CVE-2026-33557

A possible security vulnerability has been identified in Apache Kafka. By default, the broker property `sasl.oauthbearer.jwt.validator.class` is set to `org.apache.kafka.common.security.oauthbearer.DefaultJwtValidator`. It accepts any JWT token without validating its signature, issuer, or audience. An attacker can generate a JWT token from any issuer with the `preferred_username` set to any user, and the broker will accept it. We advise the Kafka users using kafka v4.1.0 or v4.1.1 to set the config `sasl.oauthbearer.jwt.validator.class` to `org.apache.kafka.common.security.oauthbearer.BrokerJwtValidator` explicitly to avoid this vulnerability. Since Kafka v4.1.2 and v4.2.0 and later, the issue is fixed and will correctly validate the JWT token.

Scoring

Severity
HIGH
CVSS base score
8.6
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L
EPSS probability
0.68%
CWE
CWE-1285
Published
2026-04-20
Last modified
2026-07-15

Affected products

Weakness type

Related vulnerabilities

Markdown version · Browse all CVEs