For RocketMQ versions 5.1.0 and below, under certain conditions, there is a risk of remote command execution.  Several components of RocketMQ, including NameServer, Broker, and Controller, are leaked on the extranet and lack permission verification, an attacker can exploit this vulnerability by using the update configuration function to execute commands as the system users that RocketMQ is running as. Additionally, an attacker can achieve the same effect by forging the RocketMQ protocol content.  To prevent these attacks, users are recommended to upgrade to version 5.1.1 or above for using RocketMQ 5.x or 4.9.6 or above for using RocketMQ 4.x .

For RocketMQ versions 5.2.0 and below, under certain conditions, there is a risk of exposure of sensitive Information to an unauthorized actor even if RocketMQ is enabled with authentication and authorization functions. An attacker, possessing regular user privileges or listed in the IP whitelist, could potentially acquire the administrator's account and password through specific interfaces. Such an action would grant them full control over RocketMQ, provided they have access to the broker IP address list. To mitigate these security threats, it is strongly advised that users upgrade to version 5.3.0 or newer. Additionally, we recommend users to use RocketMQ ACL 2.0 instead of the original RocketMQ ACL when upgrading to version Apache RocketMQ 5.3.0.

The RocketMQ NameServer component still has a remote command execution vulnerability as the CVE-2023-33246 issue was not completely fixed in version 5.1.1. When NameServer address are leaked on the extranet and lack permission verification, an attacker can exploit this vulnerability by using the update configuration function on the NameServer component to execute commands as the system users that RocketMQ is running as. It is recommended for users to upgrade their NameServer version to 5.1.2 or above for RocketMQ 5.x or 4.9.7 or above for RocketMQ 4.x to prevent these attacks.

In Apache RocketMQ 4.2.0 to 4.6.0, when the automatic topic creation in the broker is turned on by default, an evil topic like “../../../../topic2020” is sent from rocketmq-client to the broker, a topic folder will be created in the parent directory in brokers, which leads to a directory traversal vulnerability. Users of the affected versions should apply one of the following: Upgrade to Apache RocketMQ 4.6.1 or later.