Hello trung phạm, Thank you for contacting [email protected].
I note that you also added '[email protected]' to the recipients. Please don't: this is a public list, and we handle security reports in private until they're ready to be disclosed. Luckily we've been able to catch this email in moderation. It is not obvious that the behaviour you describe is surprising when evaluated against the project's security model[1]. Could you review the security model and confirm whether you believe any of your findings are still relevant when taking that into account? If your findings are indeed not vulnerability, they are off-topic for this private reporting channel - but the changes you propose may of course still be valuable as a security hardening improvements. You can collaborate on this using the regular open contribution channels. Kind regards, Arnout Engelen ASF Security [1] https://github.com/apache/kafka/blob/trunk/docs/security/security-model.md On Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:49:56 +0700, trung phạm <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Apache Kafka Security Team, > > I found a critical vulnerability chain in Kafka Connect's REST API (port > 8083). The API has no authentication by default, and > connector.client.config.override.policy defaults to "All", allowing an > unauthenticated attacker to: > > - Read arbitrary server files via FileStreamSourceConnector and exfiltrate > contents to an attacker-controlled Kafka broker > - Perform SSRF by forcing server-side connections to attacker-specified > hosts > - Steal plaintext credentials from existing connector configs via GET > /connectors/{name}/config > > A single HTTP request is sufficient to exploit this. Full PoC with Burp > Suite evidence is in the attached report. > > Affected: All Apache Kafka / Confluent Platform with default Connect > configuration. > Tested on: Confluent Platform 7.9.0 > CVSS 3.1: AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H = 9.8 > > Happy to provide additional details via a secure channel. > > Best regards, > Trung Pham
