CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-49267

MediumCVSS 5.9
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.19%

8th percentile - higher than 8% of all known CVEs

Summary

In Apache Airflow, the EmailOperator and `airflow.utils.email` helpers establish SMTP STARTTLS connections without verifying the remote certificate when `smtp_starttls=True` and `smtp_ssl=False` are used. An attacker in a MITM position can present a self-signed certificate and capture SMTP credentials and message contents.

Risk Assessment

A network attacker can intercept SMTP credentials and email content, compromising communication confidentiality and potentially enabling further attacks.

Recommendation

Upgrade Apache Airflow to version 3.2.2 or later, which includes the fix.

Other vulnerabilities in Apache Airflow

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

Apache Airflow's EmailOperator and the underlying `airflow.utils.email` helpers established SMTP STARTTLS connections without verifying the remote certificate when the deployment used `[email] smtp_starttls=True` without `[email] smtp_ssl`. An attacker positioned between the worker and the configured SMTP server (network MITM — typical hostile-network attack-surface for environments where the SMTP relay sits outside the worker's trust boundary) could present a self-signed certificate, have the worker complete the STARTTLS handshake silently, and capture the SMTP AUTH credentials and message contents the worker forwarded. This CVE covers the **core apache-airflow side** of the same root cause already covered for the SMTP provider by `CVE-2026-41016` (published 2026-04-27, covering `apache-airflow-providers-smtp`). Users who already applied the SMTP-provider fix from CVE-2026-41016 should additionally upgrade `apache-airflow` to 3.2.2 or later to cover the core-side path through `airflow.utils.email`. Affects deployments configured with `smtp_starttls=True` and `smtp_ssl=False` where the SMTP relay is reachable across a less-trusted network segment than the worker. Users are advised to upgrade to `apache-airflow` 3.2.2 or later.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS