CVE-2026-41731: In Spring for Apache Kafka, overly broad trusted-package matching in header mappers exposes JDK classes to deserialization

June 10, 2026 (updated June 12, 2026)

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.

References

github.com/advisories/GHSA-xq69-5h5v-x9x4
nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-41731
spring.io/security/cve-2026-41731

Code Behaviors & Features

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