CVE-2026-10142 kafka-python prior to 2.3.2 Denial of Service via Protocol Parser Frame Length

Description

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.

Exploitable remotely over the network, without an account and without any user action; an attacker can seriously compromise confidentiality, integrity or availability.

Attack vector

Network

Attack complexity

Low

Privileges required

None

Interaction

None

Scope

Unchanged

Confidentiality

None

Integrity

None

Availability

High

Affected products and versions