Apache Airflow 3.3.0-3.3.1: cookie wins over explicit bearer token, misattributing API calls and audit records

Impact

When a request to the Airflow core API carries both a session cookie and an explicit Authorization: Bearer token, Airflow 3.3.0 and 3.3.1 resolve the caller from the cookie and ignore the bearer token, inverting the intended precedence. The request then runs, and is written to the audit log, as the cookie's principal rather than the identity the client presented. For an operator this is principal confusion and an unreliable audit trail on the component that launches jobs onto the fleet - not a direct privilege escalation. It matters most when the audit log is what you would rely on to answer who triggered a given DAG run.

Who can reach it

Remote, but indirect: the attacker must first plant a valid session cookie of their own in the victim's browser or client - cookie tossing from a sibling subdomain, XSS in another application under a shared parent domain, or a shared workstation. Deployments hosting the Airflow UI on a domain shared with other applications are the exposed case; a dedicated domain with no co-hosted applications is not reachable this way. Only versions 3.3.0 and 3.3.1 contain the code path.

What to do

Upgrade to apache-airflow 3.3.2 or later, which resolves the caller from the explicitly supplied credential when one is present. Earlier release lines are not vulnerable and need no action. Restart the API server; no GPU node impact.

References

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