CVE-2024-31141 — kafka-clients
MEDIUMCVE-2024-31141 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in org.apache.kafka:kafka-clients. A fix is available for org.apache.kafka:kafka-clients — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Apache Kafka Clients: Privilege escalation to filesystem read-access via automatic ConfigProvider
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-31141.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-31141 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,145 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
org.apache.kafka:kafka-clientsReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Files or Directories Accessible to External Parties, Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in Apache Kafka Clients.
Apache Kafka Clients accept configuration data for customizing behavior, and includes ConfigProvider plugins in order to manipulate these configurations. 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.
In particular, this flaw may be used in Apache Kafka Connect to escalate from REST API access to filesystem/environment access, which may be undesirable in certain environments, including SaaS products. This issue affects Apache Kafka Clients: from from 2.3.0 through 3.5.2, 3.6.0 through 3.6.2, and 3.7.0.
Users with affected applications are recommended to upgrade kafka-clients to version >=3.8.0, and set the JVM system property "org.apache.kafka.automatic.config.providers=none". Users of Kafka Connect with one of the listed ConfigProvider implementations specified in their worker config are also recommended to add appropriate "allowlist.pattern" and "allowed.paths" to restrict their operation to appropriate bounds.
For users of Kafka Clients or Kafka Connect in environments that trust users with disk and environment variable access, it is not recommended to set the system property. For users of the Kafka Broker, Kafka MirrorMaker 2.0, Kafka Streams, and Kafka command-line tools, it is not recommended to set the system property.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.apache.kafka:kafka-clients | ≥ 2.3.0&&< 3.7.1 | 3.7.1org.apache.kafka:kafka-clients:3.7.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.apache.kafka:kafka-clients, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.apache.kafka:kafka-clients to 3.7.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-31141 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-31141 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-31141. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat build of Apache Camel 4.8 for Spring Boot | kafka-clients | RHSA-2024:10700 |
| Streams for Apache Kafka 2.9.0 | see advisory | RHSA-2025:2416 |
| Streams for Apache Kafka 2.9.1 | see advisory | RHSA-2025:9922 |
| Streams for Apache Kafka 3.0.0 | see advisory | RHSA-2025:12511 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-31141 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-31141 across Maven dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.