MCP Kotlin SDK's unbounded line buffer in StdioServerTransport/StdioClientTransport leads to memory exhaustion (DoS)
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 0.13.0
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
- Exploitation: poc
- Automatable: no
- Technical impact: partial
Summary
MCP Kotlin SDK is the Kotlin Multiplatform software development kit for the Model Context Protocol. In versions 0.7.0 through 0.12.0, `ReadBuffer.append` in `kotlin-sdk-core/src/commonMain/kotlin/io/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin/sdk/shared/ReadBuffer.kt` writes every chunk of bytes received from the stdio transport into a `kotlinx.io.Buffer` with no size cap. Frames are extracted from that buffer only when a `\n` (0x0a) byte is observed. A peer that streams bytes without ever sending a newline causes the internal buffer to grow indefinitely until the JVM (or the surrounding host process) is OOM-killed. The leak is amplified by `StdioServerTransport` and `StdioClientTransport`, which both queue raw chunks through a `kotlinx.coroutines.channels.Channel<ByteArray>(Channel.UNLIMITED)` and then call `readBuffer.append(chunk)` without backpressure or size guard. This is a remote-pre-auth denial of service whenever an SDK stdio server's stdin is fed by an untrusted or attacker-controlled producer (for example: a host program that exec's the MCP server as a subprocess and pipes through bytes received from a network peer, or a sidecar wrapper that proxies bytes from an HTTP endpoint to the stdio transport). Version 0.13.0 fixes the issue.
Timeline
- CVE published
- CISA SSVC assessment
Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
- Record last updated
Affected versions
- modelcontextprotocol io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk
fixed in 0.13.0
- modelcontextprotocol io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-client
From 0.7.0 · fixed in 0.13.0
- modelcontextprotocol io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-core
fixed in 0.13.0
- modelcontextprotocol io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-server
From 0.7.0 · fixed in 0.13.0