Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 6.2

CVE-2026-53937 json

MCP Kotlin SDK's unbounded line buffer in StdioServerTransport/StdioClientTransport leads to memory exhaustion (DoS)

published 2026-09-08 2 mo ago modified 2026-09-14 55 d ago also EUVD-2026-74297

cvss
6.2
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

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.

Patch / fix

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
55 d ago

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/security/advisories/GHSA-74gp-qhv5-v493 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • modelcontextprotocol io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk
  • modelcontextprotocol io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-client
  • modelcontextprotocol io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-core
  • modelcontextprotocol io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-server

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.