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8.8
CVSS
High

CVE-2020-11978

PUBLISHED

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...

Exploited in the wild Remote Low complexity No user interaction
Vendor
Apache Software Foundation
Product
Apache Airflow
Published
Jul 16, 2020
EPSS
—

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.

apache cisa nuclei_scanner metasploit

CVSS scores

CVSS v3.1 8.8 High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v2.0 6.5

AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:P

Exploitation status

Exploited in the wild

Recorded 2022-01-18 00:00:00 UTC · Source

SSVC decision points

Exploitation
active
Automatable
No
Technical impact
total

References

Known exploited vulnerability sources

Catalogues that list this CVE as a known exploited vulnerability.

Source Added
CISA Jan 18, 2022
CISA Jan 18, 2022

Scanner integrations

Scanner Reference Detected
Metasploit https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/blob/master/modules/exploits/linux/http/apache_airflow_dag_rce.rb Apr 28, 2025
Nuclei https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/blob/main/http/cves/2020/CVE-2020-11978.yaml Apr 25, 2025

Potential proof of concepts

These PoCs are unverified and could contain malware. Use at your own risk.

pberba/CVE-2020-11978

github · Created 2021-05-22 15:58:01 UTC · 8 stars

PoC of how to exploit a RCE vulnerability of the example DAGs in Apache Airflow <1.10.11

Timeline

  • CVE ID Reserved

  • CVE Published to Public

  • Added to KEVIntel

  • Added to KEVIntel

  • Detected by Nuclei

  • Detected by Metasploit