CVE-2026-45781
LOWCVE-2026-45781 is a low-severity (CVSS 3.5) CWE-636 vulnerability in github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2026-45781 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
MCP Registry: OCI ownership validation fails open on upstream rate limits, allowing attacker-controlled package claims
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-45781.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-45781 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 360,399 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registryReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The MCP Registry provides MCP clients with a list of MCP servers, like an app store for MCP servers. Prior to 1.7.9, OCI ownership validation skips label-match check when upstream OCI registry returns HTTP 429, letting any authenticated publisher bind their io.github.<user>/* namespace to OCI images they do not control. internal/validators/registries/oci.go:104-119 fails open on http.StatusTooManyRequests: when the registry's anonymous fetch to the upstream OCI registry is rate-limited, ValidateOCI returns nil and the publish is accepted without ever running the io.modelcontextprotocol.server.name label-match check at lines 122-141. That label check is the only cross-system ownership proof the registry applies to OCI packages — every other registry type (NPM, PyPI, NuGet, MCPB) treats a non-200 upstream response as a hard error. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.7.9.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry | all versions | 1.7.9 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry to 1.7.9 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-45781 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-45781 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2026-45781. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-45781 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2026-45781 across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.