Formalization and verification of Kafka messaging mechanism using CSP

Apache Kafka is an open source distributed messaging system based on the
 publish-subscribe model, which achieves low latency, high throughput and
 good load balancing. As a popular messaging system, the transmission of
 messages between applications is one of the core functions of Kafka.
 Therefore, the reliability and security of data in the process of message
 transmission in Kafka have become the focus of attention. The formal
 methods can analyze whether a model is highly credible. Therefore, it is
 significant to analyze Kafka messaging mechanism which describes the
 communication process and rules between each module entity in Kafka from the
 perspective of formal methods. In this paper, we apply the process algebra
 CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) and the model checking tool PAT
 (Process Analysis Toolkit) to analyze Kafka messaging mechanism. The results
 of verification show that the model caters for its specification and
 guarantees the reliability of messages in the normal communication process.
 Moreover, in order to further analyze the security of Kafka messaging
 mechanism, we add the intruder model and the authentication protocol
 Kerberos model and compare the verification results of Kafka messaging mechanism with or without the secure protocol Kerberos. The results show that the
 Kerberos protocol has improved the security of Kafka messaging mechanism in
 some aspects, but there are still some security loopholes.