CVE-2026-10142

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.

CVSS 4.0

8.7CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

CVSS 3.1

7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS

0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days; higher than 28% of CVEs (scores of 2026-10-25)

CWE

CWE-789

Published

2026-06-10

Modified

2026-10-08

Record from

the NVD, synced 2026-10-19

Affected

• dpkp:kafka-python

Packages (OSV)

References

• https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/commit/6e4831444f972d169cdd11f5c8d50333cea3f19b
• https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/pull/3019
• https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/pull/3026
• https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/kafka-python-prior-to-denial-of-service-via-protocol-parser-frame-length

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