Apache Airflow's scheduler-side deadline-reference decoder ("SerializedCustomReference.deserialize_reference") imported and dispatched arbitrary class paths drawn from DAG-author-controlled serialized state without an allowlist or plugin-registry gate. A DAG author whose code reaches the scheduler — the default on single-host deployments where the DAG bundle is importable from the scheduler process — could embed a custom "DeadlineReference" whose serialized form named an attacker-controlled module path, causing the scheduler to "import_string(...)" and instantiate that class with a live SQLAlchemy session attached. Affects deployments where DAG-author code is less trusted than the scheduler process. Users are advised to upgrade to "apache-airflow" 3.2.2 or later.