MCP Ruby SDK: Unbounded line buffer in stdio transports leads to memory exhaustion (DoS)

Summary

The stdio transports in MCP::Server::Transports::StdioTransport and MCP::Client::Stdio read newline-delimited JSON-RPC frames using IO#gets with no limit argument. CRuby's IO#gets with no limit reads from the current position until the next separator (\n) with no upper bound on the returned string length. A peer that streams bytes without ever emitting a newline causes gets to accumulate the entire stream in a single Ruby String until the process is killed by the operating-system OOM killer.

This is the same vulnerability class tracked in sibling MCP SDKs as GHSA-74gp-qhv5-v493 (Kotlin), GHSA-wqgc-pwpr-pq7r (TypeScript), GHSA-655q-2283-6jgj (Python), and others. It was identified during a cross-SDK audit; ruby-sdk had no prior report.

Affected code

Verified at main @ cf44475c.

Server transport — lib/mcp/server/transports/stdio_transport.rb

# line 23
while @open && (line = $stdin.gets)        # <-- no limit argument
  response = @session.handle_json(line.strip)
  ...

# line 76
while @open && (line = $stdin.gets)        # <-- no limit argument
  begin
    parsed = JSON.parse(line.strip, symbolize_names: true)

$stdin is the raw process global (only set_encoding is applied at line 16); there is no wrapper imposing a length limit.

Client transport — lib/mcp/client/stdio.rb

# line 150
@stdin, @stdout, @stderr, @wait_thread = Open3.popen3(spawn_env, @command, *@args)

# line 228
line = @stdout.gets                         # <-- no limit argument
raise_connection_error!(method, params) if line.nil?
parsed = JSON.parse(line.strip)

@stdout is the raw IO returned by Open3.popen3. The @read_timeout guard at line 227 (wait_for_readable!) only gates the IO.select before gets is invoked; once bytes are flowing, gets blocks indefinitely accumulating into one string.

Impact

Denial of service via memory exhaustion. A peer that controls the byte stream delivered to the stdio transport can grow a single Ruby String until the process exhausts available memory.

Threat-model caveat (important): In the default stdio deployment, the peer process already holds local execution privileges equal to or greater than the victim:

• On the server side (StdioTransport#open), the writer to $stdin is the parent process that spawned the server, which already holds Process.kill, environment control, and filesystem access over the child. This direction is a robustness defect rather than a security boundary in typical deployments.
• On the client side (Client::Stdio#read_response), the writer is the third-party MCP server binary the host application chose to spawn via Open3.popen3. In an unsandboxed deployment that binary already has local code execution as the host user.

This issue is primarily a security concern for:

• (a) host applications that sandbox the spawned MCP server (container, restricted user, seccomp) while piping its stdout to an unsandboxed host process — an unbounded gets lets a memory-capped sandboxed process exhaust the unconstrained host;
• (b) HTTP-to-stdio bridge deployments that forward bytes from a remote peer to a stdio server's stdin (note: surveyed bridges re-frame JSON-RPC and emit their own newlines, mitigating this in practice);
• (c) robustness against non-malicious servers that emit large unterminated output (misconfigured logging to stdout, runaway loops), which can crash the host process and all other MCP sessions it manages.

The bug fires before the JSON-RPC initialize handshake, since gets cannot return until \n arrives.

Reproduction

# poc_ruby_stdio_oom.rb — drives the real client transport against a producer that never emits \n
require "mcp/client/stdio"

# `yes` writes "y\n" — instead use a producer that never sends \n:
producer = %q{ruby -e 'STDOUT.sync=true; loop { print "A" * 65536 }'}

client = MCP::Client::Stdio.new(command: "bash", args: ["-c", producer])
client.start
# any request triggers read_response → @stdout.gets → unbounded String growth
client.send_request(method: "initialize", params: {})

Observed: process RSS grows linearly with bytes produced; gets never returns; process is OOM-killed.

Suggested fix

IO#gets accepts a second limit argument. Apply a configurable maximum line length (default suggested: 4 MiB — large enough for any realistic JSON-RPC frame including base64-embedded images) at all three call sites, and treat an over-limit line as a transport error that closes the connection:

MAX_LINE_BYTES = 4 * 1024 * 1024

while @open && (line = $stdin.gets("\n", MAX_LINE_BYTES))
  unless line.end_with?("\n")
    # gets returned because the limit was hit, not because a newline arrived
    raise MCP::TransportError, "stdio frame exceeds #{MAX_LINE_BYTES} bytes without newline"
  end
  ...
end

Apply the same pattern at stdio_transport.rb:76 and client/stdio.rb:228. Expose MAX_LINE_BYTES as a constructor option on both transports for callers with legitimate large-frame needs.

Credit

Identified during a cross-SDK audit of the stdio unbounded-buffer vulnerability class, prompted by GHSA-74gp-qhv5-v493 (reporter: tonghuaroot).