CVE-2021-38153: Timing Attack Vulnerability for Apache Kafka Connect and Clients

[Randall Hauch <rhauch () apache org>]

Severity: moderate

Description:

Some components in Apache Kafka use `Arrays.equals` to validate a password or key, which is vulnerable to timing 
attacks that make brute force attacks for such credentials more likely to be successful. Users should upgrade to 2.8.1 
or higher, or 3.0.0 or higher where this vulnerability has been fixed. The affected versions include Apache Kafka 
2.0.0, 2.0.1, 2.1.0, 2.1.1, 2.2.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.3.0, 2.3.1, 2.4.0, 2.4.1, 2.5.0, 2.5.1, 2.6.0, 2.6.1, 2.6.2, 2.7.0, 
2.7.1, and 2.8.0.

Credit:

Apache Kafka would like to thank J. Santilli for reporting this issue.

References:

https://kafka.apache.org/cve-list