Apache Kafka: Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value (CVE-2026-114349)
Published Last modified Sources: BSI, CVE.org
What is affected, what to do
When a broker decodes a compressed record batch, the per-record decoder reads a declared body size from the decompressed stream and allocates a buffer of that size before validating it against the bytes available or any configured limit. The size is attacker-controlled, and the batch CRC does not constrain it, so a small (around 90-byte), CRC-valid compressed produce request can declare a body size of up to about 2 GiB and force the broker to attempt that allocation, raising OutOfMemoryError.
An exploit is publicly available. Update Apache Kafka to version 2.5.0, Apache Kafka to version 4.0.0.
- Affected
- Apache Kafka
lt 0.11.0.0..2.5.0 - Apache Kafka
lt 0.11.0.0..4.0.0 - Apache Kafka
lte 2.4.0..4.1.2 - Apache Kafka
lte 4.2.0..4.2.1 - Apache Kafka
lte 4.3.0..4.3.1
- Apache Kafka
- Fixed in
- Apache Kafka
2.5.0 - Apache Kafka
4.0.0
- Apache Kafka
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Metrics
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Priority
No value is available for this vulnerability.
—
CVSS v3
No value is available for this vulnerability.
0.3 %
EPSS score
Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.
Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 16.1
Show all metrics
- Severity
- Not rated
Priority (0–325)
The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?
Read in glossary- 32.07 Methodology
Exploit maturity
An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.
Read in glossary- PoC (publicly reported)
EPSS score
The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.
Read in glossary- 0.3 %
- Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.
EPSS percentile
The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.
Read in glossary- 16.1
- Elevated — this CVE ranks above at least 10% of all CVEs scored today.
KEV status
The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.
Read in glossary- —
- Published
CWE
CWE is a catalogue of typical weakness types in software and hardware — such as flawed input validation, unsafe memory handling or poor authentication. Where a CVE names a concrete vulnerability in a concrete product, a CWE describes the underlying class of defect.
Read in glossary- CWE-789, CWE-400, CWE-1284
Detection rules
No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.
Classification under NIS2 and CRA
Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.
NIS2
NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.
Read in glossary- Handle the vulnerability in regular vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2.
CRA
The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.
Read in glossary- From 11.12.2027, Annex I Part II CRA requires manufacturers of affected products with digital elements to handle vulnerabilities without delay and provide security updates.
ISO/IEC 27001
ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.
Read in glossary- Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.
Description
When a broker decodes a compressed record batch, the per-record decoder reads a declared body size from the decompressed stream and allocates a buffer of that size before validating it against the bytes available or any configured limit. The size is attacker-controlled, and the batch CRC does not constrain it, so a small (around 90-byte), CRC-valid compressed produce request can declare a body size of up to about 2 GiB and force the broker to attempt that allocation, raising OutOfMemoryError. The record size limit (max.message.bytes), the request size limit, and client/broker quotas bound only the compressed wire size, not the declared decompressed size. Impact: An authenticated principal with Write on a topic can crash broker request-handler threads (reached when a batch's codec differs from the topic's compression.type and records are re-encoded) and any consumer that fetches the record, denying service. On brokers started with -XX:+ExitOnOutOfMemoryError, a common hardening, a single crafted request terminates the broker JVM. More seriously, a crafted record is accepted at ingest and written to disk; when the log-cleaner later reads it on a compacted topic, the OutOfMemoryError (an Error, not an Exception) terminates the cleaner thread, which is not restarted. With the default of a single cleaner thread, log compaction then stops for the entire broker, including the internal __consumer_offsets and __transaction_state topics, and the condition persists across restarts until the offending record is removed. The impact is availability only; no data is disclosed or altered. Mitigation: Upgrade to Apache Kafka 4.2.2, 4.3.2, or 4.4.0, and set max.decompressed.message.bytes (at the broker and/or topic level) to a bounded value appropriate for your workload. Upgrading alone is not sufficient: for backward compatibility this configuration defaults to an effectively unlimited value (about 2 GiB), so a broker remains exposed until the limit is set. Choose a value at or slightly above the largest legitimate decompressed record your applications produce, and comfortably below the broker heap divided by the number of request-handler and cleaner threads. Until you can upgrade and configure the limit, restrict Write access to trusted producers; quotas and max.message.bytes do not mitigate this issue. Resolution: From Apache Kafka 4.2.2, 4.3.2, and 4.4.0: the broker validates a record's declared decompressed body size against max.decompressed.message.bytes before allocating, on the produce-validation, log-compaction, and timestamp-lookup paths, and rejects oversized or negative sizes with InvalidRecordException. Operators must set this configuration to a bounded value to be protected, as its default is effectively unlimited.
Source: BSI CSAF, BSI WID Portal, cvelistv5, NVD (NIST)
Affected products
The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.
| Affected versions | Fixed in | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Software Foundation | Apache Kafka |
|
|
| Apache | Kafka |
|
|
Vendors and products
Weakness classes (CWE)
CWE-789Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value
Variant
The product allocates memory based on an untrusted, large size value, but it does not ensure that the size is within expected limits, allowing arbitrary amounts of memory to be allocated.
Entry at MITRE CWE-789CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Class
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
Entry at MITRE CWE-400CWE-1284Improper Validation of Specified Quantity in Input
Base
The product receives input that is expected to specify a quantity (such as size or length), but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the quantity has the required properties.
Entry at MITRE CWE-1284
Public exploit references
Publicly reported proof-of-concepts, exploit modules and detection templates for this vulnerability. NEOSEC links to the original sources only and does not provide any exploit code.
| CIRCL Sightings | endorlabs.com (opens in a new tab) | PoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified |
References & sources
- kafka.apache.orgcve-listVendor advisory
- openwall.comlists/oss-security/2026/10/28/18
- lists.apache.orgthread/hdy56hrd1h9btf30jb1noswsx32l17dqMailing list
Changes to this CVE
Who changed this CVE and when: NVD (analysis, affected products, CVSS), the CVE publisher (CNA) and additional providers such as CISA (ADP).
Record modifiedApache
1 individual change: Affected versions (publisher)
Show the original change
Individual changes of this event as published by NVD Type Action Before After Affected versions (publisher) added —Affected value modified. <a href="https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/blob/main/cves/2026/114xxx/CVE-2026-114349.json">CVE-2026-114349</a>Source identifier: security@apache.org
Record modifiedApache
Show the original change
Individual changes of this event as published by NVD Type Action Before After Reference added —https://lists.apache.org/thread/hdy56hrd1h9btf30jb1noswsx32l17dqSource identifier: security@apache.org
Record modifiedCVE Program
New references:Show the original change
Individual changes of this event as published by NVD Type Action Before After Reference added —http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/10/28/18Source identifier: af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108
ReceivedApache
Weakness type: CWE-400, CWE-789, CWE-1284
Description added or changed
New references:Show 6 original changes
Individual changes of this event as published by NVD Type Action Before After Description added —When a broker decodes a compressed record batch, the per-record decoder reads a declared body size from the decompressed stream and allocates a buffer of that size before validating it against the bytes available or any configured limit. The size is attacker-controlled, and the batch CRC does not constrain it, so a small (around 90-byte), CRC-valid compressed produce request can declare a body size of up to about 2 GiB and force the broker to attempt that allocation, raising OutOfMemoryError. The record size limit (max.message.bytes), the request size limit, and client/broker quotas bound only the compressed wire size, not the declared decompressed size. Impact: An authenticated principal with Write on a topic can crash broker request-handler threads (reached when a batch's codec differs from the topic's compression.type and records are re-encoded) and any consumer that fetches the record, denying service. On brokers started with -XX:+ExitOnOutOfMemoryError, a common hardening, a single crafted request terminates the broker JVM. More seriously, a crafted record is accepted at ingest and written to disk; when the log-cleaner later reads it on a compacted topic, the OutOfMemoryError (an Error, not an Exception) terminates the cleaner thread, which is not restarted. With the default of a single cleaner thread, log compaction then stops for the entire broker, including the internal __consumer_offsets and __transaction_state topics, and the condition persists across restarts until the offending record is removed. The impact is availability only; no data is disclosed or altered. Mitigation: Upgrade to Apache Kafka 4.2.2, 4.3.2, or 4.4.0, and set max.decompressed.message.bytes (at the broker and/or topic level) to a bounded value appropriate for your workload. Upgrading alone is not sufficient: for backward compatibility this configuration defaults to an effectively unlimited value (about 2 GiB), so a broker remains exposed until the limit is set. Choose a value at or slightly above the largest legitimate decompressed record your applications produce, and comfortably below the broker heap divided by the number of request-handler and cleaner threads. Until you can upgrade and configure the limit, restrict Write access to trusted producers; quotas and max.message.bytes do not mitigate this issue. Resolution: From Apache Kafka 4.2.2, 4.3.2, and 4.4.0: the broker validates a record's declared decompressed body size against max.decompressed.message.bytes before allocating, on the produce-validation, log-compaction, and timestamp-lookup paths, and rejects oversized or negative sizes with InvalidRecordException. Operators must set this configuration to a bounded value to be protected, as its default is effectively unlimited.Weakness type (CWE) added —CWE-400Weakness type (CWE) added —CWE-789Weakness type (CWE) added —CWE-1284Affected versions (publisher) added —New affected value received. <a href="https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/blob/main/cves/2026/114xxx/CVE-2026-114349.json">CVE-2026-114349</a>Reference added —https://kafka.apache.org/cve-listSource identifier: security@apache.org
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<a href="https://intel.neosec.eu/en/cve/CVE-2026-114349"><img src="https://intel.neosec.eu/badge/cve/CVE-2026-114349.svg?lang=en" alt="CVE-2026-114349 – NEOSEC Intel" height="20"></a>