CVE-2026-81914: Apache Airflow Google provider: Google Drive query injection via unescaped file and folder names

[Shahar Epstein <shahar () apache org>]

Severity: low 

Affected versions:

- Apache Airflow Google provider before 22.6.0

Description:

Apache Airflow's Google provider built Google Drive search expressions by interpolating file and folder names directly 
into single-quoted string literals, without escaping the quote character that delimits them. A name containing an 
apostrophe therefore terminated the literal early and appended clauses of the attacker's choosing to the query.

The names are frequently not written by the Dag author. In a wildcard `gcs_to_gdrive` transfer they come from the 
source bucket listing, so anyone able to create objects in that bucket controls them — typically an external data 
producer or an ingest-only service account, a different trust principal from the Dag author. An injected clause can 
broaden the match and so steer which file or folder the hook resolves: an upload can be directed into a folder the 
attacker named, and, because downloads select the most recently modified match, a download can return a file they 
placed rather than the one the Dag asked for.

Affects deployments passing externally-sourced names to the Google Drive hook, including wildcard `gcs_to_gdrive` 
transfers from buckets writable by less-trusted principals. Users are advised to upgrade to 
`apache-airflow-providers-google` `22.6.0` or later, which escapes quote and backslash characters in every value 
interpolated into a Drive query.

Credit:

Claude Security Scans (tool)
Jarek Potiuk (remediation developer)

References:

https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/72166
https://airflow.apache.org/
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-81914