How severe is CVE-2020-13927?

CVE-2020-13927 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 9.8 (CRITICAL). EPSS estimates a 99.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2020-13927: Apache Airflow's Experimental API Authentication

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

Apache Airflow's Experimental API Authentication Bypass is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2022-01-18

Remediation due

2022-07-18

Required action
Apply updates per vendor instructions.

CISA notes
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-13927

Description

The previous default setting for Airflow's Experimental API was to allow all API requests without authentication, but this poses security risks to users who miss this fact. From Airflow 1.10.11 the default has been changed to deny all requests by default and is documented at https://airflow.apache.org/docs/1.10.11/security.html#api-authentication. Note this change fixes it for new installs but existing users need to change their config to default `[api]auth_backend = airflow.api.auth.backend.deny_all` as mentioned in the Updating Guide: https://github.com/apache/airflow/blob/1.10.11/UPDATING.md#experimental-api-will-deny-all-request-by-default

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CISA9.8 CRITICAL

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

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableyes

Technical impacttotal

Exploitation Context

as of October 14, 2026

All KEV statistics→

CISA added CVE-2020-13927 to the KEV catalog 434 days after its CVE record was published.
It is one of 41 Apache entries in the CISA KEV catalog, and one of 13 added in 2022.
Its current EPSS score (99.8%) is higher than that of 90% of CISA KEV entries.

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
-	Apache Airflow	Apache Airflow <1.10.11

References

3 Links

Other references

Record Details

Published

2020-11-10

Last updated

2025-10-21

Assigner (CNA)

apache

Credited to

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CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.