CVE-2024-31141: Apache Kafka Vulnerability Exposes User Data to Potential Attackers
A newly discovered vulnerability in Apache Kafka, the popular open-source event streaming platform, could allow attackers to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-31141, affects a wide range of Apache Kafka Clients versions, potentially impacting thousands of companies that rely on the platform for critical data operations.
The flaw stems from how Apache Kafka Clients handle configuration data. According to the official security advisory, “Apache Kafka Clients accept configuration data for customizing behavior, and includes ConfigProvider plugins in order to manipulate these configurations.” This mechanism, while intended for flexibility, inadvertently opens a door for attackers.
The advisory further explains that “Apache Kafka also provides FileConfigProvider, DirectoryConfigProvider, and EnvVarConfigProvider implementations which include the ability to read from disk or environment variables. In applications where Apache Kafka Clients configurations can be specified by an untrusted party, attackers may use these ConfigProviders to read arbitrary contents of the disk and environment variables.”
Essentially, this means that in certain configurations, malicious actors could exploit this vulnerability to gain access to sensitive files and environment variables. This is particularly concerning in environments like SaaS products, where the advisory notes, “this flaw may be used in Apache Kafka Connect to escalate from REST API access to filesystem/environment access, which may be undesirable.”
The Apache Kafka project has urged users to take immediate action to mitigate the risk. They recommend upgrading kafka-clients to version 3.8.0 or higher and setting the JVM system property “org.apache.kafka.automatic.config.providers=none“.
However, the advisory also cautions that this system property should not be set for users of Kafka Broker, Kafka MirrorMaker 2.0, Kafka Streams, and Kafka command-line tools. Additionally, users of Kafka Connect with specific ConfigProvider implementations are advised to implement “allowlist.pattern” and “allowed.paths” to restrict access.
