Apache Druid’s Kerberos authenticator uses a weak fallback secretGHSA-w88f-4875-99c8
CRITICALFix: apache/druid#18368GHSA-w88f-4875-99c8 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-338 vulnerability in org.apache.druid:druid. A fix is available for org.apache.druid:druid — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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 GHSA-w88f-4875-99c8.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
org.apache.druid:druidReal-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
Apache Druid’s Kerberos authenticator uses a weak fallback secret when the druid.auth.authenticator.kerberos.cookieSignatureSecret configuration is not explicitly set. In this case, the secret is generated using ThreadLocalRandom,
which is not a crypto-graphically secure random number generator. This
may allow an attacker to predict or brute force the secret used to sign
authentication cookies, potentially enabling token forgery or
authentication bypass. Additionally, each process generates its own
fallback secret, resulting in inconsistent secrets across nodes. This
causes authentication failures in distributed or multi-broker
deployments, effectively leading to a incorrectly configured clusters. Users are
advised to configure a strong druid.auth.authenticator.kerberos.cookieSignatureSecret
This issue affects Apache Druid: through 34.0.0.
Users are recommended to upgrade to version 35.0.0, which fixes the issue making it mandatory to set druid.auth.authenticator.kerberos.cookieSignatureSecret when using the Kerberos authenticator. Services will fail to come up if the secret is not set.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.apache.druid:druid | all versions | 35.0.0org.apache.druid:druid:35.0.0 |
Affected Products
druidapacheDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.apache.druid:druid, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.apache.druid:druid to 35.0.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-w88f-4875-99c8 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-w88f-4875-99c8 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.