Description

A possible arbitrary file read and SSRF vulnerability has been identified in Apache Kafka Client. Apache Kafka Clients accept configuration data for setting the SASL/OAUTHBEARER connection with the brokers, including "sasl.oauthbearer.token.endpoint.url" and "sasl.oauthbearer.jwks.endpoint.url". Apache Kafka allows clients to read an arbitrary file and return the content in the error log, or sending requests to an unintended location. In applications where Apache Kafka Clients configurations can be specified by an untrusted party, attackers may use the "sasl.oauthbearer.token.endpoint.url" and "sasl.oauthbearer.jwks.endpoint.url" configuratin to read arbitrary contents of the disk and environment variables or make requests to an unintended location. In particular, this flaw may be used in Apache Kafka Connect to escalate from REST API access to filesystem/environment/URL access, which may be undesirable in certain environments, including SaaS products.

Since Apache Kafka 3.9.1/4.0.0, we have added a system property ("-Dorg.apache.kafka.sasl.oauthbearer.allowed.urls") to set the allowed urls in SASL JAAS configuration. In 3.9.1, it accepts all urls by default for backward compatibility. However in 4.0.0 and newer, the default value is empty list and users have to set the allowed urls explicitly.

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2025-27817

CVSS Base Severity: HIGH

CVSS Base Score: 7.5

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Affected Products

Vendor: Apache Software Foundation

Product: Apache Kafka Client

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.02% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 1.8% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-06-19 (when was this score calculated)

Stakeholder-Specific Vulnerability Categorization (SSVC)

SSVC Exploitation: none

SSVC Technical Impact: partial

SSVC Automatable: true

References

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-27817
https://kafka.apache.org/cve-list

Timeline