kafka-python prior to 2.3.2 contains a denial-of-service vulnerability in the protocol parser that allows a malicious broker or machine-in-the-middle attacker to exhaust memory or hang connections by sending a crafted 4-byte frame length value without bounds validation. Attackers can send a specially crafted frame length through the receive_bytes() function to trigger either a multi-gigabyte memory allocation or an uncaught ValueError that leaves the connection in a broken state, causing requests to hang and consumers to stop heartbeating until restart.
Fix
Patch, vendor advisory and mitigation references on NVD 4
- https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/commit/6e4831444f972d169cdd11f5c8d50333cea3f19b Patch
- https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/pull/3019 Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/pull/3026 Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/kafka-python-prior-to-denial-of-service-via-protocol-parser-frame-length Patch, Third Party Advisory
Every line above is quoted from NVD, CISA, Microsoft, the vendor's own advisory or DISA; nothing is generated.
Change history 1
- First seenCVSS 8.7 · dpkpNVD modified 2026-10-08 16:17
Affected (CPE criteria) 1
cpe:2.3:a:dpkp:kafka-python:*:*:*:*:*:python:*:*
References 4
- https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/commit/6e4831444f972d169cdd11f5c8d50333cea3f19b Patch
- https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/pull/3019 Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/pull/3026 Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/kafka-python-prior-to-denial-of-service-via-protocol-parser-frame-length Patch, Third Party Advisory