CVE-2026-53937
MCP Kotlin SDK's unbounded line buffer in StdioServerTransport/StdioClientTransport leads to memory exhaustion (DoS)
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 6.2 Medium
- Published
- Sep 8, 2026
- Updated
- Sep 14, 2026
- Reserved
- Jun 11, 2026
Description
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.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | 6.2 Medium | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H | GitHub_M |
Weaknesses
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdkmodelcontextprotocol |
|
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-clientmodelcontextprotocol |
|
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-coremodelcontextprotocol |
|
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-servermodelcontextprotocol |
|
References
- https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/security/advisories/GHSA-74gp-qhv5-v493
- https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/commit/6e6f80512fb8fcc9f3c031cfd693ccbcf9c4aaab
- https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/blob/6d5bac1/kotlin-sdk-core/src/commonMain/kotlin/io/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin/sdk/shared/ReadBuffer.kt
- https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/releases/tag/0.13.0
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