Medium severity · published Sep 8, 2026
CVE-2026-53937
MCP Kotlin SDK's unbounded line buffer in StdioServerTransport/StdioClientTransport leads to memory exhaustion (DoS)
6.2
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 8% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
IO
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk · modelcontextprotocol
< 0.13.0 · source: vendor
IO
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-client · modelcontextprotocol
>= 0.7.0, < 0.13.0 · source: vendor
IO
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-core · modelcontextprotocol
< 0.13.0 · source: vendor
IO
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk-server · modelcontextprotocol
>= 0.7.0, < 0.13.0 · source: vendor
Affected product
IO
io.modelcontextprotocol:kotlin-sdk
modelcontextprotocol
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-53937
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-53937
github.com
https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/blob/6d5bac1/kotlin-sdk-core/src/commonMain/kotlin/io/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin/sdk/shared/ReadBuffer.kt
github.com
https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/commit/6e6f80512fb8fcc9f3c031cfd693ccbcf9c4aaab
github.com
https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/releases/tag/0.13.0
github.com
https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/kotlin-sdk/security/advisories/GHSA-74gp-qhv5-v493
