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Fencer Vulns
high 8.1

CVE-2026-41731 json

In Spring for Apache Kafka, overly broad trusted-package matching in header mappers exposes JDK classes to deserialization

published 2026-06-09 5 mo ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also GHSA-xq69-5h5v-x9x4 , EUVD-2026-35908

cvss
8.1
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 43%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

JsonKafkaHeaderMapper and the deprecated DefaultKafkaHeaderMapper matched type headers against trusted packages using a prefix check, meaning that trusting any package implicitly trusted all of its subpackages. Combined with Jackson's default bean deserialization, a producer could supply crafted header values that caused the consumer to deserialize arbitrary JDK types.

Affected versions: Spring for Apache Kafka 4.0.0 through 4.0.5; 3.3.0 through 3.3.15; 3.2.0 through 3.2.13; 2.9.0 through 2.9.13; 2.8.0 through 2.8.11.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.springframework.kafka:spring-kafka 3.3.16, 4.0.6
  • Spring Spring for Apache Kafka 2.8.12, 2.9.14, 3.2.14, 3.3.15.1, 4.0.5.1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-41731 updated cvss 8.1

spring-kafka: Spring for Apache Kafka: Arbitrary code execution via insecure deserialization of crafted header values

  • Red Hat Fuse 7 spring-kafka
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack spring-kafka
    not affected: component not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
4 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.51% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 43% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CISA ADP 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
GitHub 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.springframework.kafka:spring-kafka
>=4.0.0, <4.0.6
>=3.3.0, <3.3.16
>=3.2.0, <=3.2.13
>=2.9.0, <=2.9.13
<=2.8.11
4.0.6
3.3.16

Affected products

  • Spring Spring for Apache Kafka
  • Red Hat Red Hat Fuse 7
  • Red Hat Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.