GitHub Advisoryadvisory · PyPI
GHSA-xhcr-cqfr-m3hv atomic-agents-stack: HTTP MCP catalog accepts cleartext http and spawns catalog-supplied commands (MITM to RCE)
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Ecosystem
- PyPI
- Packages
- atomic-agents-stack
- Severity
- High
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
- Weaknesses
- CWE-319, CWE-494
- Reviewed
- 2026-08-17
Affected packages
• PyPI atomic-agents-stack: < 1.1.0 → fixed in 1.1.0
Description
The HTTP MCP server-registry backend factory (`atomic_agents/mcp_registry/http.py`, `make_http_mcp_server_registry_backend_from_url`) accepts both `http` and `https` schemes. Catalog entries carry `command`/`args` that are type-validated but content-unrestricted, and are later spawned as local stdio subprocesses by `MCPClientPool`. Over a cleartext `http://` catalog URL, a network man-in-the-middle can rewrite the catalog response to inject an arbitrary `command`/`args` and obtain code execution on the agent host, with no LLM involvement. The Policy MCP allowlist is not a default mitigation (`mcp_allow_fn` defaults to None), so absent an operator-authored allowlist every resolved spec connects.
Affected: `mcp_registry/http.py`, all versions through 1.0.0. (The `https` path is sound: `httpx` defaults to `verify=True`, `follow_redirects=False`.)
Fix: require `https` by default and gate `http://` behind a loud explicit opt-in. Defense-in-depth: allowlist the resolved command basename (or require confirmation) before any registry-sourced subprocess spawn. Document the consequence in spec/36.