CVE-2026-76401 Regular Expression Denial of Service (DoS) through the REST API in Splunk Connect for Kafka
An unauthenticated attacker can cause denial of service in Splunk Connect for Kafka by submitting a malicious regular expression via the REST API.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-76401?
CVE-2026-76401 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Splunk Connect for Kafka, published on 19 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In Splunk Connect for Kafka versions below 2.2.7, an unauthenticated user who can reach the Kafka Connect Representational State Transfer (REST) API could configure timestamp extraction with a crafted regular expression and matching event data to block a Kafka Connect worker thread, stopping event delivery for the affected connector. The vulnerability is possible because timestamp extraction evaluates customer-supplied regular expressions without a time limit. For more information see Install Splunk Connect for Kafka (https://help.splunk.com/en/data-management/integrate-data-with-add-ons/splunk-connect-for-kafka/2.2/install/install-splunk-connect-for-kafka) and Data ingestion parameters for Splunk Connect for Kafka (https://help.splunk.com/en/data-management/integrate-data-with-add-ons/splunk-connect-for-kafka/2.2/overview/data-ingestion-parameters-for-splunk-connect-for-kafka) in the Splunk documentation.
Weakness: CWE-407
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-76401?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Splunk Connect for Kafka.
How do I fix CVE-2026-76401?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-76401 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-76401 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-76401 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Splunk Connect for Kafka
- CVE-2026-76402 Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) through the REST API in Splunk Connect for Kafka
- CVE-2026-76403 Improper Certificate Validation through HTTP Event Collector Kerberos Authentication in Splunk Connect for Kafka
- CVE-2026-76400 Denial of Service (DoS) through the REST API in Splunk Connect for Kafka
Sources
Also known as GHSA-9w75-cvch-h753.