GHSA-4gph-2hhr-5mwg
Envoy AI Gateway was found to be affected by a protocol parser differential vulnerability due to improper implementation of the JSON-RPC 2.0 specification. Such differential causes a MCP message alteration, potentially causing a bypass of security controls in a multi-layered architecture. According to the JSON RPC Spec used by Model Context Protocol, JSON RPC should be case sensitive https://www.jsonrpc.org/specification ``` [...] All member names exchanged between the Client and the Server that are considered for matching of any kind should be considered to be case-sensitive. The terms function, method, and procedure can be assumed to be interchangeable. ``` The AI Gateway is accepting and processing case-variant fields that compliant MCP implementations correctly ignore. Crucially, Envoy does not just "pass through" the message by acting as a transparent proxy, it alters the traffic, allowing smuggling of unwanted requests. The following steps represent the incoming message alteration: 1. **Incoming MCP Message**: ``` { id: 1, jsonrpc: "2.0", method: "tools/call", params: { name: "backend__greet", Name: "backend__secretTool", arguments: { name: "World!" }, Arguments: { name: "Exploit" } } } ``` 2. **Parses** the request, picking the non-standard `Name` field over the authorized `name` field due to internal case-insentitive parsing by libraries such as `modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/jsonrpc` and `github.com/bytedance/sonic` 3. **Overwrites** the authorized "backend__greet" value from the valid `name` field with the malicious value from the `Name` field 4. **Normalizes** the injected "backend__secretTool" value (from the invalid `Name` field) 5. **Re-serializes** the request into a new, valid MCP JRPC payload (`{"name": "backend__secretTool"}`) and forwards it upstream This "smuggling" effect means Envoy actively transforms a request that might have been checked by a
Properties
- ghsa_id
- GHSA-4gph-2hhr-5mwg
- severity
- medium
- summary
- Envoy AI Proxy - MCP Message Smuggling Vulnerability
- cve_id
- GHSA-4gph-2hhr-5mwg
- is_ghsa_only
- true
- ghsa_published
- 2026-05-19T16:18:14Z
- source_url
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-4gph-2hhr-5mwg
- ghsa_updated
- 2026-05-19T16:18:16Z
Related Entities (4)
REPORTED_BY (1)
VULNERABLE_TO (1)
AFFECTS (1)
HAS_WEAKNESS (1)
Explore deeper with Ninja Signal's threat intelligence graph