Security¶

Threat Model¶

Threat Vector	Impact	Mitigation
Broker compromise	Direct read of all topic data on disk. Ability to forge produce/fetch responses	Disk encryption (LUKS / EBS encryption). Restrict OS access. Audit `kafka-authorizer.log`. Network isolation
KRaft controller compromise	Forge metadata records (create topics, alter ACLs). Rewire partition leadership	Run controllers in isolated mode on hardened hosts. Require mTLS between broker and controller listener. Restrict `controller.listener.names` to internal-only network paths
Client impersonation	Producer writes records as another principal. Consumer reads topics they should not	SASL or mTLS authentication everywhere. ACLs with explicit deny defaults
Data exfiltration via consumer	Authenticated consumer subscribes to sensitive topics and exfiltrates	Topic-scoped ACLs (`Read` on `Topic:payments` granted to specific principals only). Per-user `consumer_byte_rate` quotas. Egress monitoring
MITM on wire	Eavesdrop produce/fetch traffic. Downgrade to PLAINTEXT	TLS on every listener (`SSL` or `SASL_SSL`). Disable `PLAINTEXT` listeners on prod. Pin TLS 1.2+
Replay attacks	Re-send captured produce requests to duplicate writes	Idempotent producer (PID + sequence number deduplication). Transactional producer with fencing
JAAS module injection (CVE-2025-27818)	Attacker with `AlterConfigs` permission triggers RCE via LDAP login module	Apply 3.9.1/4.0.0+. Set `org.apache.kafka.disallowed.login.modules`. Restrict who can call AlterConfigs
OAUTHBEARER URL abuse (CVE-2025-27817)	Arbitrary file read / SSRF through `sasl.oauthbearer.token.endpoint.url`	Apply 3.9.1/4.0.0+. Set `-Dorg.apache.kafka.sasl.oauthbearer.allowed.urls=https://idp.example.com/...`
MM2 cross-cluster credential leak	Compromised replicator can read source and write target	Separate principals for MM2 source/target. Least-privilege ACLs on internal MM2 topics. Encrypt MM2 worker-to-broker traffic
ZooKeeper compromise (legacy clusters)	Read/alter cluster metadata directly	Migrate off ZK to KRaft (Kafka 4.0+). Never expose ZK to untrusted networks. SASL on ZK if you must keep it
Sensitive logging	Credentials/payloads written to broker logs at DEBUG level	Keep root logger at INFO. Never enable NetworkClient DEBUG in prod (KIP-714 / CVE related disclosures)

Authentication (SASL & mTLS)¶

Kafka supports several authentication mechanisms on each listener. The mechanism is selected via security.protocol (transport) and sasl.mechanism (when SASL is in use).

Listener Configuration¶

# server.properties — three listeners with three protocols
listeners=PLAINTEXT://:9092,SASL_SSL://:9094,SSL://:9095
advertised.listeners=PLAINTEXT://broker1:9092,SASL_SSL://broker1.example.com:9094,SSL://broker1.example.com:9095

listener.security.protocol.map=PLAINTEXT:PLAINTEXT,SASL_SSL:SASL_SSL,SSL:SSL,CONTROLLER:SSL
inter.broker.listener.name=SSL          # broker-to-broker uses mTLS

sasl.enabled.mechanisms=SCRAM-SHA-512,OAUTHBEARER
sasl.mechanism.inter.broker.protocol=SCRAM-SHA-512

SASL Mechanisms¶

Mechanism	When to Use	Strengths	Weaknesses
PLAIN	Lab / over a TLS-only listener with an external trust boundary	Simple. Widely supported	Sends plaintext password to broker (must be wrapped in TLS)
SCRAM-SHA-256 / SCRAM-SHA-512	General-purpose username/password without an external IdP	No password on the wire (challenge-response). Credentials stored in cluster metadata	SCRAM-without-TLS is exploitable — always pair with TLS
GSSAPI (Kerberos)	Enterprise environments with existing Active Directory / Heimdal KDC	Strong mutual auth. Well-understood by ops	Heavyweight client setup. Keytab management
OAUTHBEARER	Modern microservices. Integration with corporate IdP (Keycloak, Okta, Auth0, Azure AD)	Token-based. Integrates with OAuth 2.0 / OIDC. Short-lived credentials	Default Kafka implementation creates unsecured JWTs (RFC 7515 unsecured) — usable only for dev. Production deployments need a real OIDC validator

SCRAM Setup Example¶

# Create a SCRAM-SHA-512 credential for User:alice
bin/kafka-configs.sh --bootstrap-server kafka:9094 \
  --command-config admin.properties \
  --alter --add-config 'SCRAM-SHA-512=[iterations=8192,password=ChangeMeNow]' \
  --entity-type users --entity-name alice

# Client config snippet
sasl.mechanism=SCRAM-SHA-512
security.protocol=SASL_SSL
sasl.jaas.config=org.apache.kafka.common.security.scram.ScramLoginModule required \
  username="alice" password="ChangeMeNow";

OAUTHBEARER (Production with OIDC)¶

# Client side — exchange a refresh token at the IdP, get a short-lived JWT
security.protocol=SASL_SSL
sasl.mechanism=OAUTHBEARER
sasl.login.callback.handler.class=org.apache.kafka.common.security.oauthbearer.OAuthBearerLoginCallbackHandler
sasl.oauthbearer.token.endpoint.url=https://idp.example.com/realms/prod/protocol/openid-connect/token
sasl.jaas.config=org.apache.kafka.common.security.oauthbearer.OAuthBearerLoginModule required \
  clientId="orders-svc" clientSecret="${env:OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET}";

# Broker side — validate JWTs against the IdP's JWKS
listener.name.sasl_ssl.oauthbearer.sasl.server.callback.handler.class=\
  org.apache.kafka.common.security.oauthbearer.OAuthBearerValidatorCallbackHandler
listener.name.sasl_ssl.oauthbearer.sasl.oauthbearer.jwks.endpoint.url=\
  https://idp.example.com/realms/prod/protocol/openid-connect/certs
listener.name.sasl_ssl.oauthbearer.sasl.oauthbearer.expected.audience=kafka
listener.name.sasl_ssl.oauthbearer.sasl.oauthbearer.expected.issuer=\
  https://idp.example.com/realms/prod
# Required since 4.0 — explicitly allow-list the JWKS / token endpoints
listener.name.sasl_ssl.oauthbearer.sasl.oauthbearer.allowed.urls=\
  https://idp.example.com/realms/prod/protocol/openid-connect/certs,\
  https://idp.example.com/realms/prod/protocol/openid-connect/token

OAUTHBEARER in 4.0+

From Kafka 4.0, sasl.oauthbearer.allowed.urls defaults to empty as a hardening for CVE-2025-27817. Operators must list trusted IdP URLs explicitly. In 3.9.1, all URLs are allowed for backward compatibility but the operator must set the JVM property -Dorg.apache.kafka.sasl.oauthbearer.allowed.urls.

Mutual TLS (mTLS / SSL)¶

# server.properties — full TLS listener with client-cert auth
listeners=SSL://:9095
ssl.keystore.location=/etc/kafka/tls/server.keystore.jks
ssl.keystore.password=${env:KAFKA_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD}
ssl.key.password=${env:KAFKA_KEY_PASSWORD}
ssl.truststore.location=/etc/kafka/tls/server.truststore.jks
ssl.truststore.password=${env:KAFKA_TRUSTSTORE_PASSWORD}
ssl.client.auth=required
ssl.enabled.protocols=TLSv1.3,TLSv1.2
ssl.cipher.suites=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256
ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm=https

The Subject DN of the client (or any field selected via ssl.principal.mapping.rules) becomes the principal used for ACL evaluation.

Authorization (ACLs)¶

Kafka uses a default-deny ACL model when an authorizer is configured. The built-in standard authorizer is org.apache.kafka.metadata.authorizer.StandardAuthorizer (KRaft-native). The older kafka.security.authorizer.AclAuthorizer was tied to ZooKeeper and is removed in 4.0.

# server.properties
authorizer.class.name=org.apache.kafka.metadata.authorizer.StandardAuthorizer
super.users=User:admin;User:CN=cluster-admin
allow.everyone.if.no.acl.found=false      # default deny

Common ACL Recipes¶

# Producer permissions on a topic
bin/kafka-acls.sh --bootstrap-server kafka:9094 --command-config admin.properties \
  --add --allow-principal User:orders-svc \
  --producer --topic orders

# Consumer permissions for a specific group
bin/kafka-acls.sh --bootstrap-server kafka:9094 --command-config admin.properties \
  --add --allow-principal User:billing-svc \
  --consumer --topic orders --group billing-aggregator

# Prefix-based topic ACL (every topic starting with "events.")
bin/kafka-acls.sh --bootstrap-server kafka:9094 --command-config admin.properties \
  --add --allow-principal User:platform-events \
  --producer --topic events. --resource-pattern-type prefixed

# Transactional producer (transactional.id ACL)
bin/kafka-acls.sh --bootstrap-server kafka:9094 --command-config admin.properties \
  --add --allow-principal User:orders-svc \
  --operation Write --operation Describe \
  --transactional-id orders-svc-txn-1

# Cluster admin (use sparingly)
bin/kafka-acls.sh --bootstrap-server kafka:9094 --command-config admin.properties \
  --add --allow-principal User:CN=cluster-admin \
  --operation All --cluster

OPA Integration¶

For policy-as-code, several open-source authorizers wrap the Kafka authorizer SPI to delegate decisions to Open Policy Agent (for example, Bisnode's kafka-open-policy-agent-plugin, Aiven's similar plugin, and StyraHub's Rego-based examples). The plugin runs in-broker, calls OPA over localhost, and caches decisions. This gives fine-grained, attribute-based authorization (time-of-day, business unit, message-attribute checks) that vanilla ACLs cannot express.

Encryption¶

TLS In-Transit¶

Use TLS on every listener that crosses an untrusted boundary:

Client → broker
Broker → broker (inter.broker.listener.name)
Broker → controller (controller.listener.names)
MirrorMaker 2 source → MM2 worker → target

Pin ssl.enabled.protocols=TLSv1.3,TLSv1.2. Disable older protocols. Use cert-manager (or the built-in CA of the Strimzi operator) to rotate certificates automatically — Strimzi rotates the cluster CA every 365 days by default.

Encryption At Rest¶

Apache Kafka does not ship native end-to-end record encryption. Options:

Layer	Approach	Notes
Disk	LUKS / EBS volume encryption	Transparent. Broker is unaware. Standard practice.
Application	Client-side envelope encryption (Vault Transit / KMS)	Producer encrypts before send. Consumer decrypts after receive. Schema/contract for the `key-id` header.
Kafka Connect	SMT (Single Message Transform) for field-level encryption	Several community SMTs implement field-level encryption with KMS-backed DEKs.
Confluent Platform	Client-Side Field-Level Encryption (CSFLE)	Commercial. Integrates with Schema Registry tags.

Native FS encryption

There is no shipped KIP that gives Apache Kafka transparent broker-side record encryption with operator-managed keys (analogous to Pulsar's encryption support). The community discussed several KIPs (KIP-317, KIP-1124), but as of Kafka 4.2 nothing is GA. Until then, disk-encryption + client-side encryption for sensitive fields is the standard layered defense.

Audit Logging¶

Apache Kafka does not ship a dedicated "audit log" subsystem. The de facto audit mechanism is the kafka.authorizer.logger log4j logger, which the StandardAuthorizer (and AclAuthorizer historically) writes to:

INFO: every Deny decision is logged with principal, host, operation, and resource.
DEBUG: every Allow decision is logged (off by default. High volume).

# log4j2.properties (Kafka 4.x uses log4j2)
appender.authorizer.type = RollingFile
appender.authorizer.name = AuthorizerFile
appender.authorizer.fileName = ${sys:kafka.logs.dir}/kafka-authorizer.log
appender.authorizer.filePattern = ${sys:kafka.logs.dir}/kafka-authorizer.log.%d{yyyy-MM-dd-HH}
appender.authorizer.layout.type = PatternLayout
appender.authorizer.layout.pattern = [%d] %p %m (%c)%n
appender.authorizer.policies.type = Policies
appender.authorizer.policies.time.type = TimeBasedTriggeringPolicy
appender.authorizer.policies.time.interval = 1

logger.authorizer.name = kafka.authorizer.logger
logger.authorizer.level = INFO       # raise to DEBUG to also log Allows
logger.authorizer.appenderRef.file.ref = AuthorizerFile
logger.authorizer.additivity = false

A typical authorizer log entry:

[2026-04-28 14:32:11,455] INFO Principal = User:CN=consumer is Denied Operation = Read
  from host = 10.0.4.17 on resource = Topic:LITERAL:payments for request = Fetch
  with resourceRefCount = 1 (kafka.authorizer.logger)

For richer audit trails:

Confluent Platform ships confluent.security.event.router which publishes audit events to a dedicated audit topic in JSON CloudEvents format.
Conduktor, Lenses.io, and proxy-based products (for example, Kroxylicious) provide topic-level proxy logging for record-level audit (which records were consumed by which principal).
Forward kafka-authorizer.log to a SIEM (Splunk, Elastic, Loki, Datadog) for retention and alerting. Alert on bursts of Deny decisions.

MirrorMaker 2 Cross-Cluster Replication Security¶

# mm2.properties — secure SASL_SSL on both source and target clusters
clusters = src, dst
src.bootstrap.servers = src-broker1:9094,src-broker2:9094,src-broker3:9094
dst.bootstrap.servers = dst-broker1:9094,dst-broker2:9094,dst-broker3:9094

src.security.protocol = SASL_SSL
src.sasl.mechanism = SCRAM-SHA-512
src.sasl.jaas.config = org.apache.kafka.common.security.scram.ScramLoginModule required \
  username="mm2-replicator" password="${env:MM2_SRC_PASSWORD}";
src.ssl.truststore.location = /etc/mm2/src-truststore.jks
src.ssl.truststore.password = ${env:MM2_SRC_TRUST_PASSWORD}

dst.security.protocol = SASL_SSL
dst.sasl.mechanism = SCRAM-SHA-512
dst.sasl.jaas.config = org.apache.kafka.common.security.scram.ScramLoginModule required \
  username="mm2-replicator" password="${env:MM2_DST_PASSWORD}";
dst.ssl.truststore.location = /etc/mm2/dst-truststore.jks
dst.ssl.truststore.password = ${env:MM2_DST_TRUST_PASSWORD}

src->dst.enabled = true
src->dst.topics = orders.*, events.*
src->dst.replication.factor = 3
src->dst.sync.topic.acls.enabled = true
src->dst.sync.group.offsets.enabled = true

Best practices:

Use separate dedicated principals for MM2 in the source (read-only) and target (write + create-internal-topics).
Restrict MM2 internal topics (mm2-offsets.dst.internal, mm2-status.dst.internal, mm2-configs.dst.internal, heartbeats, *.checkpoints.internal) with ACLs. Only the MM2 worker principal needs to write them.
Pin TLS 1.2+ on both clusters. Verify the certificate chain of the target cluster in the MM2 truststore.
Replicate ACLs (sync.topic.acls.enabled=true) so failover does not silently break authorization.
Encrypt the local Connect state directories of the MM2 worker host. Treat MM2 workers as part of the Kafka security boundary.

Recent CVEs (2024–2025)¶

CVE	Score	Title	Fixed In
CVE-2025-27817	7.5 (HIGH)	Apache Kafka Client SASL/OAUTHBEARER arbitrary file read & SSRF via `sasl.oauthbearer.token.endpoint.url` / `jwks.endpoint.url`	3.9.1, 4.0.0 (set `sasl.oauthbearer.allowed.urls`)
CVE-2025-27818	8.8 (HIGH)	Authenticated `AlterConfigs` operator can configure `LdapLoginModule` JAAS to trigger Java deserialization RCE on broker / Connect worker	3.9.1, 4.0.0 (`disallowed.login.modules` defaults updated)
CVE-2025-27819	7.5 (HIGH)	SASL JAAS configuration vulnerability allowing RCE/DoS for principals holding `AlterConfigs` on cluster resource	3.9.1, 4.0.0
CVE-2024-31141	6.5 (MEDIUM)	Kafka Client `ConfigProvider` plugins (FileConfigProvider, DirectoryConfigProvider, EnvVarConfigProvider) allow disclosure of disk content / env vars when client config is supplied by an untrusted party	Documented mitigation. Restrict who supplies client configs
CVE-2024-27309	(NVD)	`MirrorMaker` SCRAM credential exposure under specific replication settings	Mitigation guidance in advisory

Patching Cadence

Every major Kafka redistributor backported the 2025 CVE cluster (27817/27818/27819) (Confluent, Strimzi, Bitnami, AWS MSK, Azure Event Hubs). If you operate Kafka 3.x, upgrade to 3.9.1 minimum and apply the documented JVM properties. For new deployments, target Kafka 4.1+ which has the hardened defaults (empty allowed.urls, disallowed login modules) baked in.

The complete list of Apache-disclosed Kafka vulnerabilities is maintained at kafka.apache.org/cve-list.html.