A newly identified vulnerability tracked as CVE-2024-31141, has been discovered in Apache Kafka Clients that could allow attackers to escalate privileges and gain unauthorized filesystem read access.
This vulnerability, rated as Moderate in severity, affects multiple versions of Apache Kafka Clients and has raised concerns in environments where applications are exposed to untrusted users, such as SaaS products.
Affected Versions
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This vulnerability impacts the following versions of Apache Kafka Clients:
| Product | Affected Versions |
|---|---|
| Apache Kafka Clients | 2.3.0 through 3.5.2 |
| Apache Kafka Clients | 3.6.0 through 3.6.2 |
| Apache Kafka Clients | 3.7.0 through 3.7.1 |
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Apache Kafka Vulnerability
The vulnerability stems from improper privilege management in Apache Kafka Clients, specifically in how external configuration providers (ConfigProviders) are handled.
Kafka Clients allow custom configurations using ConfigProvider plugins, which include implementations like FileConfigProvider, DirectoryConfigProvider, and EnvVarConfigProvider.
According to Apache report, These plugins can access sensitive data from the filesystem or environment variables. If an untrusted user can specify Kafka Client configurations, they may exploit this vulnerability to read arbitrary files and environment variables.
This is particularly dangerous in services like Apache Kafka Connect, where attackers could escalate from REST API access to filesystem/environment access.
In environments such as SaaS products, where multiple users interact with Apache Kafka through APIs, this vulnerability can be exploited to access sensitive data stored on the disk or in environment variables.
Attackers with access to the Kafka Connect REST API could potentially gain unauthorized access to the underlying system’s filesystem.
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