# CVE-2020-11978: Apache Airflow Command Injection

- Exploited (CISA KEV): yes, added 2022-01-18
- Published: 2020-07-16
- CVSS: 8.8 HIGH (v3.1)
- EPSS: 99.2% (100th percentile)
- CWE: CWE-78

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.

## Edge WAF coverage (claimed by vendors, not measured)

| Vendor | Status | First rule | Days after publication |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Before feed history | — | — |
| AWS | No public claim | — | — |
| Microsoft Azure | No public claim | — | — |
| Google Cloud | Before feed history | — | — |
| Fastly | Before feed history | — | — |
| F5 | Before feed history | — | — |
| Akamai | No public source | — | — |
| OWASP CRS | Before feed history | — | — |

## Our test (measured)

- OWASP Core Rule Set 4.25.0, paranoia level 1, anomaly threshold 5, default CRS settings: partial (1 of 4 requests blocked), template CVE-2020-11978, 2026-11-02
- OWASP Core Rule Set 4.25.0, paranoia level 2, anomaly threshold 5, default CRS settings: partial (1 of 4 requests blocked), template CVE-2020-11978, 2026-11-02

"No public claim" means no vendor statement names this CVE; "Before feed history" means the CVE is older than the vendor feed. In both cases generic rules may still block it.

HTML: https://cve.vigilbase.com/cve/CVE-2020-11978 · JSON: https://cve.vigilbase.com/api/v1/cves/CVE-2020-11978