Apache Airflow Apache Kafka provider versions 1.15.0 before 2.0.0 resolve dotted-path strings found in a Kafka connection's "extra" field into Python callables via "import_string", with no allowlist, and hand them to the confluent-kafka client which invokes them. Deployments that have enabled the Kafka event producer — "dag_run_events_enabled" or "task_instance_events_enabled", both disabled by default — build that client inside the scheduler process, so a user whose only privilege is editing Airflow connections gains arbitrary code execution in the control plane; the Airflow security model limits connection-configuration users to code execution on workers, not the scheduler. Deployments using Google Managed Kafka are not affected, because that code path overwrites any user-supplied "oauth_cb"; plain brokers and Amazon MSK are exposed. Users are recommended to upgrade to apache-airflow-providers-apache-kafka 2.0.0 or later, which adds an allowlist configuration option for connection-string callbacks.