ZeroHour

CVE-2026-47427

PoC moderate

Unauthenticated DoS in GitHub MCP Server via nil pointer dereference

CVSS 3.1
7.5 high
EPSS
<1%p37
Published
()
Modified
AI analysis

GitHub MCP Server versions prior to 1.1.0 contain a nil pointer dereference (CWE-476) in the CompletionsHandler function in pkg/github/server.go, which accesses the ref field of a completion request without first verifying it is present. Any unauthenticated client able to send JSON-RPC messages to the server can trigger the flaw by issuing a completion/complete request with a missing or empty ref field. Because the dereference happens before any authentication or token validation, the resulting Go runtime panic crashes the server and yields a complete denial of service. All deployments running an affected version are potentially affected, with the greatest risk for instances reachable over a network by unauthenticated clients, while locally run stdio instances are only reachable by their local client. No widespread exploitation is reported (0.4% EPSS, not in CISA KEV), but a public security advisory documents the issue and the triggering request is trivial to craft.

What to do: Upgrade to GitHub MCP Server 1.1.0 or later, which adds the missing nil check in CompletionsHandler. Until patched, restrict any HTTP/SSE-exposed instance with authentication or network allowlisting, since the crashing request requires no credentials. Audit deployments to determine which are network-reachable versus local-only, and watch for unauthenticated completion/complete requests that crash the process.

Affected
GitHub MCP Serverall versions prior to 1.1.0
Estimated exposure
moderate≈10,000–100,000 deployments (estimate), with the remotely exposed subset likely smaller — Estimated from the GitHub MCP server's position as the official, widely adopted server in the fast-growing MCP ecosystem, tempered by the common deployment pattern of running it locally over stdio, where only the local client can send it…

Order-of-magnitude estimate by the model from install counts, market share and public scan data it knows; verify before quoting.

Description

GitHub MCP Server is GitHub's official MCP Server. Prior to 1.1.0, the CompletionsHandler function in pkg/github/server.go accesses params.Ref without first checking whether it is nil, so a completion/complete request with a missing or empty ref field triggers a nil pointer dereference and a Go runtime panic; because the crash occurs before any authentication or token validation, any unauthenticated client able to send JSON-RPC messages can crash the server, resulting in a complete denial of service. This issue is fixed in version 1.1.0.

Vendors
github
Products
mcp server
Weakness
CWE-476
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

In the news

No ingested article mentions this CVE yet.