CVE-2023-34040
MediumCVSS 5.3Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
High risk80th percentile - higher than 80% of all known CVEs
Summary
In Spring for Apache Kafka versions 3.0.9 and earlier and 2.9.10 and earlier, a possible deserialization attack vector exists, but only if unusual configuration is applied. An attacker would need to construct a malicious serialized object in one of the deserialization exception record headers.
Risk Assessment
The organization is exposed to attacks that could lead to the execution of malicious code if appropriate security measures are not taken. In particular, the risk increases when the user allows untrusted sources to publish to a Kafka topic.
Recommendation
It is recommended to configure an ErrorHandlingDeserializer for the key and/or value of the record and to set the container properties checkDeserExWhenKeyNull and checkDeserExWhenValueNull to false. Additionally, publishing should be restricted to trusted sources.
Original NVD description (English source)
In Spring for Apache Kafka 3.0.9 and earlier and versions 2.9.10 and earlier, a possible deserialization attack vector existed, but only if unusual configuration was applied. An attacker would have to construct a malicious serialized object in one of the deserialization exception record headers. Specifically, an application is vulnerable when all of the following are true: * The user does not configure an ErrorHandlingDeserializer for the key and/or value of the record * The user explicitly sets container properties checkDeserExWhenKeyNull and/or checkDeserExWhenValueNull container properties to true. * The user allows untrusted sources to publish to a Kafka topic By default, these properties are false, and the container only attempts to deserialize the headers if an ErrorHandlingDeserializer is configured. The ErrorHandlingDeserializer prevents the vulnerability by removing any such malicious headers before processing the record.