with a path separator. This causes the backend to resolve a secret belonging to a different team, as it falls back to an unvalidated team-agnostic path.

Detection Guidance

This vulnerability affects multi-team deployments using the HashiCorp Vault secrets backend in Apache Airflow. To detect it, check if your Apache Airflow version is below 4.8.0 and if you are using the HashiCorp provider with multi-team setups. Review DAG code for Variable keys that might contain path separators attempting to access cross-team secrets.

Impact Analysis

In multi-team deployments, this vulnerability allows unauthorized access to secrets belonging to other teams. Dag authors could read or use sensitive data they are not permitted to access, potentially leading to data leaks or security breaches.

Compliance Impact

This vulnerability could lead to unauthorized access to sensitive data, violating compliance requirements for data protection and access controls in standards like GDPR and HIPAA. It undermines the principle of least privilege and data segregation.

Mitigation Strategies

Upgrade to Apache Airflow HashiCorp provider version 4.8.0 or later to fix the issue. If upgrading is not immediately possible, restrict access to the Execution API Variables route and audit DAG code for suspicious Variable key usage that could bypass team scoping.

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